Books read January through December 1995
| Author | Spark, Muriel |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1988 |
| Number of Pages | 189 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | January 1995 |
In 1954, 28 year old war widow Mrs. Hawkins lives in a rooming house in Kensington and works for a near bankrupt publisher for whom she serves as chief editor, office manager, and jack of all trades. She enjoys the company of her landlady and gets on well with the other roomers. Then she runs afoul of Hector Bartlett, a terrible writer who thinks he is good and is constantly importuning various publishers to publish his awful books. Having been accosted by him in the park, she gives in to her feelings and calls him a "pisseur de copie", and later repeats the charge in public.
Angered, Bartlett takes action against her. He is living with a well known writer whom he prevails upon to call her employers. When she refuses to apologize she is fired from her job and later from another. Even worse, Bartlett works with a superstitious Polish seamstress in H's house to practice pseudo-scientific witchcraft against her, eventually causing the foolish seamstress' suicide.
Bartlett fades into other people's lives and H marries a medical student in her building. She forgets B for 30 years until she sees him again in a restaurant in Italy where she again calls him a pisseur de copie.
This novel seems short on story and might have been written as a short story. It's easy reading and professionally done with some nice scenes of publishing offices and rooming house life. But I found the character's outlook surprising and the "pisseur" uninteresting and undeveloped.
[Book group selection.]
I recall the change in tone of the book over the 30 year period. In the main part of the novel Mrs. Hawkins is poor and struggling. While not exactly dreary, her situation is precarious and badly harmed by Bartlett. At the end she is the comfortable, well off wife of a successful doctor on a vacation in Italy, something that would have been unthinkable in her earlier life. Bartlett can no longer harm her. Her situation is better and safer and her life has greatly improved, but Bartlett is still nothing but a hack who pisses out lousy copy.
| Author | Whitehouse, Arch |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City: Doubleday and Co., 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 383 |
| Extras | photos, maps, index, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Naval; World War II |
| When Read | January 1995 |
A history of aircraft carriers from their inception at the end of World War I to the early jet age. The great bulk of the book is devoted to World War II. There are some interesting chapters on the British experience off Norway and in the Mediterranean and then the story of the great carrier war in the Pacific which opened with the attack on Perl Harbor and ended with the battle of Leyte Gulf.
W has written many books of this type. He is knowledgeable, rather opinionated, and full of deep admiration for the heroes of these conflicts. He moves well from the stories of the grand strategy to those of individual pilots flying in harm's way. The centerpiece is his report on the Battle of the Philippine Sea, when a force of American aircraft were sent out on a long range pursuit of fleeing Japanese ships in late afternoon. They had to return at night, over water, tired, low on fuel, sometimes with damaged planes or instruments, to try to find their carriers and make dangerous night landings which they had not practiced and didn't really know how to do. Many, many planes were lost.
I bought this book for 50 cents at a library discard sale. It's a kind of book I've enjoyed ever since I was a boy.
The admiral in command of the fleet at the Battle of the Philippine Sea, also called the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot for the large number of Japanese planes shot out of the sky, had to decide whether to go after the Japanese carriers or not. He knew that if he did, the planes wouldn't make it back until after dark. He knew too that navigating after dark over land was hard enough but over water, with no reference points to steer by, the tired, possibly injured pilots were going to have a very tough time. After the attack he then had to decide whether to turn on the lights on the carriers. If he did, he might attract Japanese submarines and night bombers. He decided to do it. He turned on search lights that lit up the sky and guided the pilots home.
I enjoyed books like this as a boy and I enjoy them now as an old man. If I have my wits about me near the end of my life, I think I have enough experience to say that I will undoubtedly still enjoy them then.
| Author | Mosley, Walter |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1992 |
| Number of Pages | 272 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Easy Rawlins |
| When Read | January 1995 |
In 1956, Easy Rawlins is living in his house in Watts with his wife Regina, their two year old daughter, and the 12 year old mute boy named Jesus whom Easy rescued from a child molester many years before. He has told his wife nothing about his properties, his real work or life, or his income.
One day the police show up and lean on him for his help in solving the murders of three black women prostitutes and one young white coed - who unbeknownst to the police, was also working as a showgirl / nude dancer in a black bar. The cops arrest Easy's maniac friend Mouse to force Easy to help find the real killer. Easy first figures out who killed the three black women, and the cops set up and assassinate the man. They consider the case closed but in fact the white girl was killed by her own father, a prominent district attorney
Easy agonizes over his relationship with Regina. She wants intimacy but he can't give that. Finally he resolves to talk to her but it's too late. She runs off with another man, taking the baby and leaving him with Jesus.
I see that I didn't record whether Easy brought the murderer of the white girl to justice, or whether the police figured out that this prominent, powerful prosecutor had killed his own daughter and purposely decided to leave him alone, blaming it all on the man who they killed - silencing him forever. That's what it looks like must have happened based on my write-up.
Surprisingly, what I now remember best is that Easy's wife left him. It is one of the hallmarks of these books that Easy Rawlins is a good, decent, but difficult man who is set in his ways and unable to bend them to accommodate anyone else. I wrote about this in an Amazon review of one of the other Easy Rawlins stories.
| Author | Huxley, Aldous |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper Collophon, 1983 |
| Copyright Date | 1939 |
| Number of Pages | 244 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | February 1995 |
Jeremy, a middle aged English scholar who dearly loves his trivial life of reading old books, gossip, conversations with his mother, and fortnightly visits to his favorite prostitutes, has been hired by millionaire Jo Stoyte to catalog the Hauberk papers, a collection of books and diaries from an extinct (or not exactly so) English family.
Stoyte lives in a fantasy castle in California with his 22 year old playmate Virginia and Dr. Obispo, who is working on a means to extend Stoyte's life. there is also a terribly earnest young man named Peter who is head over heels in love with Virginia and an old philosopher / Christian mystic and scholar who disputes with Jeremy - who loves the simple life of mental and physical pleasure.
Obispo seduces Virginia. Stoyte finds out and gets his gun to kill him, but mistakenly shoots young Peter instead. Obispo then saves Stoyte from being revealed as a killer. They all go to England to find out what happened to the old Earl of Hauberk who seemed to live on and on. They find him alive after 200 years, having found the secret of longevity (carp intestines eaten raw) but he is little more than an ape.
This is an astonishing tour de force of writing, philosophy, character, and scholarship. I can't precisely say I liked it. It was not a "likable" book. It was often tedious and tendentious. But what an extraordinary piece of work.
Well, this one I remember. Obispo was giving Stoyte testosterone injections but knew they wouldn't give the man enough longevity so led them to England on rumors of experiments done on Hauberk. When they find Hauberk he is totally senile and living in a cage, still healthy but hairy and stupid. His body stayed young. His mind continuously got older.
All are shocked upon seeing Hauberk but Stoyte recovers. He asks the doctor, That won't happen for a while yet, right?
While I found the story tedious, tendentious and unlikable, it describes all of the things that we yearn for, youth, sex, long life, trivial and self-centered pursuits. That's what drives the reader onward to find out if there is a future for any of that.
Huxley's answer is, Maybe, but it's not what you think it will be.
| Author | Ibsen, Henrik |
|---|---|
| Original Language | no |
| Translators | Fjelde, Rolfe |
| Publication | New York: Signet Classic, 1965 |
| Copyright Date | 1892 |
| Number of Pages | 79 |
| Extras | in Four Major Plays pp 305-384 |
| Genres | Theater play |
| When Read | February 1995 |
Master builder Halvard Solness runs his business largely on the abilities of his two employees, Knut Brovik, an architect and former builder whom Solness put out of business, and his son Ragnar. To keep Ragnar, Solness seduced R's fiancee and used her influence over him. To start his business S subdivided and sold off his wife's inherited land after her father's house burned down - an event which S had tried to encourage. Now, after manipulating everyone and getting all he ever wanted, his success is bitter to him and he lives in fear of Ragnar and youth displacing him.
Into all this a young woman arrives (Hilda) and announces that he promised himself to her ten years before when she was 12 and she has come to collect. She treats him not as a bitter and possessive has been but as the great master builder which he once attempted to be. She goads him into a grand act of climbing the tower of his new home in spite of his vertigo - where he falls (or jumps?) to his death.
I take the play to be about the foolishness and vanity of ambition. The middle class man aims to rise above his fellows at whatever cost and finds that the cost is much dearer than he expected. He cannot escape paying, nor can he give up his ambition. He is left with nothing to hope for but the castles in the air that Hilda offers him.
The play sounds like one that would have left an impression on me but I don't really recall it. Solness is certainly not a person I could have identified with in any way. Perhaps that is a factor, or perhaps I'm reaching the horizon of my aging memory.
| Author | Scott, Walter |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Great Illustrated Classics, Dodd Mead and Co., 1944 |
| Copyright Date | 1823 |
| Number of Pages | 499 |
| Extras | author's introduction and notes |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | March 1995 |
Nineteen year old Quentin Durward, orphaned by clan warfare in his native Scotland, has come to the continent to seek his fortune as a man at arms. He arrives in France in 1468. His original plan of hiring out to the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, has been dashed by a fight with one of the Duke's foresters, so he seeks to join the Scottish Guard of Louis XI where his uncle is already employed.
Quentin is young, handsome, courageous, honorable, chivalrous, etc., but the evil Louis is the real central character of the book. Louis is deceiving, superstitious, selfish, and dangerous to friends as much as to foes. But he is also brilliant and bold in his own ways.
Louis sends Quentin on a mission to escort two noble ladies to the castle of the Bishop of Liege. His plan is for Quentin to be waylaid and the women kidnapped by the Wild Boar of the Ardennes, William de la Marck. But Q is too intelligent and capable. He saves the young Countess of Croye, with whom he has fallen in love. In the end, due partly to Q's intelligence and heroism, Louis averts a war with Charles the bold and Q wins the hand of the Countess.
The story line is adolescent melodrama but its character development and language are far more subtle and sophisticated than what teenagers could be expected to understand. I was greatly impressed by the characters of Louis, of the gypsy Hayraddin Mangrabin, the astrologer Martius Galleoti, and others. And I loved the wonderful language with its beautifully involved sentences, double negatives, archaic words, and nuances. No one writes like that any more.
I liked this book much more than I expected I would.
I just went to the Gutenburg website and called up this book to my screen. Reading just a couple of pages, I was charmed all over again. Scott has written more sophisticated books like Waverly and perhaps Guy Mannering, and more popular books like Ivanhoe and The Talisman, but I think this is the one I liked the best.
| Author | Frankl, Victor E. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pocket Books, Simon and Schuster, 1985 |
| Copyright Date | 1946 |
| Number of Pages | 115 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Holocaust |
| When Read | March 1995 |
I only read the first section of this book, "Experiences in a Concentration Camp. It was bound with "Logotherapy in a Nutshell", which I did not read.
Frankl was a psychiatrist in Vienna working at a clinic for poor people and doing research when he was rounded up and sent to the camps. He was at Auschwitz and several other camps. By rare good fortune, he survived.
F states, "... there was a sort of self-selecting process going on the whole time among all of the prisoners ... only those who could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves ... - we know: the best of us did not return."
F survived by finding meaning in life. He thought constantly of his young wife (who did not return) and held conversations with her image. He thought about science. He tried to do psychotherapy - medicine was out of the question in a place where 10 aspirins would be provided as the only medication for 20 typhus patients.
F said, "it did not really matter what we expected from life, but what life expected from us" (p.98). He kept faith with his ideals.
I am drawn to these accounts - though I can't say why. I have read a number of them. They are images of hell which are profoundly disturbing and yet I do not wish to avert my eyes. Perhaps I draw strength from them. Perhaps they teach me compassion. I don't know.
I liked Primo Levi's book a bit more but got much from this one too.
Books like this have never been easy to read and don't get any easier with age. The ones I like best are the ones in which the Jews somehow fight back. Levi's If Not Now, When?, Nechama Tec's, Defiance, Peter Master's Striking Back, and novels like Leon Uris' Exodus and Mila 18 and John Hersey's The Wall are the only ones that give any satisfaction, small and limited as it may be. I long for salvation and justice and am beaten down by the absence of them in the dreary history of the real Holocaust.
Frankl's viewpoint of a psychiatrist put me off a bit. What I crave is escape, justice, and revenge, not therapy. I crave defiance and solidarity, not survivor's guilt. But what can we do. Truth is truth and what Frankl tells is true.
| Author | Pileggi, Nicholas |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pocket Books. Simon and Schuster, 1990 |
| Copyright Date | 1985 |
| Number of Pages | 308 |
| Extras | index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Biography |
| When Read | March 1995 |
A biography of Henry Hill, a Mafia insider who lived a life of continuous crime for over 20 years and finally, to save himself from prison, turned witness against the mob.
Hill began working at a cabstand at age 12. It was owned by a Mafia connected man, Tuddy Vario. He worked very hard and learned everything he was taught, becoming a favorite of Paulie Vario, a major figure in one of New York's crime families.
He grew up in crime. He participated in everything from sale of untaxed cigarettes to armed robbery, hijacking, extortion, burglary, gun dealing, dope dealing, and arson. He was practically a one man crime wave, as were his well "connected" friends.
He was arrested many times but usually got off because of corruption in the police department and courts. He did spend four years at Lewisburg and Allenwood but even in jail he ran drugs and other schemes and never stopped hustling
In the end, he participated in setting up a six million dollar heist of Lufthansa funds led by an old accomplice/friend Jimmy Burke. But Burke was a wild man who killed almost all the other robbers and looked to be threatening Hill. So when the FBI arrested him he turned against his old friends rather than face prison or murder or, more likely, both.
It was terribly discouraging to see how powerful and how uncontrolled the Mafia is. However it was encouraging to see that, when the FBI decided to act, they were able to put away many people.
Hill described the New York airports as centers of crime. The Mafia owned many airport workers, especially in the baggage areas, but also in security and elsewhere. They ripped off valuable cargoes coming in and out of the city.
Why do we put up with stuff like this? Is there nothing that can be done beyond skimming off some criminals from time to time while leaving the criminal organization and culture entirely intact?
Hill described a scene where a car suddenly cut off his car, he was trapped, and men converged on him with guns drawn. As soon as he saw them, he was greatly relieved. They were cops. If they had been Mafia men, he would have already been dead.
There have been attempts to clean up organized crime. The Kennedy brothers made a big attempt in the early 1960s. The Mexican government has made some attempts on the big drug cartels. The Italian government makes periodic attempts on the Mafia. I don't know enough to know whether any long term progress is made. I suspect that changes in the nature of society are required in order to effect significant changes in law enforcement and crime.
| Author | Lewis, Bernard |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 |
| Number of Pages | 101 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Middle East |
| When Read | March 1995 |
Lewis, an eminent Arabist and Princeton professor emeritus, discusses the events of 1492, the Christian conquest of Spain, the expulsion of the Jews, and the discovery of America.
The conquest was part of an 800 year old battle which continued for hundreds more in the Balkans and in Russia between the two most similar religious ideologies in the world. The attacks on Jews were a a part of that battle. Jews were seen as akin to Muslims, as easy targets for stirring up anti-Muslim sentiment, and as in some ways even more insidious religious rivals because they accepted the Old Testament but rejected Christ, the New Testament, and the church hierarchy.
Jews expelled from Spain were welcomed into the Ottoman Empire, not because of any sympathy or tolerance, but because the sultan needed people with no geographic roots that would be solely beholden to him and who could be settled among hostile conquered peoples in order to provide loyal subjects in strategic places. They were settled mainly in Salonika - which became a predominantly Jewish city until the Holocaust - and in Istanbul. They were among the most loyal of the Sultan's subjects. Their culture and language displaced that of the smaller and less educated populations of indigenous Greek speaking Jews.
L says little about the conquest of America but much about its contribution to the ascendancy of Europe and the development of "Western" civilization. He is at pains to show that conquest or no, it led to the development of the freest, most tolerant, most democratic society.
I don't know what I thought about Lewis' claim of the conquest of America creating the freest, most tolerant, most democratic society, and I don't remember the context of L's claim. Surely the Spanish did not create the freest, most tolerant, most democratic society in the New World. If we consider the treatment of the Indians and the black slaves, it's not clear that the English colonists did either. I'm inclined to think today that what happened in the English colonies was that the conditions of nearly free land with a paucity of people enabled a society to grow up with much less poverty and feudalism than in the old world, and this lead to a more democratic country. I'm having trouble seeing anything about the Christian/Muslim fight in that.
| Author | Cutter, Thomas J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper Collins, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 341 |
| Extras | index, photos, maps, bibliography |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | March 1995 |
An account of the largest naval battle in history in terms of the number of ships and men involved. after the U.S. invasion of the Philippines at Leyte island in 1944 the Japanese Navy launched a final all or nothing assault, sending four fleets from three directions against the Americans. The complicated Japanese plan actually worked. The attack from the south brought one American fleet south while a decoy force in the north drew the main U.S. 3rd fleet under Bull Halsey to the north. Then the center force, weakened by air attacks the previous day, broke in among the support forces and sank a number of light escort vessels.
Inexplicably however, the center force under Kurita withdrew after sinking a few vessels instead of steaming on to wipe out the unprotected support fleets - which it might have done. thus tremendous sacrifices of Japanese ships and men were expended for very little gain.
There were many heroes in this battle. PT boats and destroyers made courageous attacks on the Japanese southern force. Then when Kurita appeared (due to Halsey's poor strategy), a small force of American destroyers, DE's and aircraft made determined, effectively suicidal attacks - successfully harassing the enemy, slowing him down, and inflicting casualties. The survivors had to swim in shark infested waters for two days before anyone remembered to pick them up.
The book was well written and researched by a 25 year Navy veteran, now a professor of history. Clearly, he cared about these people.
I remember quite a few things from this book. There were the suicidal attacks of the destroyer escorts against heavy Japanese cruisers. After sinking the DE's, Japanese officers saluted the American survivors swimming in the water as they passed. American pilots from the nearby escort carrier had no armor piercing bombs, only ordnance intended for ground attack. But they didn't hesitate to attack the Japanese battleships with light bombs and machine guns, furiously pressing home their attacks. Although they did little serious damage, they rattled the Japanese who, aware of generally overwhelming American air power, came to believe that they were going to be sunk from the air.
I remember the controversy of Halsey's pursuit of four Japanese carriers northward. Aircraft carriers had become the new capital ships of the USN, and were the ships that the Japanese used for their main attacks. The IJN knew they'd be attractive decoy targets. I was very surprised that they would put these ships at risk but apparently at that stage of the war they no longer had planes or pilots for them. When a message went out to Halsey the commander who sent it asked where they were and the communications people put a phrase at the end, "the world wants to know", supposedly just for encryption purposes. But Halsey was highly offended.
I remember the battle against the southern fleet with PT boats attacking in the dark and the American battleships "crossing the T" of the oncoming Japanese ships and sinking them in the only instance of this classic surface ship maneuver in the entire war.
And of course I also remember the young seaman aboard the escort carrier at Leyte who, when the Japanese battleships turned around and headed away, yelled, "They're getting away!"
I wrote about the TC Boyle short story collection that I read books about topics that interest me. World War II is one of them. It was the good fight of democracy and humanity against fascism, imperialism, and evil. These books tend to stay in my memory.
One of the characteristics of many of the histories I read, very much including this one, is a deep sympathy of the author for the people he writes about. Cutter clearly appreciated the sacrifices of the Americans who fought at Leyte and wanted to preserve their memory. He did a good and, as far as I can tell, an objective and truthful job of that.
| Author | Boyle, T. Coraghessan |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Viking, 1989 |
| Number of Pages | 224 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | March 1995 |
This is a collection of 16 widely varied, flamboyant, short stories. My favorite was about the owner of an Italian restaurant who has prepared for months to have his restaurant reviewed by an ice queen food reviewer for the local paper who gives everyone terrible reviews. After two failed sessions with her in which various things have gone wrong, he discovers her secret. She really knows nothing about food and depends on a boorish clod she always brings with her who likes nothing. The owner coaxes her into the kitchen, away from the clod, and seduces her with exquisite delicacies she cannot resist
Another striking story was about a woman selling burglar alarms who makes her living scaring people. She comes into the home of a homicidal maniac who later sees one of her customers with the little signs saying "This home is protected by ..." The maniac vents his fury on them, killing everyone inside. The sales lady is shaken by this experience but goes on selling alarms - telling people about the maniac killer but not telling that the people he killed had bought an alarm.
All of Boyle's stories exhibit a direct engagement with life. There is no Hamlet like shilly-shallying about its edges. B's characters go for whatever it is they are going for - which gives the stories and energy and freshness that is very appealing.
I should try his novels.
Looking at my book notes, it appears that this is the only book I have read of Boyle's.
I seem to recall that I read this for a book group and the title was suggested by Susan Petrie. My impression of the book was positive, as I wrote above, but I found the author's sensibilities to be quite different from mine. It was one of those cases of an intelligent author with good writing, good stories, and good characters. By all such criteria, I should have read more of him but didn't. I seem to recall seeing his books on the shelf at the libraries, even borrowing some, but somehow always picking up different books when I finished something and was ready to start another.
I sometimes read books I admire but don't like. I sometimes read books I like but don't admire all that much - for example books on topics that deeply interest me. And then again I sometimes don't read books that I admire and even kind of like.
We make choices in our lives and in our reading too. We aren't always good at explaining them.
I went ahead and read a TC Boyle novel after writing the above notes. I didn't like it. See The Harder They Come.
| Author | Sheffield, Charles |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Del Rey / Ballantine Books, 1990 |
| Number of Pages | 257 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | April 1995 |
Five or six thousand years in the future, a space pilot / adventurer is sent to the Dobelle system to find out why the agency representative, a promising man, has chosen to stay there in a backwater job. He arrives just before Summertide, a time when a grand lineup of planets and the double star in the system will cause enormous gravitational tides on the twin planets.
There are various aliens and adventures culminating in the witnessing of a major event apparently organized by the "Builders", a long disappeared race who left many still un-understood gigantic artifacts scattered about the galaxy.
Sheffield holds a PhD in physics (and math too if I remember correctly) and is a big time scientist - chief scientist at Satcom (or someone like that) and has done all kinds of things that us ordinary mortals never even approach.
I read this book mainly just for Sheffield himself. The writing isn't bad. The science is excellent, the imagination very stimulating.
| Author | Robinson, Derek |
|---|---|
| Publication | London: Harwill (Harper Collins) Avon, 1993 |
| Number of Pages | 454 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Aviation; World War II |
| When Read | April 1995 |
A World War II novel about a short period in the spring of 1942 in North Africa. all of the characters run into each other and most are killed. The three main story foci are: a P-40 squadron commanded by Fanny Barton (from Piece of Cake); an SAS commando unit which comes out of the desert at night to attack German airfields; and a German major in Luftwaffe intelligence who is in love with an Italian woman doctor.
R's characters, as in Piece of Cake, have been warped by violence and stress. They fight with an almost insane determination to destroy the enemy at any cost. Fanny is told that if he doesn't produce some action he'll be sent out to ferry Hurricanes. So he leads his squadron in a series of strafing attacks that reduce the group from 12 to 2 pilots. Some of his strategies are brilliant, some crazy.
The SAS man, Lampard, pursues his personal vendettas against the Germans and falsifies his reports. Later, between missions in Cairo, he kills a British officer in a fight. He flees back to the desert, trying very desperate attacks but surviving all of them. Eventually he captures the Luftwaffe major and is on the way home with him when Fanny spots them from the air and, following screwed up orders, kills them all.
R writes credibly well with well researched history. There isn't the same compulsion as in the historical drama of the Battle of Britain in PoC. A decent war story - no more or less (or maybe a little more.)
I fell into an email correspondence recently with the author of this book. He's in his upper 80's now. When you know somebody, your thinking about him changes. You become more sympathetic to the person and less critical. Of the books by Robinson that I read, I thought one was quite bad, one was quite good, and this one was pretty good. All in all, I'm glad he wrote them, I'm glad I read them (at least two of them), and I'm glad that I got to correspond with him. I wish him well.
| Author | Hemingway, Ernest |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Collier Books, 1986 |
| Copyright Date | 1927-1933 |
| Number of Pages | 154 |
| Genres | Fiction; Short stories |
| When Read | April 1995 |
Here are ten stories written early in Hemingway's career. The title story is about a man dying of gangrene after an infection from an insignificant scratch while on a safari in Africa. He reviews his useless life and thinks of all the stories he never wrote. He dies while dreaming of a flight to safety. "Fathers and Sons" is about a man driving along a road remembering all the things his father taught him and all he failed to teach him. The man's own son awakes on the front seat and he re-tells the stories to him in a different and better light.
"The Killers" has Nick Adams in a cafe when two killers come in and hold the place, waiting for their victim who never appears. Nick goes out to warn the man but finds him apathetic and uninterested in saving himself.
"Fifty Grand" is about a boxer double crossed by gamblers. He bets all his money on losing to a young kid only to find the young kid had been paid to lose - by using an obvious low bow. The older boxer survives it and insists it was not a low blow. He keeps fighting and then gives one of his own - getting revenge and winning his bet.
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is about an American couple on Safari. The man proves a coward in a confrontation with a lion. His wife lords it over him and despises him and cuckolds him. But he goes on another hunt for buffalo. He develops his courage and becomes a new man, ready to fight and ready to stand up to his wife. When the buffalo charges, he stands his ground, only to be shot by his wife. An accident? We don't know.
Classic Hemingway - macho, cynical, depressed, well written.
I remember these stories pretty well. Hemingway employed strong and effective imagery in his writing that made an impact on memory and imagination.
As with Howard Fast, there were a number of Hemingway books I read before I started writing book notes, and I remember some of them fairly well. They include The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, and the Nick Adams stories.
| Author | Austen, Jane |
|---|---|
| Publication | British Broadcasting Corporation |
| Copyright Date | 1815 |
| Number of Pages | 246 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | May 1995 |
Emma Woodhouse, 21 year old daughter of an elderly widower, is mistress of Heartfield, the premier estate in the little village of Highbury in Surrey, 16 miles from London. She takes 17 year old Harriet Smith under her wing - the illegitimate daughter of a person of some "consequence", and convinces Harriet that she is too far above her young farmer suitor and aims her at Mr. Elton, the local pastor instead. But Elton is pursuing Emma herself - which Emma fails to understand.
Well, it all works out in the end. Harriet gets her farmer, another young woman gets Mr. Frank Churchill, a wealthy but somewhat flighty fellow, and Emma marries the solid, intelligent and wise Mr. Nightly, who is also her brother-in-law.
As with Sense and Sensibility we are presented a closed little, privileged society as if it were all that existed in the world. No one would learn from Emma that Napoleon existed or that there was poverty or steam engines or anyone at all beyond this little world. Its distinctions of "agreeableness" and rank and its careful manners, duties, and affectations could be taken as all that mattered.
And yet A writes within the small circle with considerable wit and charm and even, in its narrow way, some wisdom.
The turning point of this novel is Emma's realization that her meddling in Harriet's life and her snobbery towards the solid, honest, but non-gentry farmer are evidence of her own personal immaturity and limitation. Fortunately, the man who realized this all along, Mr. Nightly, also realizes that Emma is a fundamentally sound girl who will learn and mature.
It was some time after reading this and some of the other Austen novels that I read a biography of the writer and learned that she was not so narrow as the world she portrayed. Rather she was a writer with a deep understanding of her own strengths and weaknesses, and a recognition of what readers wanted from her. She wrote to support herself and did what she needed to do.
A diary entry says that this BBC production was abridged. I have always hated that but, as with others where I made the discovery after completing the book, I have not gone back to read the original.
| Author | Branon, Bill |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 340 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | May 1995 |
This is a turgid, violent, adolescent valued, right-wing novel by "a Harvard educated Navy veteran who is an expert on weaponry, demolitions and state-of-the-art surveillance. He is also a champion ocean sailor, professional level golfer, and denizen of Las Vegas casinos." Maybe "adolescent valued" is too harsh, but there is certainly something twisted in this man.
The story has a number of characters who are all involved in a plot to blow up IRS offices, which succeeds. The leader of the plot is an anti-IRS tax rebel/intellectual who appears to have been bank rolled by an agency of the government - though all that is never clear. There are also two professional killers and a priest/money courier/casino high roller who are the action heroes of the story. The killers are hired to kill the intellectual but wind up on his side against the nasty government men.
Branon seems to be the Posse Comitatus version of an intellectual. He'd fit right in with the crazies that blew up the Federal building in Oklahoma City. He writes as if bombing hundreds of innocent people is not an extraordinarily heinous crime that could only be perpetuated by an evil man or a psychopath.
There is an intensity in the writing, a commitment to graphic description of violence, but I still can't call it good writing and I'm astonished that the New York Times called this a notable book of the year.
I read this because Sandy Dwiggins recommended it. But it was a not very well written fantasy of a man who has owned too many guns and despised too many people.
I can't say that I deeply regret not remembering more about this book. It sounds worth forgetting. After reading issues of the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report for many years, I think I have a better understanding of people like Branon. I think most of them are people who externalize personal disappointments in the form of anger at the world. The powerful and amorphous federal government makes a fine target for this anger, and the IRS, an agency that they like to think is composed of thieves stealing people's money, is perfect for the role they are cast into.
I don't recall where the title of the book comes from, however I think it is common for a certain kind of person to covet the roles of both victim and predator. They are victims, not in the sense that anyone can hurt them - they see themselves as too strong and dangerous for that - but in the sense that they have been assaulted by enemies. The role of predator is coveted for its "top dog", "alpha male", macho connotations. The ultimate expressions of this mentality are found in the karate, kung fu, and cowboy movies in which a super-strong, super-fast, super-skilled fighter tolerates one insult and even assault after another until he is pushed over the line and anyone can see that he is perfectly justified in taking violent revenge. The concept is, "I really want to hurt people. I know that is of questionable morality, but it is perfectly justified in this case and I can just let all of my violent instincts loose - oh that feels so good!"
I don't recall why Sandy recommended this book. She's certainly a politically progressive person. I think perhaps she had a love for action thrillers, as many of us do, and a readiness for entirely different reasons from Branon, to see the U.S. government as a villainous organization. Perhaps those interests led her astray in evaluating this book.
| Author | Fast, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books |
| Copyright Date | 1961 |
| Number of Pages | 208 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | American Revolution |
| When Read | May 1995 |
Fifteen year old Adam Cooper lives with his father Moses and his mother, grandmother and 11 year old brother Levy on their farm in the village of Lexington Massachusetts. Adam feels browbeaten by his father, who is a sort of intellectual in their little society, and is chairman of the Committee of Correspondence and a leader in the local independence movement.
In April 1775, a British force moves through the village and meets the local militia with Moses and Adam, standing on their own soil to present their grievances and discuss them. The British do not talk. They order them to drop their weapons and disband. Then they fire, killing Moses Cooper.
Adam runs for his life and is saved. He joins the forces which attack the British as guerrillas, shooting down dozens of them from ambush. In the end he learns about the horrors of war, the strength of a community of free men, the love of his father and family, and the love of young Ruth Simmons, the neighbor girl he grew up with.
Fast is steeped in Americana. He presents the language and thoughts, the religion, the intelligence, the social and family spirit of these people and times, in a very convincing way. It is an optimistic and perhaps glossy view. It is meant to instruct and inspire us as much as to entertain. But it does all of that very well.
Beautifully read by Jamie Hames on this cassette tape version.
See diary.
The first comment in my diary was in the 1995-05-17 entry, the second in the 1995-05-24 entry.
Fast was a leftist political writer. One of his aims was to educate his readers about those aspects of American history in which ordinary people stood up for themselves and for each other. Citizen Tom Paine, Freedom Road, The American and a number of others were also of that type. I think that those books can be seen as an attempt to counter the prevalent propaganda of the right that saw left politics as "unamerican", as for example portrayed in the House Unamerican Activities Committee.
Naturally, no single man, especially no single man with nothing but a typewriter as his means of reaching people, can go very far against the powerful forces of reaction. But in so far as a single man can do anything, Fast did it. And he did it with skill, intelligence, and style, as well as a progressive political commitment.
| Author | Woiwode, Larry |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1981 |
| Number of Pages | 204 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | May 1995 |
An elderly actor has spent the last 12 years playing Poppa John, a kind, wise, Bible quoting fellow in an afternoon TV soap opera. Now he is home with his wife Celia. His part was written out of the show with a lingering illness and a final death that drew millions of viewers. But without the show he is out of work, running out of money, unsure about who he is (having merged himself into the part for so long) and wrestling with neurotic remembrances of his father's death (a corrupt policeman killed, perhaps by other corrupt cops) and his mother, a frustrated actress who gave it up and never reconciled to his becoming an actor.
The whole story is an inner narrative of one day of Christmas shopping remembrance and nervous breakdown on Friday, Dec. 23, in the late 1960's. He wrestles the demons of his past, falls off the wagon, pisses in his pants, meets admirers, and winds up in a hospital attended by his faithful wife and intelligent psychiatrist where he wakes Christmas day, in love with his wife and converted to believing Christianity.
This is a complex book full of extraordinary thinking and imagery so densely packed that only the particularly fine passages stand out. Ned, the main character, is confused, weak and neurotic, but also intelligent, courageous and charitable. It was a moderately difficult book, though not long. I was impressed by it.
See diary entries.
The only diary entry I found was just a few sentences in the entry for 1995-05-22.
| Author | Shute, Nevil |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: William Morrow and Co., 1947 |
| Number of Pages | 380 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | June 1995 |
John Turner, a flour and cereal salesman, visits a neurosurgeon about dizziness and fainting spells. It is discovered that a wound he received in 1943 when a plane he was flying in as a prisoner was shot down, is now killing him. He has at best a year to live. He decides to look up three men who were in the hospital with him after the crash and who helped him recover. He wants to do something for them if possible. The three are a pilot with an "actress" wife who is cheating on him, a commando who is under arrest for murder after killing a man who assaulted him outside a bar, and a black American GI under arrest for attempted rape. Sections of the book detail each man's story, usually as told to Turner or to someone else, but with only a small nod to that narrative device.
The pilot is in Burma where everyone back in England thinks that he has gone native and downhill. In fact he's become a government official, married an educated, high class woman who is a devout Buddhist, and is living in a big house with five servants. Shute takes the opportunity for some of his fine sermons on racial toleration and respect for Eastern religion. The black GI is a well-behaved, educated, hard-working young man in love with a white English girl. His "attempted rape" was just a stolen kiss. He comes back after the war and marries her. Here too are fine stories of racial tolerance and opposition to American racism.
In the end Turner sees that all his old friends are well fixed and thriving. He even improves his relationship with his wife as he slides towards his own end.
I like these Shute books. They're didactic. They yield too much to mysticism. They use some contrived plot and narrative devices. But they tell good stories of people becoming more and more civilized and human.
Shute was a favorite of mine. The last book of his I read was Trustee From the Toolroom, which was also the last book he wrote. It may have been my very favorite.
I have more of his books and hope to be able to read more in the time remaining to me to read.
| Author | Dickens, Charles |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Amsco Literature Program, 1975 |
| Copyright Date | 1860 |
| Number of Pages | 443 |
| Extras | "Readers Guide" |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | June 1995 |
Dickens' masterpiece about the poor orphan Pip raised by his strict, neurotic sister and her saintly husband, blacksmith Joe Gargery. Pip helps an escaping convict at the beginning of the story who later turns out to be his benefactor - sending him money and having him educated. But Pip thinks his anonymous benefactor is the local Miss Havisham, a terrible misanthrope raising her adopted daughter Estella to exact revenge on all men for Miss Havisham's having been betrayed by her fiancee many years before.
Pip loves the cold bitch Estella while slighting and spurning his true friends Joe, and Biddy - the girl whom he could have married. But Pip chooses wrong and loses all, learning only too late the real lessons of life. As published, Pip wins back Estella on the last page - but the earlier sadder ending which D replaced is more honest.
D's prose is very broad and rich - full of cleverness, humor, and invention. He has achieved both great depth and great clarity. Full of brilliant comic vignettes and penetrating observations on society, it nevertheless still holds together as a novel and balances its flashes of wit with considerable humanity, its heavy handed manipulations with subtle insights.
Need I say I liked this book very much?
The notion of "realism" can be interpreted in many ways. In France they were moving more towards the modern conception. Balzac offered us deep critiques of weak, selfish, and predatory people. Flaubert progressed to a psychological realism not seen before. Zola introduced social realism in a deeper and more comprehensive way. Perhaps we might say that Thackeray was also more "realist" in the modern sense than Dickens.
Still, Dickens had his own way of telling the truth. It may have used more exaggeration, more caricature, and more contrived plots than the others, but his writing did not lack truth.
In his autobiography, Isaac Asimov said he read Great Expectations 25 times, "by actual count". That says something about Dickens (and Asimov too), doesn't it?
| Author | Ishiguro, Kazuo |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Vintage International, 1982 |
| Number of Pages | 183 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 1995 |
A Japanese woman living in England has a visit from her younger daughter by an English husband and thinks about her experiences as a young married woman in Nagasaki. Etsuko carries a burden of guilt. Her elder daughter, Keiko, by her first husband Jiro, had committed suicide. Now Etsuko recalls her experiences with a terrible mother named Sachiko who claims always to be doing everything for her little daughter Mariko, but is in fact sacrificing the girl to her own pride and foolishness. Etsuko even helped her by trying to soothe the girl and explain away her mother's terrible acts while shutting off the child's natural emotions.
This is a subtle, repressed sort of book. It shows us Etsuko making mistakes, Sachiko making wrong decisions, Jiro ducking issues, and Nikki (Etsuko's younger daughter) making irresponsible statements. But none of this is ever discussed by the characters. They can never either discuss their problems or confront the mistakes of others. So they accede to errors. They allow the errors to perpetuate themselves. There is one person and one relationship - Jiro's father Ogata and his relationship with Etsuko - which is more honest and open. And yet it turns out that Ogata helped the fascists during the war.
This is not a book that I liked to read although it was very readable. The repression and silence were depressing. But it is a well written, thoughtful and subtle book.
This an earlier book by the author of The Remains of the Day.
I currently don't recall anything about this book. Books about neurotic people and difficult personal relationships aren't what most interest me in my reading. I want to intervene and lecture the people. However there are some very great authors and very great books, I'm thinking of Tolstoy and Anna Karenina, that overcome those kinds of thoughts and make me feel that the characters are ahead of me. They understand what the problems are better than I do and all I can hope to do is to listen to them and try to understand.
Ishiguro is a very fine author. Perhaps I'm just not remembering enough of this book, or perhaps he developed his art further after this one.
| Author | McBain, Ed |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape, 1984 |
| Copyright Date | 1965 |
| Number of Pages | 286 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| Keywords | Matthew Hope |
| When Read | July 1995 |
An early Matthew Hope novel. H represents a young man trying to purchase a God forsaken snap bean farm on the west coast of Florida. But the man is murdered. Shortly after, the farmer he tried to buy from is also murdered. Hope becomes involved sexually with the young man's 57 year old mother while his 23 year old sister also tries, unsuccessfully, to seduce Hope. There's also a pair of incidents with two bullies in which H is beaten up in the first but triumphs in the second after using dirty fighting tricks taught him by his cop friend, Maury Bloom.
In the end the murderer is caught - a rather stupid 18 year old jerk. There was no clever, mastermind killer in this one, just a foolish, brutal lout.
As with other McBains, it's nicely written stuff. Nothing great, but full of intelligent observation.
For some reason, when I was reading these books, I liked the Matthew Hope novels better than the 87th precinct novels by the same author.
I've never figured out how people like Ed McBain write. Is he full of stories that he needs to tell? Or does he develop more or less random plots that he then fills in with some skillful writing?
Salvatore Albert Lombino (the name McBain was born with) appears to have published a couple of books every year for over 50 years, right up to the year of his death at age 78 in 2005. I heard an interview with him once where he said he wrote 40 books before the first one was accepted for publication. It was a best seller. He was then able to sell all the earlier ones.
I don't know what to make of all that but I regard the man as having filled a lot of pleasant hours for a lot of readers. How many people can say as much about their life and work?
| Author | Wharton, Edith |
|---|---|
| Publication | Newport Beach, CA: Books on Tape, 1986 |
| Copyright Date | 1911 |
| Number of Pages | 77 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | July 1995 |
Ethan Frome's tragic story begins with his recall to his New England farm after one year of college studying physics. He must run the farm and care for his sick father, then his sick mother. After both have died he marries his older cousin Zenobia (Zeena) who helped care for his mother during her last year. Then, right after the marriage, Zeena becomes a cranky hypochondriac who wastes Ethan's money on doctors and leaves him to work his stony farm and poor saw mill.
Then Zeena's cousin Mattie Silver arrives to help out and the world changes for Ethan. He falls in love again. At last there is someone in his life who is truly alive. He and Mattie grow closer and closer until Zeena stops their budding romance by driving Mattie out. Desperately in love, hopeless, Ethan and Mattie get on a sled and coast down a mountain into a big elm tree, intending to die together. But they don't die. Mattie is permanently crippled with a broken back and Ethan loses partial use of an arm and shoulder. In the end, 25 years later, they all live together in the half ruined farm. Only Zeena has flowered, throwing off her hypochondria to become again a caretaker.
The story is harsh and heavy but very well written. W has a fine, clear, elegant narrative style. I didn't like the story but I liked the book.
There are so many great books like this - admirably written, sometimes quite engrossing, yet depressing and sometimes even pitiless for the reader.
| Author | Morrow, James |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984 |
| Number of Pages | 274 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | July 1995 |
At some time in the far future a technology has been developed to deliver stories as dreams by way of eating "cephalic apples", also known as "cephapples" or "dreambeans". Quinjin, a dreambean critic, is recruited by the dreambean's inventor to find and destroy a "noostree" producing horrifying madness inducing dreams and track down its creator.
He embarks on a number of adventures with all sorts of characters including a robot named Sigi, his lover Urilla, and his 14 year old daughter Lilit. They traverse an underground continent to find and kill the noostree and then go to the castle of the bad guy who created it all, where Quinjin fights against real and psychological horrors before finally killing his enemy and saving his daughter who had been driven mad by one of the beans.
This is not quite as elegant a book as City of Truth. It's a little more sprawling, a little more slapstick, not quite as tightly conceived. But it has much the same off-hand brilliance. Wonderful dreambean titles are rattled off all over the place in perfect parody of Hollywood and popular culture. The character of Quinjin behaves with a fine mixture of bumbling and heroism, of smart moves and mistakes.
I like Morrow very much, not only as a comic and an SF writer, but as a man of ideas.
City of Truth was a more mature book, written later than this one but read by me earlier. I remember it better than this one but I liked this one too.
In all of the years that I was dependent upon public libraries for my reading matter I was not able to read many books by favorite authors unless they also happened to be favorites of everyone else, not excluding the librarians. Now, with the Internet, and without losing access to libraries, my reading opportunities are significantly expanded.
I was really spoiled at the University of Illinois which had one of the truly great libraries in the United States or the world. The downtown Central Library of the Enoch Pratt Free Library was also a great library, though much less so than the U of I. After I left there I spent many years just reading what I found at the suburban libraries. I could have gone downtown or at least requested books by interlibrary loan, but the suburban libraries always had some good stuff to read and they were much more convenient.
Those notes aren't about this book, are they? Well, they sort of are. They're about why I read no more Morrow after this one.
| Author | Aleichem, Sholem (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich) |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Yiddish |
| Translators | Shevrin, Aliza |
| Publication | New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1984 |
| Copyright Date | 1907 |
| Number of Pages | 220 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1995 |
A fine novel with all of A's wonderful wit and charm but with a deadly serious downbeat theme which contrasts sharply with the charm and makes us all the sadder to see the fates of the very human beings who are the novel's subjects.
In the period before the revolution of 1905 in Kiev, the middle aged members of the Jewish community mind their own business and do their best to get along with each other and the rest of the world. But their children are idealistic and committed. Most are communists, trying to raise the consciousness of their fellow students and the workers. They work peacefully for democratic change but they are gradually hunted down and imprisoned or executed. They are truly the flowers of youth, the fine fruit of the Jewish community. Their destruction is a catastrophe for their parents as well as themselves.
The revolution of 1905 comes and it appears for a moment that liberation is at hand. But the reaction is quick and catastrophic with horrifying antisemitic pogroms allied to repression and terror.
One boy, a Zionist, struggles to save his girlfriend and find a way out.
A powerful book.
This was first published serially in 1907, then as a book in 1917, the year of the author's death. The author had fled Russia after the events of 1905 and lived in New York and, for a time, in Geneva. His personal life was something of a mess but he had deep insights into the human condition, insights gained from the viewpoint of the oppressed and those with great difficulties in their lives.
| Author | Edgerton, Clyde |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 1992 |
| Copyright Date | 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 258 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1995 |
In a Southern college town Wesley Benfield lives in a halfway house where he was sent after stealing a car. He has gotten religion from an old lady who took him in and treated him as her grandchild. He longs to be a good boy, to do the right thing, and to own a National Steel Dobrow bottleneck guitar to play the blues.
The local Baptist College recruits Wesley to tutor a retarded boy in bricklaying, to play in a gospel band (which really longs to play blues), and to bring favorable publicity to the college. But Wesley is his own man and in his own purely ingenuous way totally thwarts all of the college plans.
The characters in the story are all caricatures and the satire is heavy handed, but there is a lot of appeal to the powerless people who, in spite of all odds, go on asserting themselves. Wesley pursues fat Phoebe. The old lady holds on to her independence. The retarded boy plays the blues and asks his pesky and persistent questions.
There is no happy ending here. Wesley and the band skip out of the halfway house before their terms are due. They mess up the big PR event of the college. The get all the authorities mad. No good will come of it.
The story ends in Wesley's dream - with a twist of sardonic fate interrupting his dream goal.
An interesting book.
| Author | Hibbert, Christopher |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books |
| Copyright Date | 1964 |
| Number of Pages | 192 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | Military |
| When Read | August 1995 |
A history of the English invasion of France in 1415 leading up to the battle of Agincourt in which 5-8,000 English archers and men-at arms massacred a French army three times as large.
To me, the most striking aspect of the whole affair was the senselessness of it. Henry V was determined to assert his feudal authority in France no matter how many innocent people or brave soldiers died for it. He had no real hope of conquest. And yet he made very bold and risky military maneuvers and took ferocious measures such as the casting out of all people from Honfleur and the massacre of French prisoners at Agincourt.
If there was any fancy maneuvering, grand strategy, or even clever tactics in the campaign, Hibbert didn't describe them. All that happened was that a somewhat better disciplined and led force, standing on favorable ground, butchered a poorly led force that blundered to its death.
A famous and glorious chapter in English history? Seems more like a dead loss to me.
| Author | McGrath, Patrick |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1990 |
| Number of Pages | 221 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1995 |
Middle aged Dennis Clegg, living in some sort of half way house in the East End of London, begins to relate a terrible tale of his childhood, writing it in his secret journal. As a boy of 12 or so he sees his sex crazed father grow increasingly furious at his saintly mother, completely obsessed with a prostitute, Hilda Wilkinson. Things get worse and worse until the father (Horace Clegg, the plumber) kills the mother with a shovel in their allotment garden. Then he brings the prostitute into the house where they live a dissolute life in the face of young Dennis "Spider" Clegg.
As the book progresses pieces of the story fall apart until we see Spider as the real killer. Attempting to kill his father with a string tied to the gas knob on the stove, he accidentally kills his mother. From there he slips into madness. He spends 20 years at the Ganderhill asylum where he makes peace with himself and lives for his gardening. But a new director kicks him out and sends him back to London, where it all falls apart for him again. He becomes more and more psychotic. We fear for his landlady / house mother. We see a rapidly developing psychosis and, in the end, suicide.
I didn't expect to like this book but it grabbed and held me. It was a magnificent piece of writing. The descriptions of the interior of a psychosis were tremendously revealing and the mix of intelligence and madness most compelling.
If I remember correctly, Spider is expelled from the asylum because, first, he appears to be behaving quite normally and sanely, and secondly, because the director cannot justify keeping a normal, sane man at public expense.
This is the kind of problem that Marcia deals with all of the time. Some of her seriously damaged clients get a little support from the state and, with Marcia's help, begin to emerge from their nightmare lives into something resembling normalcy. The support is then withdrawn. Its purpose was never intended to support people forever, but only to help them get "on their feet" so to speak. It's not so obvious however that those people who appear to be standing up are actually pretty shaky and fall down when the crutches are removed.
This is one of the problems of modern society. Some of the European social democracies deal more charitably with their damaged people, but are also, presumably, more put upon by laziness and fraud. In the absence of anything like a "cure" for these people we seem to be in one of those situations where a correction in one direction causes a worsening in the other, and vice versa. So we do the best we can with those motivated by human sympathy pushing in one direction and those motivated by fiscal responsibility, or in not a few cases, contempt for others, pushing in the other direction.
Be that as it may, McGrath has written a fine book at the level of the individual human being.
If I remember correctly, "Spider" gets his name for his propensity for hiding curled up in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.
| Author | Bronte, Emily |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books |
| Copyright Date | 1847 |
| Number of Pages | 256 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | August 1995 |
The famous novel of passionate love and revenge in which foundling Heathcliff loves and loses Cathy Earnshaw - who marries the mild, sunny, gentleman Edgar Linton. Linton has none of Heathcliff's wild dark passion but is a decent, intelligent, devoted and refined man, appropriate to Cathy's station.
Heathcliff plots his revenge against everyone. When Cathy's dissolute brother Hindley gambles away his money, Heathcliff gets the title to Wuthering Heights, dispossessing H.E's orphaned young son Hareton and raising him as an ignorant farm hand. He gets revenge on Linton by marrying his innocent sister Isabel and abusing her. When Cathy dies in childbirth, her daughter (also named Cathy) is brought up to be a sweet, loving child. But Heathcliff gets his claws into her, forcing her to marry his weak, sick son, who promptly dies, enabling H to steal the dying Linton's estate as well. Heathcliff then lives on with Cathy and Hareton, in increasing dementia and bitterness, until his death. In the end, Cathy redeems Hareton and he, her. They marry and live happily.
The story is told by housekeeper Nelly Dean, the virtual mother of all the main characters, to Mr. Lockwood, who rents the house.
This is a romantic and fantastic novel and yet it contains remarkably powerful characterizations, from the dark Heathcliff to ambiguous strong/weak Cathy, to the upright but not always right Nelly, to the child Cathy. There is an honesty in spite of the mad passion.
I liked it - although my sympathies were all with the mild Linton, not the passionate lovers (unlike many teen girl readers.)
It wouldn't surprise anyone who knows me that I'd like the decent, intelligent, mild and thoughtful man.
Emily Bronte died at age 30, shortly after the publication of this book. A second edition, edited by Charlotte, came out a few years later. I don't know which one was the version I read.
| Author | Kaminsky, Stuart M. |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 1993 |
| Copyright Date | 1981 |
| Number of Pages | 222 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | September 1995 |
Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov of the Moscow police is ordered to investigate the murder of dissident Alexander Granovsky who was killed, as it turns out, by a demented student. Rostnikov is told by the procurator and the KGB to be careful and wind things up quickly. He uses two investigators to help him, the implacable, terrifying Karpo, who pursues criminals in a single minded communist crusade, and the young Tkach, who is an innocent and an idealist.
The wrong man, though still a murderer, is caught for the crime, but the right one is eventually tracked down. However he is shot by a police driver, who must be a KGB agent, before he can reveal anything.
In the end R pieces together the real truth. A KGB informant in the dissident's circle proved to a sick, unstable young man that Granovsky was having an affair with the young man's wife. It was a devious political setup of a murder. But of course R and his comrades must swallow the truth and soldier on.
This is a better than average mystery - as much about life in the USSR as about crime. Mostly, it is about what a man must do when he wants to be honest and decent in a corrupt, poor and dangerous society.
I liked it.
This is the first Stuart Kaminsky and the first Inspector Rostnikov novel that I read. If I remember correctly, Rostnikov was portrayed as a man well into middle age who had fought as an adolescent in World War II. He was a body builder who spent hours lifting weights and he used his great strength once or twice when dealing with those who would harass him. The success of the novel led Kaminsky to write more of them, having to become silent about his history in order to avoid making him too old as time passed. The demise of the USSR also affected the environment for these stories though K did a good job of adapting.
I like writers who can deal with cultures other than their own, and I especially like to read about the USSR, China, or other countries which we have been taught to see as regimented and evil and may be so, but which are also more complex and human than we are accustomed to think. That may just be my old communist leanings coming out.
| Author | Herley, Richard |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: William Morrow and Co., 1978 |
| Number of Pages | 209 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | September 1995 |
A pre-historic revenge, adventure tale set in southern England and written perhaps slightly above the adolescent level. (I probably would have enjoyed it more at age 15.)
Tagart, a nomad of the forest, is the sole survivor of a massacre of his clan group by local farmers. He takes his revenge, virtually wiping out the farmers' village by killing individuals, leading bears into the camp, and poisoning their hallucinogenic mushroom supply. He also suffers capture by soldiers of the Flint Lord, who make him a slave in the mines. But he escapes, finishes off the village, and steals back to the mines to spirit off a young female slave about to be forced into a brothel.
I read these kinds of books today for the same reason I read them at 15, escape, adventure, the thrill of historical romance - a different world. But I can't be as uncritical as I was then. I don't accept his history or too much of his characters. It was a pedestrian effort.
The author hails from Watford - my old stomping grounds. See the diary.
I wrote about this book in greater depth in my September 8, 1995 diary entry. While not having much good to say about the story, I did find the setting credible. Those of us who think about the stone age at all will often think of people wearing animal skins, living in caves, and grunting to each other. But that is certainly a false view of the neolithic period, almost certainly so of the mesolithic, and probably also totally inadequate even in describing the paleolithic. In the time of Stonehenge, and probably for thousands of years before, there must have been farmers, shepherds, craftsmen, something approximating priests, and very possibly merchants and even seamen. Although populations were tiny by today's standard, humans lived in such conditions for thousands of years compared to only a couple of hundred for the industrial age.
| Author | Vachss, Andrew |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 259 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | September 1995 |
This must be the fifth or sixth book in a series about Burke, a middle aged private investigator, abused orphan, thief, Biafran freedom fighter, blackmailer, lover of dogs and children, ex-convict, and avenger of abused children. He is introduced only gradually and by hints. Readers who have read the earlier books would no doubt be put off by a long introduction.
A woman he met 20+ years before has told her 19 year old son, if he is ever scared, call Burke. While she is away in Europe for the summer Randy calls Burke to come to their rich Connecticut home to assist him in fighting a rash of teen suicides. There Burke begins to investigate. He finds a "pro domina" and her sociopathic sister (Fancy and Chaim) at the center of a criminal conspiracy to assist wealthy people to hide their identities by plastic surgery. On the side, Chaim is testing a new drug which induces suicide.
Burke cracks the conspiracy, teaches the boy self-confidence, breaks Fancy's dependence on Chaim and teaches her how her sexual deviations derive from childhood sexual abuse, and blackmails Chaim and the criminals for 2.5 million dollars. He also injects Chaim with water, telling her its her own drug, and she kills herself.
This is a mystery with a knowledge of sleazy sex and abuse not found in most books, and with a mission. It's not badly written, better than many, and more interesting.
I read this book, in part, in order to learn more about the world that Marcia works in. I learned from it and, as my comment indicates, I found it to be well written and interesting. However it was also depressing and I never read more of Vachss. I know that these sorts of people exist but I don't want to know them any better.
There's a bit about this in my diary entry of September 20, 1995.
| Author | Grisham, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 1992 |
| Number of Pages | 496 |
| Genres | Fiction; Thriller |
| Keywords | Law |
| When Read | September 1995 |
A political murder/thriller about a beautiful, brilliant young law student who figures out who might have murdered two Supreme Court justices and thereby makes herself a target for the team of professional assassins. The girl, Darby Shaw, figures out that a lawsuit in the appellate court will, if the environmentalists win it, cost a reclusive oil magnate a huge fortune and the two dead justices were the ones most likely to support the environmental cause. She sends her "Pelican brief" through her law professor lover to the FBI. Her lover is then killed and the action starts as she runs from one killer after another. In the end, she works with famed Washington post reporter Gray Grantham and gets out the whole story.
The writing is standard thriller fare. Flat characters chosen from a small box of character types are run through a mix of well and ill conceived plot mechanics to a boy gets girl ending. The best part of it for me were the White House scenes where thinly disguised stand-ins for George Bush and John Sununu perform in their respective bumbling and Machiavellian styles. They also battle a J. Edgar Hoover type with various public relations blackmail stratagems.
In spite of it all, it was a compelling read - as these kinds of stories are. I just wish for more ...
I got more. As of today, I've read 12 John Grisham novels. This one was the first. His heroes are often not entirely sympathetic but his stories are compelling. I've read a lot of them via audio recordings, which works well for these books.
| Author | James, Henry |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books |
| Copyright Date | 1898 |
| Number of Pages | 96 |
| Genres | Fiction; Horror |
| When Read | September 1995 |
This is a rather ridiculous ghost story in which a young governess battles for the souls of her two little charges against the ghosts of their former governess and serving man. Everything is told in her written account of the affair so we are open to treating the tale as one of her psychosis rather than as a ghost story, but the opening is very narrow.
James' language is often quite beautiful. He is a writer with a great gift for expression. If only he had something to say that was more than just commonplace society convention - or reaction of convention, but still commonplace.
I finished the story only because it was recorded and I was able to listen passively while trapped in my car for the long commute. Other than the fine turns of phrase, there was nothing else I liked about it.
Reading the Wikipedia article on this novella I see that it has engendered a significant amount of critical interest from serious writers and literary critics. Is that because it was interesting, good, or just because it was written by Henry James? I expect that the last explanation is quite sufficient to account for the interest in the story. If a great writer writes a strange book, his admirers will certainly look for greatness in it.
Although I'm not a great writer, I'm also not a great critic. On the one hand, this disqualifies me from passing judgment on the novella, but on the other it gives me some license to form a personal opinion, not constrained by a need to be fair to the writer or to not prejudice any other readers.
The simple truth is, I didn't like the book.
| Author | Hurston, Zora Neale |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books, 1994 |
| Copyright Date | 1937 |
| Number of Pages | 256 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | October 1995 |
Poor black Jamie Crawford is raised by her grandmother in white folks' back yard and, at age 16, married off to a local man twice or more her age. Her grandmother feared that Jamie would become a spittoon for every young buck who took a fancy to her if she didn't have a protector, a solid husband with a house and a farm. But Jamie finds nothing to love in her husband and soon runs off wih Jody Sparks, a dynamic man set upon becoming a big shot in a new all Negro town in Florida. He achieves his aim, owning a store, a big house, rental property, and becoming mayor.
She lives with him for 20 years but Joe never makes an equal place for her. She is always his possession, his beautiful lady who must work for him in the store and set an example of ladyship - never mixing with common folk. He becomes more and more obsessive. He hits her in front of everyone and she responds by humiliating him, deriding his manhood. She would love him if he would let her, but he won't. Then he dies, leaving her rich (by local standards), 40, and alone.
Jamie lives alone, rejecting all suitors until she meets Tea Cake, a young, virile, interesting man. She runs off with him and marries him. They have a passionate, romantic life together in the Everglades where he picks beans and gambles and she works beside him. Then there is a flood. He saves her life but is bitten by a rabid dog. He goes mad and tries to kill her and she must shoot him dead.
This is a beautiful, poignant, funny, interesting, well written book. I loved every bit of it and every bit rang true with the humor and wisdom of an oppressed people.
A real classic.
The notes bring this book to me very clearly. It is a classic and a great American novel.
I don't know what would happen if everyone in the U.S. were to read the book. For all its simple language, it is nevertheless a very sophisticated book, one that many people would probably not understand. The presentation of black people is superficially bad. It requires some human understanding to see how sympathetic it really is.
| Author | Renault, Mary |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Pantheon Books |
| Copyright Date | 1956 |
| Number of Pages | 389 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| Keywords | Ancient Greece |
| When Read | October 1995 |
Alexias, son of Myron, almost exposed at birth but saved by his mother, grows up in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. He becomes the student of Socrates, the lover of Lysis, friend of Xenophon. From age 16 on he is a soldier or sailor/marine in the war.
One calamity after another befalls Alexias, his family, and Athens, all of which are tied together with the war. His father is a part of the disastrous expedition to Syracuse, where he was captured, enslaved, beaten and starved. Myron returns home bitter, angry, and opposed to democracy. Alexias fights on for Athens, for democracy, for Socrates, for Lysis. He also runs, winning the Isthmian Games at Corinth in a well described episode.
When the Spartans win the war they install a band of opportunists in Athens who initiate a reign of terror aimed at killing all potential enemies and stealing all the wealth. Alexias and Lysis flee to Thebes where they join a bunch of rebels. The band crosses the border and by luck, by courage, and by popular support, they overthrow and kill the tyrants, re-installing a shaky democracy, which is the government that kills Socrates.
R is writing a novel, and a successful one too, but is also teaching history. We see that democracy in Athens was not a system chosen by Athenians, but the result of a terrible class struggle. We also see, in a very dignified form, a homosexual culture very unlike the modern one, and very accepted.
An interesting book, long on history and deep concern about the Greeks, and steeped in historicity. Good reading too. But not an intellectual book as Graves or Mann would have written.
In my September 20, 1995 diary entry I wrote that Renault was serious about history, unlike Herley (see above The Stone Arrow.
My understanding of this period has recently been enhanced by my reading of Durant's The Life of Greece. It was a fascinating place and period. Ancient history, especially of the Greek and Roman worlds, can give us tremendous insight into our humanity. I am truly sorry that the vast majority of the literature of the actual period has been lost.
| Author | McMurtry, Larry |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape |
| Copyright Date | 1972 |
| Number of Pages | 304 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | October 1995 |
Undergraduate English major Danny Deck wakes up at a party next to a beautiful young woman who has just broken with her British professor boyfriend. He brings her back to his apartment at the University of Texas at Austin and marries her. In the meantime, his first novel has been accepted by a publisher and will be made into a Hollywood movie.
Everything falls apart for him, mainly as a result of his marriage. Sally turns out to be a bitch. She doesn't love him, she isn't faithful, once she gets pregnant she wants nothing more to do with him - kicking him out of their apartment (now in San Francisco) and later refusing to allow him to even see their daughter.
Danny has romantic episodes with an intelligent cartoonist who hates sex, a frustrated housewife married to a fastidious gay man, and the plump wife of his best friend. He writes another novel. He quits school. He befriends a Chinese refugee who plays ping pong and has written a 2,000 page novel which is totally unpublishable. He heads down to Mexico where he becomes enamored of a Mexican whore whom he wishes to live with but won't have him. He is viciously brutalized on the road by two Texas Rangers. In the end, he swims out into the Rio Grande where he destroys his second novel, drowning it in the river.
Danny is isolated and out of control. He doesn't know what he wants or where he is going. His existentialist crisis culminates in the river.
I don't know what this all means or what to think about it. It is competently written - good but not brilliant. I liked the characters and some of the ideas, but not the pessimistic outcome.
Except for the clever title, which I still remember, I put this novel entirely out of my mind and memory.
Because of my good marriage, because of Marcia, books like this don't make a lot of sense to me. It's depressing to think that many people do resemble the characters in this book and do have lives and personal relationships of similar misfortune.
| Author | Pease, Howard |
|---|---|
| Publication | Garden City: Doubleday and co. |
| Copyright Date | 1940 |
| Number of Pages | 312 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Young adult |
| When Read | October 1995 |
A juvenile book purchased I don't remember where (Wheaton Library book sale I think) and stamped with the name "Pikesville Jr. High Library."
Stanford University freshman Rance Warren learns that his father, a surgeon, has been seriously injured in a Japanese bombing raid while in China. He is desperate to go there and help his parents, so he signs on as a wiper in the engine room of an American tanker carrying oil to Japanese forces in China. along the way he becomes embroiled in an attempt to catch a killer among the crew and foil an attempt to destroy the ship.
Eventually they discover that the saboteur/killer is a Hawaiian crew member dedicated to helping the Chinese. They deliver the oil but the ship, the whole oil depot, and all the oil is destroyed by Chinese bombers.
I read these books as a child. I don't remember when, but don't think I was out of elementary school, or maybe Jr. High. I loved them then with their adventure and ocean and foreign port, foreign character scenes. Now it all seems very simple and flat.
The plot was contrived, the characters cardboard, the politics muddled. I got little out of it.
Another book by Pease that I know I read as a child was The Jinx Ship. There were probably others but, looking at the bibliography in the Wikipedia article about him, I don't recognize any of the other titles.
| Author | Custer, Helen |
|---|---|
| Publication | Microsoft Press, 1993 |
| Number of Pages | 385 |
| Extras | Foreword by David N. Cutler, bibliography, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Computer science |
| When Read | November 1995 |
I rarely read technical books cover to cover. I mostly use them to study specific topics in specific chapters. But in this case I decided to get an overview of the whole thing.
NT strikes me as the result of an almost superhuman effort to build a complete, highly developed, highly functional, multi-user, multi-processor operating system in a planned, orderly, integrated way. It's an impressive achievement.
I learned some things about object and process abstractions, memory management, coordinating closely coupled processors, etc. I will forget all the details but hope to remember some of the concepts.
The book suffers from being a bit too far from the details. I would have learned more if I could have seen some pseudo code, some physical data structures, etc. to instantiate the theories. But at least I got some theory - something you don't necessarily get in the technical manuals.
| Author | Steinhoff, Johannes |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books |
| Copyright Date | 1969 |
| Number of Pages | 288 |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| Keywords | World War II; Aviation |
| When Read | November 1995 |
Steinhoff commanded a fighter wing in Sicily prior to and during the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943. He had fought in the Battle of Britain, then in Russia over Stalingrad, then at the end of the Africa campaign in Tunisia before arriving in Sicily.
Africa and then Sicily were his first exposures to hopeless campaigns. Already familiar with defeat in Britain and Russia, he now tasted hopelessness. Everyone knew the battle was lost even before the invasion began. The allied buildup was so overwhelming that his forces were outnumbered 5, 6, or 10 to 1. Their airfields were bombed around the clock. Their attacks on American bomber formations usually never made it through the fighter screen or, at most, got one pass at the bombers before having to fight it out. On the few occasions that they had a free hand they found the flying fortress defensive fire to be murderous and the American pilots seemed to just ignore them. And on top of it all, Goering constantly hit them with insults, stupid orders, and demoralizing demands.
Two things amazed me about the story. First, the remarkable efficiency with which they kept their organization intact in spite of the assaults, and second, the fact that they kept fighting and eventually escaped to Italy, to fight some more.
Why? For what? Why did thy go on killing and being killed? They seemed not even to have considered the obvious option of surrendering.
I still don't have a good answer to my question. Steinhoff and his pilot comrades were educated men. They knew that their commander, Hermann Goering, was a terrible man. At one point Goering demanded that one out of every ten pilots be selected for execution for cowardice, an incredible charge against these men. All of the top pilots volunteered and Goering had to back down. What could Steinhoff and his men have thought of Hitler? They knew that the Allied industrial capacity was way out of their league, that Allied technology was better, and that the numbers arrayed against them were overwhelming. What was the point of fighting on? Yet the book ends with the remaining pilots and planes flying off to mainland Italy.
I sort of know the answer. It was a combination of a concept of "honor" and "patriotism" that nagged at them, and a commitment to not abandon their comrades. But it did them no good.
I remember a number of scenes from the book. At the beginning, S takes off in his fighter from North Africa and lands in Sicily. They have just been driven out of Africa and have seen the handwriting on the wall. Now they have only a brief respite before the Allied attack begins again.
In another scene the Germans have cleverly camouflaged their air base. Allied bombers drop bomb after bomb on empty ground.
In another, S manages to break through an American fighter screen and get at the bombers behind it. He is impressed by their speed, their formation flying, and the quality of their planes. He manages by great effort to shoot one down. He is the only man of his squadron to have done that, the others being driven off or shot down. He arrives back at the base to hear yet another dressing down from Luftwaffe command - who have no appreciation of the odds that the men are facing and treat every failure as a failure of courage and will.
| Author | Tyler, Anne |
|---|---|
| Publication | Books on Tape |
| Copyright Date | 1970 |
| Number of Pages | 200 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | November 1995 |
North Carolina teenager Evie Decker is overweight, invisible to most of her classmates, and lives a lonely life with her father and black housekeeper Clotilda. She does not do well in school, has only one friend, and is not close to her father. She has no particular interests in life and just goes on, bored and alienated.
Then she hears an interview on the radio with the local rock singer Bertram "Drumstrings" Casey. With no special plan in mind she starts visiting the local roadhouse each Saturday night to hear him play. Then one night, purely on impulse, she dashes off into the bathroom and carves his name CASEY on her forehead, but in mirror image. From then on their lives become entwined. He wants nothing to do with her but his "manager" and drummer convinces him to use her for publicity, having his picture taken with her and bringing her to their concerts each week. After a while Drum's career seems to be advancing, but then he gets in trouble over a girl and it recedes as fast as it had advanced. He refuses to apologize or accommodate anyone and won't go home. He lives on Evie's porch, hiding from her father. Finally, he sleeps with her.
They live almost happily in a shack. He pumps gas and she works in the library after school. Then it falls apart. She gets pregnant. Her father dies. Drum is caught in bed with another girl. They separate. He is left lonely and in some confused existential state. She moves into her old house.
This is a book about an odd circumstantial attraction of two people with meaningless lives who don't quite succeed in saving each other. Not badly done.
| Author | Shellabarger, Samuel |
|---|---|
| Publication | Boston: Little Brown and Co. |
| Copyright Date | 1944 |
| Number of Pages | 503 |
| Genres | Fiction; Historical fiction |
| When Read | November 1995 |
Innocent nineteen year old Pedro de Vargas is the son of a famous soldier in Spain in 1518. He aspires to marry the beautiful daughter of the local Marquis and to join a famous French chevalier whom his father has arranged for him to be trained under. But his world falls apart when an evil local landowner and corrupt priest of the Inquisition conspire to seize his whole family to get their land. They kill his little sister under torture, but his friends, Juan Garcia and the barmaid/dancer Catana Perez, help the family escape. His parents flee to Italy where they petition Pope and Emperor for justice but Pedro, Juan, and eventually Catana, flee to the new world.
They join Cortes' expedition to Mexico where they are part of the first expedition to the city. Pedro, Juan and Catana are captured by the Aztecs but saved by Coatl, a Zapotec chief whom Pedro had twice saved.
After many adventures, Pedro returns to Spain, rich, on a mission from Cortes. There his old enemy betrays him again, but by boldness, he and his father saved the day. He kills the enemy, spurns the Marquis' beautiful but shallow daughter, and marries the barmaid Catana, returning to the New World.
This is a wonderful historical romance which hits just the right note on almost every element - youth and age, love and honor, loyalty and passion, bravery and adventure. Nothing is missing. It is the equal of Sabatini. Beautifully and knowledgeably written.
I loved it.
In the opening of the book, which I still remember, Pedro is recruited by a neighbor to help catch an escaped Mexican/Indian slave. Feeling his oats and deciding to prove himself, Pedro strikes off on his own to a place where he thinks the Indian might be hiding. There he actually finds the man but, through a misunderstanding, Coatl imagines that Pedro is there to help him, not capture him. Disarmed by Coatl's attitude and developing a sympathy for him, Pedro actually does help him escape. It was a charming scene establishing Pedro's youthful naivete, his 16th century consciousness that condones slavery, and his essential humanity.
Other scenes also remain with me. Pedro and others are taken by the Aztecs but he is rescued by Coatl's people. As they are walking away they hand him a sword. Not yet understanding that he is being rescued and not just taken out to be tortured and killed, he thinks, "Oh, if it's a fight they want ...", happy for the chance to fight for his life. In another scene, the evil priest/Inquisitor has gone to Mexico to make his fortune. He is captured by the Indians and tortured to death in a scene that makes a mockery of his martyrdom for Christianity. In another scene Pedro discovers a fortune in Indian gold, which he promptly steals and uses to set himself up for his future life.
Although the book is an adolescent adventure story and only a minimal piece on the conquest of the new world and the fate of its inhabitants, what it does, it does very well.
I gave this book to Robin thinking that she'd like it, but she wouldn't read it. She was put off by the 1940's era sexism in the opening that was ubiquitous in its time but does not hold up today.
| Author | Cherryh, C.J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: DAW Books, 1994 |
| Number of Pages | 378 |
| Genres | Fiction; Science fiction |
| When Read | November 1995 |
A space ship carrying colonists from Earth suffers a catastrophe and finds itself totally lost, with no way to find Earth or any familiar place and no fuel to return even if they did. By heroic self-sacrificing the pilots refuel and reach a habitable planet, but one already inhabited by an intelligent race, the atevi, who are much bigger than humans, very tough, and in the beginning of the steam age. Against the wishes of the pilots, the colonists descend to land. There they eventually are attacked by the atevi and, after a brutal war, become somewhat subservient to them, trading technology for peace and ownership of an island.
200 years later, Bren Cameron is the representative of the human community to the chief atevi association. He thinks that, for the first time, he has formed personal bonds of friendship with the atevi. But there is an assassination attempt, he is taken incommunicado to a remote castle where he is tested and tortured, then stuck in the middle of an atevi fight. It turns out that the pilots have returned with the spaceship and the atevi feel betrayed. But Cameron's brave steadfastness convinces one chief political leader to trust him and head off a war.
A very competently written book. C has churned out 50 already and is clearly good at it. There was a lot that I didn't believe in but there was also a lot that was well handled. It is a more social SF than a science SF, though the science is acceptable.
I may read more of her or may not.
As of today, this is still the only book I've read by C.J. Cherryh. I may be reading less science fiction in general. 1996-2000: 29 books. 2001-2005: 25 books. 2006-2010: 16 books.
That kind of analysis is much harder on book cards than on XML records. It will get easier still if I write some programs.
| Author | Hersey, John |
|---|---|
| Publication | Recorded Books |
| Copyright Date | 1944 |
| Number of Pages | 277 |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | World War II |
| When Read | November 1995 |
Major Victor Joppolo, US Army, arrives in the Italian town of Adano as the Civil Affairs Officer, charged with ending fascism, teaching democracy, and organizing the town.
He succeeds. He demonstrates to the people through his own actions that it is possible for an official to care about and serve the people instead of treating them arrogantly and stealing from them by graft and corruption. He organizes the officials, the police, the bakers, the fishermen, gets everyone working productively, and gets the American authorities to help, even to the extent of finding a bell for the watch tower of town hall to replace the historic one melted down by the fascists.
Although Joppolo is married, he falls for a local girl who is in love with an Italian soldier who may or may not still be alive.
The Italians are treated with great sympathy and humor - and a lot of condescension. But they come out better than many of the Americans.
In the end, Joppolo is kicked out by the stupid, arrogant General Marvin for countermanding of one of Marvin's idiotic orders. As he leaves, he hears the ringing of the new bell.
An attractive, humane novel giving a different side of the war from within its midst. I liked it.
There is a scene in the book in which General Marvin, frustrated by donkey traffic on the roads, shoots a donkey and orders all donkey carts out of the town. Joppolo counters this order after Marvin leaves because he knows that no water can get into the town without donkey carts. It turns out that General George Patton had a donkey shot for holding up military traffic and some think, perhaps rightly, that Marvin is a stand-in for a slap at Patton - though Patton did not serve in Italy.
| Author | Kaminsky, Stuart M. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1991 |
| Number of Pages | 244 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | December 1995 |
Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is ordered to go on vacation, which he needs to do anyway to assist his wife in recovering from brain surgery. Emil Karpo was also ordered on vacation but ignored the orders and continued his hunt for the killer of a German tourist, whom he is convinced is crazy and will kill again. Sasha Tkach is off trying to catch a computer thief who prey's on Jewish programmers - often killing them and then stealing their computers.
Rostnikov discovers that numerous capable police and KGB agents have been sent on vacation and uncovers a plot to kill Gorbachev, using the mad killer tracked by Karpo. In the end, R reveals the plot and Karpo kills the killer - though it is never clear that Gorbachev is the intended victim, or that the killers are communists, fascists, or liberals within the KGB.
This is another dark novel of murder, intrigue and betrayal with Kaminsky's fascinating cast of Russian characters and his insights into the brutal, dangerous world of the Soviet Union. There are fine touches in Karpo's obsessive compulsion and in Tkach's mixture of strength and weakness, and his fundamental decency.
I like the stories and may eventually read them all.
I have read more, the last being in 2003. I don't know whether I've read them all or not. I'd have to check.
| Author | Hobsbawm, Eric J. |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: New American Library, 1962 |
| Number of Pages | 416 |
| Extras | index, notes, photos, maps, charts |
| Genres | Non-fiction; History |
| When Read | December 1995 |
The great British Marxist describes what he calls the "dual revolution", the industrial revolution beginning in the 1780's in England when the first economy in the world "took off" into self-sustaining economic growth, and the political revolution beginning in 1789 in France when people first arrived at a sense of their powers and possibilities in overcoming the old feudal regimes.
The industrial revolution was founded entirely on the manufacture of textiles for the world market. It was only around 1830 that it broadened into railroads, iron, chemicals, steamships, gasworks, and other areas. Its immediate effects were to enrich some and impoverish many, degrading the semi-skilled class of weavers into unskilled mill workers living on starvation wages. However it did gradually develop a middle class and a bourgeoisie which developed continually in strength, self-confidence, and political power out of what was already the world's largest commercial bourgeoisie. England and the USA were the first countries in which political opposition was safe and legal, and the USA was the first "radical" democracy (with Jackson's presidency) offering political power to common folk.
The political revolution in France, even though it led to Napoleon's dictatorship, nevertheless changed things forever, awakening first the bourgeoisie and urban craftsmen, petit bourgeois, etc., and then the mass of the people. It created the modern state, law, party and other institutions.
Hobsbawm is at home in politics, economics, war, culture, ideology, and science. he writes brilliantly of these things. He is thoroughly well read in all of the subjects, languages, and countries. This is not a conventional history. It assumes some understanding. It is essentially a commentary full of brilliant insights and aphorisms. A remarkable book.
I read this book a few pages at a time, over a period of seven months. I have written extensively about it in my diary and so won't add any more here. Diary entries I found on it include: May 21 and 26, June 12 and 17, August 25, and December 25, all in 1995.
This book is part of a three volume series. I read the second volume, The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 in 2008. I haven't yet read the third volume The Age of Empire: 1875-1914. I looked for it for a long time and think I found a copy many years ago at a used book store, but I'm laid up at the moment and can't get down to my basement to check. I would like to read it.
Hobsbawm made it to age 95, publishing new books right up to and after the end (possibly collections of essays brought together by his publishers after his death.)
| Author | Bronte, Charlotte |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Signet Classics, 1988 |
| Copyright Date | 1847 |
| Number of Pages | 461 |
| Extras | Bibliography, Afterword by Arthur Leiger |
| Genres | Fiction |
| When Read | December 1995 |
Orphaned Jane Eyre is raised to the age of 10 by her Aunt Red, who hates her, treats her badly, and allows her to suffer at the hands of her odious son John. When Jane rebels she is sent to Loworth, a school for orphans with a fine head-mistress but an arrogant, hypocritical, stupid preacher/director who starves and freezes the children until an epidemic kills many of them and raises a scandal that brings reform. At 16, educated, tempered and developed by the school, the headmistress and a saintly student who dies of TB, Jane graduates and becomes a teacher. When the headmistress leaves there is nothing left for her and she advertises and becomes a governess, caring for Adele, the little French ward of Fairfax Rochester, a man 20 years older with a powerful intellect, a dissipated past, and a secret in the attic.
Jane and Rochester fall in love and plan to marry but on the wedding day his secret is revealed, a mad wife in the attic. He asks Jane to be his mistress but she will not. She runs away with no money but a coach fare and lands, starving and freezing, at Moon House, where she is taken in by two young women setting out to become governesses and their preacher brother, St. John. SJ sets her up as a teacher in a school for poor girls and eventually tries to subdue her to his will, to marry him, and to go to India as a missionary. He is all intellect and coldly driven will. Meantime, she inherits 20,000 pounds and discovers that SJ and his sisters are her cousins. She shares the money with them and restores Moon House. She almost succumbs to SJ but is recalled by a telepathic message from Rochester whom she finds alone, blind, and single. They marry and live happily ever after.
A powerful romantic novel with a fine, principled heroine whom we cannot help but care about. I loved it.
There is a paragraph about this book in my diary entry for Christmas Day, December 25, 1995. I wrote about how much I admired the character of Jane Eyre and how, "We are uplifted by having known her."
My perception of early 19th century English literature was too colored by Jane Austen. Austen's books were about the gentry of the English countryside. Starving orphans, men with lunatic wives, domineering preachers - both smart (SJ) and stupid (the orphanage director), did not appear in her books. With no disrespect to Austen intended, in fact I greatly admire her, there were others who were writing about the less fortunate of the world. Charlotte Bronte was one of them, and she did it with great insight and feeling.
I'm not sure that a comparison of Austen and Bronte is fruitful in the way I thought it was. Austen died in 1817, 30 years before Bronte's book was published. A lot happened in the literary world during those 30 years and advancing literacy and the introduction of industrial book printing greatly increased the size and changed the character of the reading audience. From my perspective in 2014, 1817 and 1847 may have seemed like part of the same era, but I don't think they were.
| Author | Brett, Simon |
|---|---|
| Publication | New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1988 |
| Number of Pages | 248 |
| Genres | Fiction; Mystery |
| When Read | December 1995 |
Wealthy widow Mrs. Melita Pargeter, in her sixties, moves to a modern upscale house in suburban Smithy's Loam where six houses surround a central close. She discovers that the former owners of the house have disappeared. Using a variety of shady characters who are indebted to her late husband (we never know why), she discovers that the former woman of the house was murdered and she believes it to have been done by one of the housewives among the other five houses. It turns out to have been the Norwegian au pair at one of the houses.
I don't expect a great deal from a writer like Brett but even in this I was disappointed. The characters are particularly flat and thin. There is no motivation for Mrs. Pargeter's inquiry and no explanation for the absurd attitude of "I'd do anything for Mr. Pargeter's widow after everything he did for me", expressed by the characters she calls upon - each of whom is portryed as a lovable comic fellow who is a genius at his trade of harmless petty crime. And if all this weren't bad enough, the writing itself descends into clumsy and boring repetition, as for example when Mrs. P. starts to address Mr. Wilson by his nom de crime "Rewind", not once but about ten times. "Yes Re..., uh, Mr. Wilson."
Was he drunk when he wrote this?
I had thought of Simon Brett as one of those reliable story tellers who always deliver a comfortable, if not impressive, story. That's the nature of series stories whether in books or on TV.
Nineteen years later, that's the way I now remember Brett rather than by this book. However I do note that I haven't read any of Brett's books since this one.
| Author | Turgenev, Ivan |
|---|---|
| Original Language | Russian |
| Translators | Berlin, Isaiah |
| Publication | Penguin Books, 1978 |
| Copyright Date | 1860 |
| Number of Pages | 107 |
| Extras | Introduction by V.S. Pritchett |
| Genres | Fiction |
| Keywords | Russia |
| When Read | December 1995 |
Vladimir Petrovich tells the story of his first love, a passionate worship of the impverished princess Zinaida who moved next door for the summer when he was 16 and she 21 (I think). Zina is surrounded by admirers whom she teases and plays with and who adore and flatter her. Her crude mother uses this to extract loans and assistance from the men. Little Vladimir is the youngest of these and has no hopes, but is entranced nonetheless, treated as a beloved pet by Zinaida, and is tormented by the discovery that she has actually fallen in love with someone.
To V's horror, he discovers that she has fallen in love with his own father, a distant, superior man whom V worships almost from afar since his fathe never allows him to be too close. In increasing fever and confusion he watches the signs of fighting between his shrewish mother and his father, and the changes in Zinaida and the tenderness that she shows him.
They return to town. One day he goes riding with his father. He is told to stay and hold the horses. After a long wait he walks down the street and sees his father in front of a house with Zinaida. He hits her with his whip and they disappear in the house. V is stunned.
In the end, his father dies of a stroke. He then finds out that Zinaida has married and died in childbirth, "... I wanted to say a prayer for her, for my father - and for myself."
This is a small masterpiece of sensitivity and emotion, of youth and love and developing consciousness. Superbly done. See 1978 book card and 1995 diary entry.
The diary entry referred to above is from December 30, 1995. It notes that I first read this story in 1978 but had completely forgotten that I read it [Perhaps bad memory is not a new problem for me]. Mostly however, it discusses the difference between the highly favorable response it invoked in me in 1995 as compared to what I wrote in the September 1978 book card. Reviewing that again now, I see that I was pretty negative about the book, mainly because of a negative reaction to the society it represents on its pages.
The book card from 1995 brings back some memory of this book. The one from 1978 is much less evocative.
My 2014 self appears to be more like my 1995 self than my 1978 self.
| Author | Lynch, Peter |
|---|---|
| Author | Rothchild, John |
| Publication | New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993 |
| Number of Pages | 318 |
| Extras | charts, index |
| Genres | Non-fiction; Investing |
| When Read | December 1995 |
One of the most successful mutual fund managers explains the stock picking strategies that he used to consistently out perform the market and take fidelity Magellan from nowhere to the biggest mutual fund in the world.
Lynch is a self described "stock picker". He doesn't use mathematical models or invest (very much) in industries. He picks individual stocks on the merits of the companies. His method is hard work. He spends seemingly every waking moment researching stocks, watching the market, phoning in orders, calling CEOs of companies or visiting them. On a ski trip he picked a resort because it had a phone booth at the bottom of the slope so he could phone in to the office after each run. At dinner he read phone book sized analyses of the auto industry or Savings and Loans. He relied almost exclusively on the value of the company, not on esoteric indicators.
What did I learn?
1. Research is critical. Learn the company, understand its balance sheet and its business, its competitors, and its industry.
2. Diversify.
3. I'm up against smart, informed, obsessed people like Lynch when I gamble on the market.
Almost 20 years have passed since I read this book. I have not become a successful investor but, for the most part, have avoided becoming a totally stupid one.
At my stage of life, with my assets, I could make more money today by wise investing than I could by programming computers. There's no doubt about that. But I have no interest in investing. I can hardly bring myself to read a prospectus, an Edgar filing, or a balance sheet. It's probably the case that all of the money I've made in the stock market is attributable to mutual funds and all of the money I've lost is attributable to other, mostly funky and illiquid, investments, from oil and gas partnerships to real estate investment trusts, and to one stock, Tucson Electric Power. Taking everything together, I've underperformed the market and way underperformed Peter Lynch.
But I'm not unhappy. If I were a smart investor, not a genius, just smart, I'd probably have 25-50% more money than I have. But I can't complain because I have enough. There is nothing I want to buy that I can't afford - basically because there's nothing I really want to buy. We have enough to last us for the rest of our lives and probably do it without ever dipping into the principal, and certainly without ever reducing our standard of living. All we need to do is be smart about not losing our money - which should be easy to do as long as we can stave off Alzheimer's - at which point Dan or Robin needs to take over.
Mr. Lynch has more than a sufficiency. Maybe he wants it. Maybe he wants to spend it. Maybe he enjoys fancy houses and cars and planes. However I doubt it. I suspect that what he enjoys is the game of investing - at which he is a supreme competitor and winner.
Ah well, we all come to a similar end. I hope he is as happy as I am.