rocketjk's modest 50 in 2012

Last year I only read 40 books, due mostly to my new venture, a used bookstore, that took up a lot of time. To put it mildly. However, I'll be optimistic and shoot for 50 this year. Wish me luck!

In addition to the books I read straight through, I like to read anthologies, collections and other books of short entries one story/chapter at a time instead of straight through. I have a couple of stacks of such books from which I read one story/chapter each between the books I read from cover to cover (novels and histories, mostly). So I call these my "between books." When I finish a "between book," I add it to my yearly list.

Master List (Touchstones included with individual listings below):
 1: Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley
 2: The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad
 3: A Southern Girl in '61: the War-Time Memories of a Confederate Senator's Daughter by Louise Wigfall Wright
 4: I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch
 5: Jungle Jest by Talbot Mundy
 6: Real Grass, Real Heroes: Baseball's Historic 1941 Season by Dom DiMaggio
 7: The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
 8: The Only Game in Town: Sports Writing from the New Yorker edited by David Remnick
 9: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
10: What Maisie Knew by Henry James
11: Reel Baseball: Baseball's Golden Era the Way America Witnessed It--In the Movie Newsreels by Les Krantz
12: The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci
13: The Hamlet by William Faulkner
14: Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis
15: Under the Blue Flag: My Mission to Kosovo by Philip Kearny
16: Sepharad by Antonio Munoz Molina
17: Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
18: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
19: Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 by Madeleine Albright
20: Mr. Machine by Deneb T. Hall
21: Tideland by Mitch Cullin
22: The Lasko Tangent by Richard North Patterson
23: Maigret and the Pickpocket by Georges Simenon
24: Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh
25: The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster
26: The Hermitage: A Stroll around the Halls and Galleries by Sergei Vesnin, S. V. Kudri︠a︡vt︠s︡eva and Tatiana Pashkova
27: The Pride and the Pressure: a Season Inside the New York Yankee Fishbowl by Michael Morrissey
28: What the People of the Wilderness Used to Believe In by Oili Räihälä
29: South Orange Revisited by Naoma Welk
30: The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway
31: Ukiah by Darline Bergere
32: The Beatles: The Ultimate Album-by-Album Guide by Rolling Stone Magazine
33: Turned Round in My Boots by Bruce Patterson
34: Blood-Dark Track by Joseph O'Neill
35: The Best American Sports Writing of the Century edited by David Halberstam
36: Dead Meat by William G. Tapply
37: Spencerville by Nelson DeMille
38: Last Stand at Papago Wells by Louis L'Amour
39: A German Requiem by Philip Kerr
40: The True Story of Pochahontas: the Other Side of History by Dr. Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow and Angela L. Daniel "Silver Star"
41: Saturday Review Reader No. 3
42: War Propaganda and the United States by Harold Lavine and James Wechsler
43: Natasha by David Bezmozgis
44: Degree of Guilt by Richard North Patterson
45: The World, the Flesh and Father Smith by Bruce Marshall
46: The Norman Achievement by David Charles Douglas

Book 1: Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley



A fun, savage, satire of Washington & corporate values and political correctness. I had a ball reading this. It made for some quick, happy reading over the New Year holiday and a fast first entry for my 2012 challenge.

It was a lot of fun...something like Thank You For Smoking makes for a smile in a dark and grim political time, no?

Happy 2012! Good reading!

Indeed, Richard. After all the non-fiction I'd been reading, I needed a vicious lark. And good reading to you this year, too!

Happy New Year!

Good to see you, Jerry! I lost you entirely in 2011, somehow. Just went searching, found your last thread and read about six reviews, most of which resulted in additions to my wishlist. *sigh* I hope the store is going well....wish I could drop in, but you're probably already going to do enough damage to my book budget!

Thanks, billiejean and Linda. Happy New Year to you both! I'm getting ready to round out my first year of bookstore ownership (Feb 1 is my 1-year mark) and so far so good!

Book 2: The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad



The third year of my recently begun practice of beginning each year with a re-read of a Joseph Conrad novel. Narcissus is considered by some to be the final, and best, work of Conrad's beginning period. Others consider it to be the first work of Conrad's middle period: his peak years. At any rate, the book delivers Conrad's trademark insights into human nature and wonderful turn of phrase. In this case, we are on a sailing ship traveling down the east coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope and up the west coast to England during the waning days of the wind and sail era of trading ships. The title character is one James Wait, a black crew member almost immediately revealed to be consumptive and dying. The book is a rewarding look at group psychology, as manifested by the ebbing and flowing morale of the crew as affected by Wait's deteriorating condition, the impact of the finely drawn personalities among the crew members, and the "external" elements of the ocean and the wind. There is also a lengthy, and harrowing, description of the experience of passing through the fearsome storms and gales of the Cape. Also fascinating is Conrad's description of the relationship between the crew and the 3-man officer corps. I hadn't read this in over 20 years, and I'm very glad I got to it again.

Goodness, I do love Joseph Conrad's writing.

Book 3: A Southern Girl in '61: the War-Time Memories of a Confederate Senator's Daughter by Louise Wigfall Wright



An interesting volume, to be sure. Wright was the daughter of Louis T. Wigfall, who was a U.S. Senator from Texas at the outbreak of the Civil War. As Texas was one of the last southern states to officially secede, Wigfall insisted on keeping his seat in the Senate until the bitter end. He was present and played an important, if controversial, role in the attack on and surrender of Fort Sumpter and served briefly in the Confederate Army before becoming a member of the Confederate senate. A close friend of Jefferson Davis at the outset of the war, Wigfall and the Confederate president became more and more estranged during the war years, especially over the conduct of the war and Davis' treatment of Wigfall's friend, General Joseph E. Johnston.

I mention all that because much of this book consists of letters from the Wigfall family archives, including many between Wigfall and Johnston and a few from Davis.

Louise Wright was 15 at the outbreak of the war, so this book covers years of her late teens. The memoir sections of the book, then, give us the point of view of a young girl of Richmond society. Wright's memories of those years, as rendered through several decades of time (the book was written and first published in 1905) are certainly interesting, though of fairly limited scope and seen through a rather romantic haze of sentiment for the "glorious lost cause."

The letters to and from Wright and her father and, especially her brother, a young officer at the front throughout the war, are more interesting, all in all. The letters involving her father give a rather one-sided, but still illuminating, picture of some of the internal politics of the Confederate government.

Wright was an unapologetic defender of slavery, even in 1905, when these memoirs were written. Happily, there is only one brief mention of this topic. There is one humorous insight into Wright's patrician upbringing and status early on, however. Speaking of a time spent in Washington before the war, Wright says (and remember this is being written in 1905):

"The winter of '60 saw us in Washington with our quarters changed to Wormley's. This was more than forty years ago and was in the dawn of Wormley's fame as a caterer. . . . I can recall now, in these degenerate times of discomfort and bad servants, the admirable service rendered . . ."

Good luck getting to 50 to you too!

>9 rocketjk: Good review. I have run across Senator Wigfall several times in my reading on the Civil War. The book puts a personal perspective on the war. I will have to put this on my wish list.

11> Thanks, although his daughter's portrayal of him seems to have cleaned Wigfall's character up more than a little. I looked him up on wikipedia and according to that entry Wigfall was a hothead, a heavy drinker and, before his marriage, a frequent dueler. Nevertheless, I think the book well worth reading for anyone interested in the American Civil War.

Book 4: I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch



This novel is considered a classic in Frisch's native Switzerland, and I can see why. Written shortly after World War II, the book is a dense, often insightful, exploration of identity, guilt, obsession, co-dependency, fear of death and fear of life.

A man attempts to enter Switzerland by train but is "recognized" as the artist Stiller, who has been missing for over 8 years and wanted by the police in connection with a fraud case. The man, who says his name is White, is adamant that he is not "their missing Stiller." So the book begins with a decidedly Kafka-esque quality.

The story is told almost entirely via an exposition that leaves us deeply doubting the "reliability" of the narrator (mostly the title character via his jail cell notebooks) and contains long, long sentences and often page-long paragraphs. So it's not always the easiest of reading, but the often breathtaking quality of the writing, the keen observations of human nature supplied, and the liberal doses of very effective humor all combine to make this book into the classic it's become, at least in Europe.

Hi rocketjk

Well, I'm glad to read that also in English there are long sentences and paragraphs and so it isn't always an easy reading.
On the other hand the plot is like a mirror of the living and thinking after WWII in Switzerland. Frisch was a well gifted observer of people, politic and life.

Happy reading and best wishes from Switzerland

Thanks, Ameise1! The feelings, both "literal" and figurative, portrayed in I'm Not Stiller certainly have a strong ring of truth to them in the reading. It's good to have that impression reinforced by one who really knows. All the best from Northern California!

Book 5: Jungle Jest by Talbot Mundy



Mundy was a British writer, active in the early decades of the 20th century, most known for his adventure stories that take place in the far flung corners of the British Empire, especially India and nearby countries. Jungle Jest is comprised of three long stories, strongly interconnected, which I suspect were originally published separately in a literary/adventure periodical of some sort.

Published in 1932, these stories predict the end of the Raj, a development Mundy doesn't necessarily find a negative prospect. His attitude seems to be here that this will be a natural evolution that should be handled as peacefully as possible.

At any rate, these three stories all center around one Cotswald Omminy, a very resourceful fellow, indeed, who is employed by the British Forest Service and whose loyalties are in fact to the trees and animals within his jurisdiction much more to any nationalist or government entity, including his own. By making Omminy a forester rather than a soldier, Mundy cleverly provides his character a freedom of movement and allows him a purity of motive both endearing to the modern reader and useful to the storylines.

At heart, though, these are adventure stories, to be sure. The first two center around a Moslem uprising against British rule and the third around a factional power struggle within an Indian principality. And while each story is sown with a small number of noble figures, we are mostly treated to a series of devious, ruthless, calculating characters--Moslem, Hindu and British more or less equally. Of course, our dear Cotwald is the cleverest of the lot, by far, always sniffing out subterfuge and betrayal before it bears fruit and adept at using his adversaries greed and power-mongering against them. So we know ahead of time that he will prevail, but watching him do it is extremely entertaining.

The stories are lots of fun and very well written. I seem to have the only copy of this book on LT, and even within online Mundy bios this clearly an obscure volume, even within the context of Mundy bibliographies.

Jerry, you do realize it's cruel and unusual of you not to post your reviews on the work pages? What chance do we have to get some thumbage for these forgotten classics, possibly even awaken interest in them anew here in this new century of technological possibility?

Now hustle your bustle on over there and post this review! Quick sticks!

#17> OK, done, yeah. You can see my review of Jungle Jest on the book's work page now, too. But my 50-Book Challenge thread is ever so much more interesting! :)

But we can't like reviews here. Apparently Someone Who Has Tim's Ear dislikes the idea of a "like"-type button anywhere, but was overruled on reviews.

*sigh*

Well, it's to each his/her own, but I would rather draw people to this thread to try, gain a bit of a gathering here as it were, than worry about having people "like" my reviews. It's all good, though.

But putting your reviews on the book page is a great way for more people to "meet" you, check out your profile, and find your thread.

Book 6: Real Grass, Real Heroes: Baseball's Historic 1941 Season by Dom DiMaggio with Bill Gilbert



Joe DiMaggio's brother Dom was a fine ballplayer in his own right for many years. In 1941 (and for his whole career), Dom was an outfielder for the Red Sox, so I was expecting this book to be a memoir about what life was like on the BoSox during that 1941 season. But this turns out not to be a memoir, really, as there are relatively few personal memories about playing ball that year. What we have, instead, is an overall history of the 1941 season and, almost as much, what life was like in America in 1941 on the eve of World War Two.

1941 was the year that Dom's brother Joe compiled his possibly never to be equaled 56-game hitting streak. It is also the season that Dom's teammate Ted Williams hit over .400. No one since has cracked the .400 mark. So that, and the fact that the country, and the ballplayers, had the feeling that the U.S. would soon be in the war and that baseball would be strongly affected, is what makes the season "historic" in DiMaggio's point of view.

Part of the book's problem, though, is that the American League had no pennant race to speak of that year. The Yankees won the flag by 17 games. The NL had a tight race, but DiMaggio barely mentions it.

Dimaggio does give a good overview of the state and conditions of baseball in those days, including the joys of riding trains on road trips, the quality of the umpiring, the miserly ways of the owners, etc. He gives a description of the effects the war had on the major leagues after Pearl Harbor, as well as some nice brief profiles of some of the stars of the day. As a life-long baseball fan and someone with a decent grasp of American history, I found, say, 65-70% of this book to be a review of things I already knew. It's not that there are no personal reminiscences, just not as many as I was expecting/hoping for. For someone just learning about baseball history and/or not familiar with life in the U.S. during that time, this book might be well worthwhile.

Oh, and I should say that the writing is crisp and the book flows nicely.

Nice writing is worth a lot in sports memoirs! Thumbs-upped this one.

Book 7: The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien



There are many comments on LT by people who have started this book but set it aside without finishing it, and I can understand why that would be. Written almost entirely in exposition form, with little development of character or creation of compelling scenes, the Silmarillion presents Tolkien's backstory to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The book was published after Tolkien's death by his son Christopher. There is evidently some controversy as to whether or not Christopher diverged from his father's intentions in some aspects of the history, but given that Christopher was working from voluminous notes and, in many cases, multiple re-writes, I guess that sort of thing was unavoidable. At least according to one Wikipedia article I read, Christopher Tolkien himself later said that he might have come up with something different had he not been under pressure from his father's publisher to deliver something sooner rather than later after his father's passing.

At any rate, this book is recommended for Lord of the Ring enthusiasts only, and even then under advisement. It's a slog in parts, and the stories become a bit repetitious. However, even though I haven't read the Lord of the Rings in decades, the stories and characters remain quite alive for me (aided no doubt by the movie version), and I was happy to have many questions answered. There is much mythology and history alluded to but not really explained by the LOTR characters. It was fun getting some of those holes filled in while reading the Silmarillion. But even if you're a LOTR fan, if you don't care about all that, I can't imagine a reason for reading this book.

Book 8: The Only Game in Town: Sports Writing from the New Yorker edited by David Remnick



Read as a "between book" (see first post), this is a wonderful collection of sports articles and essays spanning the decades of the New Yorker's existence. There are some old favorites, anthologized often, such as Roger Angel's "The Web of the Game" and John Updike's "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu," and some delightful classics by giants like A.J. Liebling, Ring Lardner and Martin Amis. Even the pieces about sports I have no knowledge of or even little interest in, like horse racing and tennis, usually offered very rewarding reading experiences. Recommended for fans of sports in particular but also of good writing in general.

Book 9: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury



It took me a long time to get through this book due to all sorts of ongoing events in my day-to-day life, but it was well worth sticking with this 760-page fascinating novel about the U.S. Senate. The book centers around a controversial presiodential nomination for a new Secretary of State. The question is, does this man have the stuff to stand up to the Russians during the height of the cold war. The book delves into the pasts and personalities of several key senators and in the process shows the workings of the Senate during such a procedure. Of course reading this story set in 1959, one wonders how much the standards of etiquette, courtesy and mutual respect are still observed in today's fractious political times. At any rate, the story here flows very, very well indeed. The book is compelling and the plot believable. Nobody is all good or all bad. This book won a Pulitzer Prize and one can well see why. The only drawbacks might be that the characters are drawn with just a touch of cliche sometimes, and are not quite as deeply realized as I think Drury was hoping for, and also that the book at times gets a bit preachy. But that's why I give this book 4 1/2 stars rather than the full five. Advise and Consent is a time commitment and something of a time capsule. I do recommend it highly for anyone who thinks a novel about the American political system, even in 1959, might be interesting.

Book 10: What Maisie Knew by Henry James



I had to read a lot of Henry James in grad school. A lot. And I never cared for him at all, although I understand his importance in the grand scheme of things. But, oh, the endless exposition about this one's thoughts and that one's motivations . . . Get on with it, man! I don't mean to offend anybody's sensibilities, though. I know there are people who cringe at such criticisms of James in the same way that I cringe at criticisms of Conrad. I'm just talking personal experience, here. At any rate, grad school was 25 years ago or so. I've had this copy of What Maisie Knew, one of the few James I didn't read during those courses, on my shelf for a long time and decided to give it a go to see if perhaps my appreciation of the man's writing might be different these decades later. But, sadly, that wasn't the case. Despite fairly frequent fabulous turns of the phrase, I found this to be a tedious book about tediously cruel people. C'est la vie. Now I know. I do like the James short stories, however.

Tedious about sums up my experience with James too. Although I did enjoy Washington Square. It was short. Maybe I will sample a few of his short stories one of these days.

Book 11: Reel Baseball: Baseball's Golden Era the Way America Witnessed It--In the Movie Newsreels by Les Krantz



Read as a "between book" (see first post). It's easy to see why this book quickly made its way to the remainder table. The idea is to recreate the experience of watching movie newsreel segments about famous baseball events. The book comes with a DVD of such newsreels, with a short book chapter corresponding to each. Individually, each newsreel is fun to watch, but if you just watch the DVD from beginning to end, about halfway through it begins to get a bit tedious. And it's not really worth the trouble to set up the DVD each time to watch the segments individually along with each chapter, which I guess is how this package was intended. So, anyway, the book becomes a nice but not particularly compelling refresher course of baseball's most memorable events, including World Series, All-Star Games and individual achievements like Joe Dimaggio's hitting streak. Since it's coffee table book size, there are some nice photos to go along, as well. For someone just starting out to learn about baseball history, it's not a bad entry. Otherwise, mostly a pleasant stroll down baseball history lane. The DVD is nice, if watched in chunks instead of straight through.

Re Advise and Consent: the movie based on the book is pretty good, too.

#30> Yes, I remember the movie from when I was a kid, although I'm sure I never saw it. For some reason I have a clear memory that Raymond Massey was in it. Of course, as a kid I recognized Raymond Massey's name from his role in the TV show, Dr. Kildare. And the fact that I have a brain cluttered up with meaningless facts like Raymond Massey's role as Dr. Gillespie, Richard Chamberlain's supervisor in Dr. Kildare, explains a lot about why I never became president. :)

Saddened by the no-go on What Maisie Knew...I liked Advise and Consent when I read it millennia ago...Reel Baseball sounds like a Father's Day giftie item.

There! All caught up. Glad the bookstore's keepin' you busy.

Hey, Richard, thanks for keeping up! The bookstore is indeed keeping me busy despite some people I could name who insist on going online to promote ebooks!

Just kidding. I suspect there will always be plenty of people who prefer real books or who like both.

If my hands were less painful, I'd always rather have a tree book. But when holding a book up and turning its pages cause flashes of thoroughly unpleasant pain, I gotta go with reality.

Book 12: The Yankee Years by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci



The listed authorship of this book is deceptive, as it gives the impression that this is an "as told to memoir." But the book is all written in the third person, clearly by Verducci, not Torre, as a history of those years that Joe Torre managed the Yankees. Obviously, Verducci spent many hours interviewing Torre for this (as well as many other sources), as the book heavily relies upon quotes from Torre and on Torre's memories of events. My guess is that Torre included his name as co-author in order to avow his support for and approval of the contents of the book. Or maybe it was a marketing decision. Or maybe both.

At any rate, this is an excellent, excellent baseball history, and not just for Yankee fans. Verducci does a great job of describing the in and outs, the personalities, the drama and melodrama, of the 12 seasons that Joe Torre managed the Yankees, including the incredible run of championships at the beginning of Torre's tenure. But Verducci also does a great job of placing all those events within the context of the developments going on in and around the Yankees in the world of major league baseball in general. Both the steroid situation and the changes in scouting and player appraisal heralded by the arrival of the "Moneyball" philosphy are covered well, for example.

This is a smart, well-written, in-depth book, of interest to all baseball fans, I would think, not just for Yankee fans.

*ngurmph* Givin' money to a Yank-me just sticks in my craw. Can't do it.

Richard, if you're talking about Torre, he hasn't been a Yankee in several years. He's no longer an active manager, and even after leaving the Yankees he was manager of the Dodgers for three years. All told, he was . . .

a player on the Braves for 9 years
a player on the Cardinals for 6 years
a player on the Mets for 3 years
manager of the Mets for 6 years
manager of the Braves for 3 years
manager of the Cardinals for 6 years
manager of the Yankees for 12 years
manager of the Dodgers for 3 years

So that's a 48-year baseball career during which he was a Yankee for 12, or about a quarter of the time, if that helps. Anyway, the loss is yours (in my humble opinion, of course) if you let that sort of prejudice keep you away from this book, which really is an excellently written baseball book that illuminates in a lot of important ways the conditions within baseball as a whole over the period of time it covers.

Book 13: The Hamlet by William Faulkner



For years I procrastinated about reading Faulkner. I was intimidated, I guess, by what I'd heard about the difficulty of the language, although generally I'm not put off by such things. And it just so happened that through high school, undergrad and even an English Lit MA, no syllabus containing Faulkner never crossed my path. At any rate, at age 56 I finally decided to start with the Snopes Trilogy, of which The Hamlet is the first novel. And, wow, am I sorry I waited so long.

Not really a novel in the classic sense, The Hamlet, rather tells a series of interweaving stories with a core set of characters moving throughout and an interchanging series of part-time players revolving around them. This is life in small town deep South in the late 19th/early 20th centuries: grim, ruthless and hard, with a few hesitant glimmers of grace woven in. The writing hurtles headlong with dense, flowing language, memorable characters and beautiful, lush descriptions of nature and location that serve as much to set the tone of the characters' actions and frames of mind as it does to offer an acute sense of place and time.

Obviously, many others have written at greater length and with greater scholarship about Faulkner. I'm just saying I loved this, and if there were dense spots at times, I learned to let the language loft me floating over them rather than trying to hack my way through them. I'm looking forward, at the very least, to the rest of this trilogy.

Welcome to Yoknapatawpha County, Jerry. I learned to let the language loft me floating over them rather than trying to hack my way through them. That approach will serve you well, and I hope you branch out from Snopes to enjoy many hours in the company of Faulkner's remarkable cast of characters.

"I hope you branch out from Snopes to enjoy many hours in the company of Faulkner's remarkable cast of characters."

Thanks, Linda. I'm sure I will, although not all at once.

Sho'ly---not all at once. It's a life-long endeavor!!

Jerry, I don't think I have ever read any Faulkner either, and here I am at 57 ... I've read southern literature but no Faulkner that I can recall. I will fix that some day I hope.

No time like the present, Ron.

When I think about it I imagine it is probably impossible not to have read SOME Faulkner - a short story must have crossed my path sometime. A certain amount of who we connect with at points in life is random, and others because of where we are in life or place. I was exposed to Steinbeck at a young age and since I had family from the Salinas valley area going back several generations and had frequented the California coast where I grew up, the landscape was very vivid to me and the characters that much more real. If I had grown up in the south I am sure southern literature would have been much more likely to bond. Still, I love the writings of Shelby Foote and have a certain fondness for Eudora Welty.

I grew up in NE Pennsylvania, and Steinbeck's work had the same effect on me as a teenager.

#44> The effect you describe goes a long way to explaining why this Jewish boy from Newark is such a big Philip Roth fan. Something about the Southern writers has always resonated with me also, though. For example, I've always loved Flannery O'Conner. And that was even before I spent 8 years living in New Orleans.

Book 14: Guadalcanal Diary by Richard Tregaskis



It was good to finally read this classic memoir of a war correspondent's experiences during the opening weeks of the battle for Guadalcanal. It was very interesting and informative. Tregaskis was often right up on the firing line and describes taking the scantiest of cover as bullets whistled around him. I didn't know, or didn't remember, the rather amazing fact that the Japanese forces on the islands were taken by surprise by the arrival of the Allies' huge invasion armada and so the invading forces essentially walked onto the island and established a beach head unhindered. Obviously, the fighting soon grew fierce, and remained that way for months. Tregaskis describes the conditions for the troops quite well. And yet there is something somehow unsatisfying about the book. Tregaskis' method is definitely more one of "telling" than of "showing," and I often felt a lack of detail that would enable me to see the scenes more fully. Maybe it's because I've grown so used to the more graphic medium of movies and the more "pull no punches" style of modern journalism (such as Michael Herr's excellent Viet Nam War memoir, Dispatches). This book was written, of course, and published while World War II was still raging. The agreement among correspondents (and/or their editors and publishers) seemed to be not to show the horrors of war too graphically, so as not to upset the home front too much. Even the brilliant Ernie Pyle did not focus his lens that harshly on the blood and guts of it all. Also, at times I wondered whether or not there might be a certain amount of propaganda inserted. There are frequent descriptions of Japanese bombing attacks on the American forces on the island. And we are often told of the high percentage of these Japanese planes shot down by American fighters, with no mention of American losses. Were the Japanese pilots really that bad? Maybe that is exactly how it was, but it did make me wonder. I suppose more research is in order.

At any rate, despite the reservations provided above, Guadalcanal Diary is indeed a fascinating account of the first weeks of one of the most horrific and protracted battles of World War Two.

It was fun to read this book via my very early edition copy, printed in 1943 (but without dust jacket). I don't remember where I got it, but I do wonder who owned it before me.

Thumbs upped Guadalcanal Diary, and a thought on Faulkner...Light in August is an extraordinarily good read.

#48> Thanks for the thumb and the thought, Richard. As for Light in August, I'm sure it's great. But my next Faulkner adventures will entail a completion of the Snopes Trilogy. So The Hamlet will be my next Faulkner. Cheers!

::confused::

Re-reading The Hamlet? Or reading The Town?

Yeah. The Town.

Oh

K

Thought you'd gone all Faulknerian and were using recursion in your reading.

I read a kid's version of Guadalcanal Diary when I was perhaps 11 or 12. At least I assume it was a kid's version. I thought I still had the book but it must have slipped away at some point although I do still have a couple other books such as The Flying Tigers by Toland from that time. Anyway, I thought it a great book at the time but suspect I might view it differently now. I was thinking about it recently when I was looking at some WW2 books to be read - I will pick it up someday when it crosses my path and give it a go. Nice summation Jerry.

#52> No, but I am using reading in my recursion.

Book 15: Under the Blue Flag: My Mission to Kosovo by Philip Kearny



Philip Kearny was a San Francisco prosecutor who, seeking greater challenges, applied for and got a job with the United Nations mission prosecuting war crimes in post-war Kosovo in 2001. Kearny details well his culture shock upon arriving in Kosovo and his struggles to learn the local legal code. The book is very interesting and well written in a lucid, straightforward manner highlighted with just the right sort of descriptive details to let the reader really see the scenes and situations being described. Happily, these details are used sparingly so as not to clutter up the narrative.

The age-old emnity between the Kosovans and Serbs is well described as a background for the three cases that Kearny highlights, cleverly chosen to highlight the scope of the U.N.'s task in Kosovo. There is a case involving war crimes commited by the Serb army against Kosovans in the days before NATO bombing drove that army out of Kosovo. There is a case involving Kosovan military thugs detaining, torturing and killing any of their own people who they officially deem as suspected collaborators with the Serbs (but whom Kearny shows are just as often merely people whom the army officers have some pre-war grudge against). And there is a case involving a horrid thug of a man who bullies and beats on anyone he feels like who happens to cross his path, but who will never by prosecuted by local courts because of who he is. It is all told quite well enough to be very compelling reading.

Funny thing for me about this book is that Phil Kearny lived in my neighborhood in San Francisco before my wife and I moved away. In fact, he lived right around the corner from me and I knew him a bit. So there was pleasant, likeable Phil Kearny in my 'hood. And then he was gone for awhile with this interesting job in Kosovo, while my life as a freelance jazz writer/copywriter continued. And then one day there was Phil back in town again. "Hi, Phil! Welcome back!" says I. "Thanks," says he. And that was the extent of things. But, of course, I had absolutely no clear idea of everything he had seen and done and experienced in the intervening nine months. I didn't feel like I knew him well enough to become one of the dozens or hundreds of people asking for the story and getting whatever prefabbed response he was giving casual acquaintances. So now I know.

At any rate, I highly recommend this book.

Jerry - some great stuff over here. Baseball is not my thing as a little game called cricket absorbs my time in it's stead, but they do have similar statistical attributes so I can appreciate the allure. Enjoyed your review of The Hamlet and my attention was drawn especially to Jungle Jest by Talbot Mundy - a period of literature I also enjoy and which I will look to hunt down now.

Interested to note that both Linda and RD are regulars over here visiting you (Mr. Derus is everywhere of course and leaves his mark wherever he goes). Will star you mate and visit over here from time to time.

>55 rocketjk: Up-gethumbed!

Book 16: Sepharad by Antonio Munoz Molina



Sepharad is a wonderful book, short on plot, long on insight. Beautiful, tragic, saddening and uplifting all at the same time.

The title is a reference to the diaspora of the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 who ended up spread all over Eastern Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. Sepharad concerns itself with the mid-20th Century consequences of this expulsion, specifically the terrible ends many Sephardic communities came to at the hands of the Nazis in places like Rhodes, Hungary and Romania. But while that subject may be the touchstone around which the narrative revolves, it is really, overall a book about repression, fear, tyranny (especially in the guise of the Nazism, Stalinism and Francoism), loss, the merciless enforcement of "otherness" onto entire groups, with healthy components of laughter, love and hope worked throughout.

Rather than telling a single tale, or even multiple tales, Sepharad instead presents an interweaving of stories and meditations. The stories jump around in time and place, moving effortlessly (at least for this reader) between first and third person, sometimes even moving into second person. The reader is thereby encouraged and skillfully enabled to enter the minds and hearts of the storytellers and their subjects:

A Spanish solder fighting with the German Army on the Russian Front lies in a barn at night, awakened from a restless slumber to the hushed sounds of Russian partisans who have come to slit his throat; a Jewish mother and daughter return to their small town in France to try to learn the fate of their husband/father, only to walk into a den of fear and resentment; a German Communist, one of the leading lights of his party when the Nazi's take power, is marked for execution post-war by the very Stalinists he has served all his life; a Hungarian Jew who might have received a Spanish passport and been saved from the Nazis is instead lost when her name cannot be found by her husband on any of the deportation lists for the simple reason that she has been sent to a relatively obscure death camp that nobody has ever heard of; a father relates the idyllic summer in a Spanish seaside resort with his wife and young son, then tells again of the emptiness of the return trip two years later for the simple reason that his loving son has turned, quite naturally, into a sullen teen. That's just a small sampling of the interwoven stories. Once you get used to the form and the pace, it becomes easy to go with the flow because one quicly sees that the whole is adding up to something entirely coherent and immensely moving.

I am not doing this book justice.

It is not for everyone, I know. If you enjoy your novels more plot driven or even, really, character driven, this might be a hard go in some ways. i guess I would say this book is idea-driven. And humanity-driven.

nice review Jerry

Very very moving review! I've asked my liberry to get a copy.

Book 17: Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger



I hadn't read these stories in many, many years, and I was curious as to how this collection, published almost 60 years ago, would hold up for me. Re-reading Salinger is also always somewhat an exercise in nostalgia for me, as his style, so singular, puts me in mind of the time in my life when I first read him, and of the wonderful 11th grade literature teacher who introduced me to Catcher in the Rye and at least some of the stories in this collection.

Anyway, one or two of the stories, particularly "Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut," I found over-wrought and not especially effective. One or two were good but went on too long, I thought. But there are several that are still and will always be, for me at least, examples of short story genius. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," perhaps the Salinger short story most often anthologized, "The Laughing Man," "Down in the Dinghy," and, most especially, "For Esme--With Love and Squalor" are terrific and timeless. In these, Salinger best gets at the American human condition post-World War Two, as Americans took stock, counted their losses, and tried to wade through the hollow, enforced "normality" of the materialistic world that was cropping up around them. As a teenager, it didn't occur to me as it did in this latest reading the extent to which almost all of these stories revolve around the damage done to families, psyches and dreams by the experience and/or consequences of the war.

Excellent assessment, Jerry. I've never "taken" to Salinger, but you make me want to sample some of those stories.

>61 rocketjk: Thumbs-upped the review, in perfect accord with your analysis and assessment.

Thanks, kids!

Book 18: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson



Finally finished off this trilogy. I don't think anybody needs another review of this book at this late date (I notice these books have finally stopped selling at my used bookstore, so I guess everybody who's interested in reading these books has done so). I enjoyed them all in all, although I'm not sure what the big to-do was. The first book of the three was the best, I think. As to Hornet's Nest, I'd say that the second half of the book is much better than the first half, and like everybody else I think Larsson needed a better editor. Still, the book was fun, and I'm glad I read the set.

Happy birthday, Jerry! Wow, are you old.

I hated the first one of the trilogy so much I never finished it or read another.

Book 19: Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948 by Madeleine Albright



There is something a bit misleading about the way this book has been packaged and sold, which is as a memoir. But while the author, Madeleine Albright, who was U.S. Secretary of State during the Clinton Administration, did live through many of the events described, she was too young, for the most part, to have cogent memories of them today. What we have, mainly, is a history of the Czech national experience during the years of World War Two and immediately afterwards.

On the other hand, Albright's father was Josef Korbel, who was highly placed in the government of Eduard Benes, the president of Czechoslovakia in the years leading up to the infamous Munich Agreement and then the leader of the Czech government in exile in London during the Nazi occupation of the country. Albright makes use of her father's letters and other writings (plus lots of extensive research) to draw a very interesting picture of the history of these efforts.

In addition, Albright tells us early on that she had been brought up as a Catholic, but that back when she became prominent in the American government, she was contacted by people who had known her family in the old country who told her that in fact both her parents, and her whole extended family, had been Jewish. Her parents, both passed away long ago, had never told her of this, but the revelation had led to lots of family research by her and her siblings. It turned out to be true, and they discovered that many (most) of her aunts and uncles and cousins had been killed in the Holocaust. For better or worse, however, Albright presents most of this as a fait accompli in the book and never really delves much into the impact this information had on her personally. Perhaps, learning these facts so relatively late in life, with her personal identity already strongly set, there was no way for her to have had that identity seriously altered, to suddenly feel "Jewish," which is fair enough. What is clear is that Albright was deeply moved by what she learned about her family members and their collective fate.

So this book, as I said, is a history of the Czech experience in the years just prior to, during and after World War Two intertwined with Albright's family history. That's all fine, especially given her father's positions. I learned a lot, especially about details of the machinations that lead up to the Munich Agreement, the agony with the Czechoslovak government as they decided whether or not to fight back against the Nazis even though their English and French "allies" had made it clear through Munich that no help would be forthcoming (they chose not to fight, a decision still, apparently, debated within the country), as well as the developments post-WW2 that led to the establishment of a Communist dictatorship rather than a re-establishment of the pre-war democratic republic.

Sometimes Albright's using her family's experiences as a template for her book are helpful and sometimes they aren't. For example, because her family got out of Prague and spent the war years in London where, as I've said, her father was highly placed in the government in exile, we get an interesting picture of the struggles and concerns of that effort. But we also get a very lengthy and detailed description of life during the London blitz. It would be one thing if we were getting Albright's actual memories, but in fact she was only five, so her memories are mostly vague and the chapter is much more research than memoir. That's fine for anyone who has never read an account of the blitz, but I have read many, and I found this account well done but mostly an interruption of the real story being told. And since the family was in England rather than in their home country, the account of the experience back home during the occupation by necessity becomes a straight history rather than any sort of memoir.

Also, because many of Albright's family members were imprisoned for years and ultimately perished in the Terezin concentration camp, we get a long, detailed and extremely harrowing account of what life was like in that cruel and frightful place. An important part of the Czech national experience during the war, certainly. And an important part of Albright's family history, even if she only learned this was part of her family history decades later. But Albright's decision to suddenly pivot from the flow of her wider history and to a close-up examination of the camp still felt somehow disjointed to me. Oddly, however, I can't decide quite whether I find this a flaw or a strength in the book overall.

The bottom line is that I do recommend this book for anyone interested in the history of Czechoslovakia during this period. The book is very well written--how much by Albright and how much by her co-writer of course I don't know--and within each chapter flows very well. I just wish it had been presented as something like "A national history and a family history," which it is, rather than as "A personal story of remembrance and war," which, to me at least, it very often seems not to be.

Great review, Jerry. That history interests me, and I may have to see if our library has this book available.

This book also interests me so thanks for the detailed review. I am Czech in ancestry (both sets of grandparents were bilingual although they had been born in the U. S.) and clearly remember my Grandmother sitting at the dining room table and crying because the Russians had marched into Prague in August of 1968. I want to add this book to my wish list.

Very nicely done, Jerry!

Book 20: Mr. Machine by Deneb T. Hall

This is an unpublished manuscript that I read as a favor to its author, a young friend of mine, who asked for my feedback. Let's just say that it's an admirable first attempt at a fantasy novel and leave it at that. But at 515 pages, I'm including it here.

Book 21: Tideland by Mitch Cullin



This is a dark but well written book featuring a very memorable character and voice. Jeliza-Rose is a young girl living in a run-down house on the Texas plains and adrift, mostly, in her own imagination. That imagination includes, for example, her friendships with several severed Barbie doll heads. The supporting characters are quirky, to put it mildly, and in a way that perfectly supports Jeliza-Rose's expectations of life. The writing, here, is hypnotic and compelling. This novel is essentially a reverie on the lengths a young mind may go to to escape from misery and sadness. I know there's a movie of this book, but I won't be seeing it, as I doubt it could do justice to this fine work.

I brought this book with me on the wonderful vacation to Finland that my wife and I have just returned from. I finished it there, and then read several others. I'll report them here one at a time as I get time to catch up.

Tideland sounds very good, Jerry. Onto my wishlist it goes. Thanks for sharing. I'd love a little report on Finland too, if you get the time!

>72 rocketjk: Great review, Jerry!

Book 22: The Lasko Tangent by Richard North Patterson



A while back, I read another book by Patterson, The Final Judgement, which I didn't like. But I had one more of his books on my shelf, Eyes of a Child, and I decided to give it a try. But then I realized that it's the third book of a series. So I took the first of the series, The Lasko Tangent, down off the shelf of my store and brought it on vacation. I was, in fact, very pleasantly surprised. This is a nice, fast-paced mystery with a likeable protagonist and a mostly believable plot. It was fun; good vacation fare, certainly, and now I look forward to the rest of the series.

Book 23: Maigret and the Pickpocket by Georges Simenon



This was the first book I actually bought in Finland during our vacation. These Maigret books must be very popular in the country, as I saw a lot of them in the stores I visited, both in English and in Finnish. At any rate, this was my first, and I liked it a lot. The Maigret character seemed very interesting and down to earth to me, smart but not too smart. The other figures in the story were also well done as were the psychological aspects of the situation. I have realized that the real laudatory comment I want to make about this story would constitute a plot spoiler, so I will refrain. LT says this is the 66th in the Maigret series! I probably won't be reading all of those, but I'm sure to be reading at least a few more one of these days.

SIXTY-SIXTH!! Wow.

Book 24: Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh



This is a gently biting satire about the fading of the English gentry and about the absurdity of military life in general. Guy Crouchback is the last of his line, a once revered English family that traces it's ancestry back into the hazy mists of the middle ages. A kindly, yet (self-described) ineffectual fellow, Guy has led a life of more or less useless ease in Italy over the years since his wife left him for a chum of his and essentially drained his life of meaning. But with World War 2 in the offing, Guy, at the age of 35, is determined to find himself a spot as an army officer. The novel describes the consequences of his success. The first book of a trilogy, Men at Arms takes us only through training camp. As the ominous opening moves of the war (the British army's botched attempt to forestall the German invasion of Norway up through the disaster of Dunkirk) unfold in the background, Guy's regiment trains, then moves, then trains some more. Guy, all the while, is the likeable schnook constantly stumbling over his own good intentions with a penchant for being taken advantage of by his friends and fellow officers. Waugh's facility with language, his powers of observation about human nature and his light touch with a barb make this book a delight. We like following Guy through his misadventures and like him for maintaining his good spirits and enthusiasm and for his fundamental humanity. I look forward to getting to the second and third books in the set.

Book 25: The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster



The Invention of Solitude contains two exquisite essays/memoirs, "Portrait of an Invisible Man," Auster's reminiscences about his difficult-to-pin-down father, and "The Book of Memory," an intoxicating longer memoir about memory, writing and experience. In both cases, but especially in the latter work, the prose is often somewhat dense and quite often dreamlike in nature, but at the same time almost impossibly precise, as if it were necessary for Auster to first blur the lens before sharpening the view to hone in directly on his point. I found myself frequently astonished. There were a dozen passages that made me think, while I was reading them, "I'll quote that." But I'll just quote this one:

. . . For a man to remember so precisely things he had seen only once, things which could not have had any bearing on his life except for a fleeting instant, struck A. with all the force of a supernatural act. He realized that for Ponge there was no division between the work of writing and the work of seeing. For no word can be written without first having been seen, and before it finds its way to the page it must first have been part of the body, a physical presence that one has lived with in the same way one lives with one's heart, one's stomach, and one's brain. Memory, then, not so much as the past contained within us, but as proof of our life in the present. If a man is to be truly present among his surroundings, he must be thinking not of himself, but of what he sees. He must forget himself in order to be there. And from that forgetfulness arises the power of memory. It is a way of living one's life so that nothing is ever lost.

Auster's mention, in the first essay, of a house in New Jersey, and his frequent references to boyhood experiences in Newark, set off a bell in my brain. So I looked Auster up on Wikipedia, and sure enough, it was as I thought I had remembered. Auster and I went to the same high school, and he graduated only three years before me, which puts him only a year behind my sister. I'll have to ask her about him. In the meantime, I also picked up the rather astonishing information that "The Book of Memory" was Auster's first published work. Holy Cats! It was sort of like reading Goodbye, Columbus all over again.

I bought this book in Helsinki's wonderful, giant downtown bookstore. I started the book in Finland and finished it here. So this catches me up fully on my reporting of my recent vacation reading.

I just finished Winter Journal and loved it. Auster mentions The Invention of Solitude a few times in this new book. I have not read Solitude so I don't know how much overlap there would be, but certainly Auster has lived quite a bit of life since writing this book. Do you plan on reading Winter Journal?

#80> I guess I do now, if you recommend it! Seriously, although I don't know just when, I really do feel that I want to continue exploring Auster's work.

Book 26: The Hermitage: A Stroll around the Halls and Galleries by Sergei Vesnin, S. V. Kudri︠a︡vt︠s︡eva and Tatiana Pashkova



You know how when you go on vacation, you come back with a small stack of guides and other souvenir books specific to the places you've seen, and you swear you're going to give them a good read when you get home, but then they sit around for a month and eventually you just shove them onto the "vacation" shelf?

Well, this time I've sworn an oath to slowly actually go through these books and really read them. So, my wife and I went to Finland for three weeks with a 2-day side trip to St. Petersburg, where we of course visited the glorious Hermitage. So because I really bought this book to give to an art museum-loving friend of mine, I've started with this very good 140 (including lots of full color art reproductions) page printed tour of the museum, including a history of the building and individual rooms and a walk through the highlights of the amazing art collection. Very nicely done.

Book 27: The Pride and the Pressure: a Season Inside the New York Yankee Fishbowl by Michael Morrissey



Just in time for the final weeks of the pennant race, I decided to read this exploration of the 2006 season from inside the Yankees clubhouse and front office. Morrissey was a Yankees beat writer, so he had a lot of access to the players and management personnel and witnessed a lot of what occurred with the team that year. 2006 was a season in which the Yankees overcame a load of injuries to win their division handily, but then got abruptly wiped out in the first round of the playoffs by the Tigers. Morrissey focuses on many of the Yankee personalities from that season, describing how the experiences and situations of each contributed to team dynamics. Some of the players highlighted included Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Mike Mussina and Bernie Williams. And, inevitably, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. Because I've followed the team so closely over the years, I'd say the first half of the book was old news to me, although it did serve as an entertaining refresher course. (Is 2006 six years ago already?) The book got more interesting for me when Morrissey began discussing Rodriguez. His take is different than many others, in that he has more sympathy for A-Rod than is often found, and some relatively disapproving words for Jeter and manager Joe Torre, as well. Essentially Morrissey's position is that when Rodriguez struggled during the season and began feeling the wrath of the fans and NY press, Jeter refused to offer him any support and was in fact often critical within the clubhouse. Morrissey identifies a famous interview A-Rod gave before he became a Yankee in which he somewhat downplayed the pressure that Jeter, primarily a singles hitter, had to play under. Morrissey's criticism of Torre is in letting this situation fester with his normal "hands off in the clubhouse" policy, and his mistake in pushing A-Rod down in the batting order during that playoff series, thereby inadvertently (but predictably) heightening the attention and pressure for Rodriguez. Obviously, you'd have to care about baseball, the inner workings of a clubhouse, and most specifically the Yankees and Yankee history, to be interested in this book. It's skillfully if not gracefully written. A good baseball book.

Book 28: What the People of the Wilderness Used to Believe In by Oili Räihälä



This is another book picked up more or less as a souvenir during our recent vacation to Finland. We stayed for two days in the large park area of Hossa in eastern Finland. The area includes pre-historic rock drawings (which, sadly, we didn't see). This book discusses those drawings and their possible significance, and also gives an interesting survey of the religious and folk beliefs of Finland and Lapland. The translation seems a bit stiff at times, but mostly this short volume held my interest.

That last sounds fascinating. I can't begin to pretend to know what that name is...male? female? some Finnish gender identity I wot not of?...but the subject is a grabber for me.

I'm pretty sure the author is a woman. The book is interesting, yes, though brief. Each chapter of this book would make a great full-length book of its own.

Book 29: South Orange Revisited by Naoma Welk



One of those short Arcadia Publishing books, this one about the New Jersey suburb right next to the one I grew up in. This is the second Arcadia book about South Orange, and it is much less interesting than the first one, which is simply entitled South Orange. I'm not sure why they felt they needed this second one, which is mostly full of photos of houses, other than they figured that suckers like me might buy it! There was a small amount of interesting info, though, so not a complete waste of time.

Book 30: The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway by Ernest Hemingway



Hemingway is one of those writers who brings on strong reactions in many readers, either positive or negative. In this large volume of short stories, published while Hemingway was still alive, some of the stories contain the mannered, self-consciously "manly" style that his detractors so loath. But many of the stories here, at least for me, are acute and effective. Even moving. Often they consist of little more than finely drawn vignettes, insightful miniatures into human nature. I worked my way through this collection gradually, as one of my "between books" (see first post in this thread). I haven't read a Hemingway novel in a long time. I remember admiring The Sun Also Rises but being so-so on For Whom the Bell Tolls and a Farewell to Arms. But while this collection I guess is uneven, quite a few of the tales within I consider true gems.

Over the past few years, I have been selectively re-reading some Hemingway. He always left me cold in the past, with that Manly Man thing...and it wasn't the subject matter, it was the approach. But I do find, like you, that he has a few gifts to offer, when he steps out of his own way. I enjoyed A Moveable Feast, and even most of The Green Hills of Africa. I'll have to sample some of the short fiction one of these days.

Book 31: Ukiah by Darline Bergere



Just another quick Arcadia Publishing volume. Ukiah is the county seat of Mendocino County, California, and is just over the mountain from Boonville, where I live. Most importantly, this is the town my bookstore is in. It was fun to see a book of old photos of the town and get a little better feel for the history of the place. Most entertaining for me was seeing 80-year-old photos of the very block my store is on.

I have a few books in that Arcadia series. Some of them are better than others, aren't they? The pictures are endlessly fascinating to me.

Yes, lw3, the Arcadia books are a mixed bag. I guess it depends on how knowledgeable, industrious and/or really interested the particular author is in the subject matter. That South Orange book I read recently wasn't very interesting at all, as I mentioned. The Ukiah book is better, but still not all I'd hoped for. Still, as you say, the pictures almost always make the experience worthwhile to some extent.

I like the Arcadia books, too. Lots of stuff on Long Island villages, which is always fun.

Book 32: The Beatles: The Ultimate Album-by-Album Guide by Rolling Stone Magazine



This is really more a magazine than a book, but it is just substantial enough for me to decide to include it here. Published last year, this guide includes one chapter on each of the Beatles' albums as they appeared in England (rather than the somewhat different and usually shorter albums released in the U.S.). Each chapter contains a relatively short but informative rundown of the album at hand, including descriptions of where the Beatles were individually and collectively in the short, brilliant and ultimately sad trajectory of the band. In addition, there is a song-by-song breakdown, as well. This volume is full of informative and fascinating (for fans of the music and/or veterans of the era) information. I enjoyed it, and often gave me even more avenues into this music I've loved since I was a kid, but ultimately it made me sad as I read still again of the four friends' devolving relationship over the years.

Book 33: Turned Round in My Boots by Bruce Patterson



This is a memoir by someone I know, a long-time resident of Anderson Valley, the rural area of Mendocino County, California, where my wife and I have lived sinced 2008. Patterson is a Vietnam War combat vet who describes effectively the ways in which his war experiences exacerbated self-destructive tendencies that took root in his childhood. That childhood is also described. After that, the memoir is an account of the first several years after Patterson's return to civilian life in rural northern California. Patterson is a good writer, although he does have a tendency toward the cliche: "He knew I was lying," for example, becomes "He knew I was lying through my teeth." There are also sections--lengthy descriptions of different jobs Patterson held, for instance, that, while well written, are not as compelling as one might wish. There are a lot of very nice nature descriptions, and Patterson has a good eye for detail. Parts of the book are very effective, indeed.

Nicely balanced review, Jerry.

Book 34: Blood-Dark Track by Joseph O'Neill



"At some point in my childhood, perhaps when I was aged ten, or eleven, I became aware that during the Second World War my Turkish grandfather -- my mother's father, Joseph Dakad -- had been imprisoned by the British in Palestine, a place exotically absent from any atlas. A shiver of an explanation accompanied this information: the detention had something to do with spying for the Germans. At around the same age, I also learned that my Irish grandfather, James O'Neill, had been jailed by the authorities in Ireland in the course of the same war. Nobody explained precisely why, or where, or for how long, and I attributed his incarceration to the circumstances of a bygone Ireland and a bygone IRA. These matters went largely unmentioned, and certainly undiscussed, by my parents in the two decades that followed. Indeed, the subject of my late grandfathers was barely raised at all . . . "

So begins this fascinating and well written family history/memoir by Joseph O'Neill, in which O'Neill goes in search of his grandfathers' stories. He writes about that search, and about the stories he uncovers, in clear prose and compelling detail. What he uncovers is quite interesting. He lays out his discoveries about the lives' of his two grandfathers, of course, but along the way also delves into the cultures and concerns that shaped them. The story of O'Neill's Turkish grandfather provides the more exotic tale, as the author fleshes out for us the environment faced by a successful businessman in a small Turkish Mediterranean port town living within the cultural context of being Lebanese born rather than a Turkish native, Christian rather than Moslem, a speaking Arabic & French as his native language rather than Turkish. O'Neill also describes nicely the atmosphere in the city during World War Two, a port city in a neutral country teaming with diplomats, businessmen and other unsavory people from countries on both sides of the conflict. A hotbed of espionage, in other words. Was Joseph Dakad truly a player in this game, or simply a naive man betrayed by prejudice and jealousy? Across the world in Ireland, we find out about Jim O'Neill's IRA activities and the reasons for his imprisonment. Along the way we get an in-depth look at the effects that IRA life had on the families of the participants, along with an on-the-ground look at the history of the IRA through the middle part of the 20th century. O'Neill also puts together full-blooded portrayals of the lives and personalities of both grandfathers, and of both sides of his uniquely constructed family.

An aspect of the book I particularly appreciated was O'Neill's decision to give the "family history" aspect of his narrative general precedence over the "memoir" aspect. Although he describes much of his research, and the conversations & interviews entailed therein, in the first person, and adds in his own childhood memories of certain events on occasion, these things are overall presented in service of the overall story. O'Neill also lets us know when discoveries he makes are jarring, either to his conceptions of his own family's history or to his understanding of history in general, but these observations are offered appropriately and relatively sparingly. It is not until the end of the book, when he has fully laid out the stories and, in my opinion, has earned the right, does O'Neill delve more fully into what all of this research and revelation has meant to him. Particularly well done, for me anyway, is O'Neill reflections on his own feelings about the decades of violence perpetrated by the IRA, and whether such violence can ever be justified by the cause it serves and/or ultimately by history.

All in all, I give this book very high marks.

Four and a half stars! That, sir, is close to unprecedented from you. You're a tough sell. Wishlisted!

I do try to be a "tough sell," Richard. But this book is very much well worth reading if the subject matter looks interesting to you.

Book 35: The Best American Sports Writing of the Century edited by David Halberstam



Read as a "between book" (see first post), this massive collection would, I think, be overwhelming if read straight through. But reading these great sports stories one or two at a time over the course of several years was quite enjoyable. Some were old favorites, others were new to me. Many were about sports I knew nothing about. A fun volume, published in 1999.

The village liberry has a copy, so it'll be waiting for me after the hurricane.

All the best, Richard, and stay safe and dry. That goes for all my east coast LT friends.

I'm in the big fat middle of Long Island, so not much other than power outages likely...it's the poor folk in Jersey! UGH! So much flooding likely, so many trees coming down likely. Boo hiss.

Book 36: Dead Meat by William G. Tapply



This is the 5th book in Tapply's Brady Coyne mystery series. Like the others, this one is quick, well done and fun. Who is killing people up at a remote Maine fishing resort? Luckily, Brady Coyne, attorney for the rich and well placed, is on the scene!

Book 37: Spencerville by Nelson DeMille



The first half of this book was fairly annoying, in that the plot was wholly derivative and most everything that happened you could see coming a mile away. The second half was more entertaining, so I'm mildly happy that I stuck with the book. Keith Landry, former U.S. spy, has been cut loose by the government after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Happy to be away from the stress and disfunction, he returns home to rural Spencerville, Ohio, to take over the family farm and enjoy a simple life. His first (and lifetime soulmate) is still living there and she is married to . . . guess who? The local chief of police who is . . . guess what? Mean, jealous and abusive. Readers or viewers of the movie The Lucky One, for example, will be well familiar with the concept. There is some good writing here, in particular DeMille's ruminations on the demise of Midwest, small town farming culture. I sell quite a few of DeMille's thrillers in my store, so I was curious and decided to try one. I guess I picked the wrong one, but based on the overall quality of the writing, which I thought was pretty good, I will probably try another one of these days.

Book 38: Last Stand at Papago Wells by Louis L'Amour



Fast, furious and fun. A group of assorted travelers are trapped in a mountainous watering hole, surrounded by a band of murderous Apaches. Can our hero, Logan Cates, keep this band of innocents and ne'er-do-wells from killing each other long enough to defend against their attackers until help arrives? Not much in the way of character development, here, but some good descriptive writing and an enjoyable, fast-paced plot. This was my first time reading L'Amour and I will read some more sooner or later.

L'Amour did some good, entertaining work. I've never read this one. Sackett's Land is the first of a family saga, and a darn good book.

I've made the stuffing. I've prepped the brussels sprouts with apples. I've got the noxious bird-meat brining in my own souped-up whiskey brine mixture. Yam nastiness baking now. Must roast the sprouts, some white potatoes with garlic, oil and rosemary, and birdie. Sweet potato pie, pecan pie, southern mincemeat pie, and apple pie all done. Life is good, but my knees and feet are killin' me! Happy holiday for you and all those you love.

Book 39: A German Requiem by Philip Kerr



Once again, Berlin private detective Bernie Gunther is up to his neck in grisly intrigue. In the first two books of Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series, Gunther was a private eye in pre-WW2 Berlin, and his cases brought him into contact with an array of Nazi bigwigs. Now it is Berlin 1947, and the city is awash in ruins, black marketeers, American soldiers and, even worse, Russians. Gunther is hired to try to clear a former friend and current black market operator (and who knows what else?) who is accused of shooting an American occupation officer. The case brings Gunther to Vienna. The twists and turns of the imaginative plot are entertaining, as are the characterizations. Not much in the way of strong women here, though, and I did find myself wishing Kerr could have laid off the forced hard-boiled detective story metaphors a bit. But overall this is a very enjoyable detective story set in a fascinating time and place. 3 1/2 stars.

Jerry, I hope you'll post that model of concise and informative reviewing. I'd like to thumbs-up it.

Thanks, Richard. OK, the review is posted here: http://www.librarything.com/work/95/summary/52036136

Done and done. *brisk hand-dusting*

Book 40: The True Story of Pocahontas: the Other Side of History by Dr. Linwood "Little Bear" Custalow and Angela L. Daniel "Silver Star"



According to the authors, the Mattaponi tribe of Virginia passed down their version of the Pocahontas/John Smith/Jamestown story via oral history for over 400 years but never set it down on in writing for fear of reprisals due to its rather extreme divergence from the pasteurized mythology told by white society, starting with Smith's own falsified reports in the 1600s. As the new millennium dawned, however, it was deemed finally time to tell the Native side of the tale to the world. Hence, in 2007, this slim (100 pages) volume was published.

The "story" of Pocahontas and John Smith is one known to most U.S. school children: in the tale, the young Powhatan Indian maid brings food to the starving Jamestown colony and, when John Smith is visiting the Indian settlement, warns John Smith that her father is planning to kill him in the night, allowing him to escape. The authors point out the holes in this version, namely that Pocahontas at the time would have been right around 10 years old. As the favorite daughter of the tribes chief, she would have been closely watched and protected, and not allowed to get anywhere near a visiting white, let alone able to sneak off alone to their fort with provisions. The authors, current-day Mattaponi historians and scholars, provide an insightful look into the culture and beliefs of the Powhatans (the Chiefdom of whom the Mattaponi were but one of many member tribes) as well as their own version of the Pocahontas story, which includes her kidnapping to be held as hostage, forced conversion and marriage, and eventual murder at the hands of the settlers. The relations between Indian and white is told as the usual progression of exploitation, theft and overall cruelty by the whites towards the natives.

I liked the fact that the prose here is often purposefully presented in a narrative meant to reflect spoken language, as if one is being told a tale by a griot, by a bard. So this is a skillful and effective mix of "straight" cultural history and tribal oral history. Obviously, the "real" actual story will never be known, but this telling certainly rings true. I think it's an important story for American readers to experience.

My enjoyment of this book was enhanced by the fact that I purchased the volume in the gift shop of the American Indian Museum (a branch of the Smithsonian) when I visited Washington, DC, in September.

Book 41: Saturday Review Reader No. 3



Ah, the still literate 50s & 60s, when magazines would publish pocket book sized anthologies of highlights for sale on the book racks. Whenever I see one of these in thrift stores or, if moderately priced, in bookstores, I snap them up, and occasionally I actually read one! I completed this one, read as a "between book" (see first post) last night. Published in 1954, this book is described on its cover thusly: "Containing 28 articles of permanent value on a world-wide range of topics, plus 8 representative poems." And: "A third outstanding selection from The Saturday Review." I've read a few of these sorts of anthologies and they are instructive, often, in a "the more things change . . . " kind of way. This anthology, for example, contains Seymour St. John's essay, "The Fifth Freedom." This fifth freedom, St John says, "is one we are in danger of losing--the freedom to be one's best." Now, where have I heard that complaint before? There is also the requisite mourning for the death of literacy among the general populace, here provided by Gilbert Seldes in "Radio, TV and the Common Man."

I don't want to seem too glib about all this, however; both of those essays were well-written, thoughtful and, yes, even enlightening, even if the subject matter is familiar. The volume also contained some interesting time pieces, such as Dana W. Atchley's "The Healer and the Scientist," which describes how, in the mid-1950s, the traditional roles of healer and scientist were finally coming together in the field of medicine, creating doctors who were able to simultaneously fulfill both roles. It was of interest to me to get a perspective on how recent a development that is (if we even consider it to be true within modern corporate medicine anymore, at least in the U.S.). John Mason Brown's "The Trumans Leave the White House" and Paul Hume's "Rosa Ponselle of Via Pace" are two examples of the fine personal profiles contained herein.

So, overall, a fine selection of well-written essays and profiles, and some interesting time travel back to the concerns and the notable figures in the U.S., circa 1954 when this volume was published.

Thumbs up for Pocahontas! I liked The Saturday Review, which my hoarder father kept in his garage, and I discovered as a teen. It had only just stopped publishing at the time. Slate or Salon are the closest we come these days.

I also thumbed your Pocahontas review! Sounds very interesting!

Thanks, Richard and Tina!

Book 42: War Propaganda and the United States by Harold Lavine and James Wechsler



This fascinating book was published in May of 1940, during the window between the start of World War Two and American's entry into the conflict. Lavine and Wechsler were journalists and their book a detailed and nuanced account of the varying and ubiquitous attempts, both from within and without, to sway American public opinion either toward or away from American involvement in the war. In the U.S., the major camps, of course, were the isolationists and the interventionists, but the authors do a very effective job of displaying the ways in which those major groups were far from united internally. For example, both the American communists and many American industrialists were isolationist, but for obviously very different reasons. Also quite fascinating is the fact that the spring of 1940 was also during the period between the German-Russian non-aggression pact and the German invasion of Russia. In other words, as far as the world (and the authors) knew at the time of writing, the Allies were facing a totalitarian Hitler/Stalin axis of evil (and also explains the American communists' isolationism). There is speculation in the book that this might change, as Russia, other than its attack on Finland, had yet to become a combatant, and the possibility that they might be swayed over to the Allied side is speculated upon.

I had always known that Americans were largely against entry into the war right up until Pearl Harbor, but I was quite interested to learn that a major factor in Americans' resistance had to do with a very sour taste left over from the propaganda that had drawn us into World War One. The feeling was strong among middle/working class Americans that the country had been lied to about German atrocities in the first war and that the country had ultimately gone to war to defend the interests of American industrialists more than anything else. As one reporter who went on a fact-finding mission across the country put it (I am paraphrasing as I cannot find the exact quote right now), "You get the feeling that many Mid-Western farmers have their shotguns loaded, ready to shoot the first person who mentions Belgian babies."

This is a detailed, comprehensive and well-written account, a very interesting look at a very particular moment in American history, made even more interesting by the fact that it was written at the time, with the writers having no knowledge of events to come. The final, summarizing chapter, takes the position of: Here is where we stand as we get ready for the presidential campaigns of 1940.

What an irony to finish this book on the morning of Pearl Harbor Day. For while there are some infrequent mentions in the book of the Japanese invasion of China and the threat to America from that direction, the writers focus their attention almost entirely on events in Europe. There are some mentions of the fact that some in the U.S. and in England were in favor of making an early peace with Germany in return for their aid in taking on the "Asiatic hordes" of Russia and Japan, but only as a recitation of some of the outliers among public or official opinion. Finally, on page 335 (of a 355-page book), we read, "There was another door to war of which most Americans were only vaguely conscious, but which the propagandists could not overlook. It was labeled Japan. In his text for British propagandists, Captain Rogerson had written: 'The position will naturally be considerably eased if Japan were involved and this might and probably would bring America in without further ado.' Generations of American schoolchildren--and adults--had been nurtured on the 'Yellow Menace.' Once upon a time American preparedness advocates had talked only of Japan, apparently confident that Europe would not be a matter of concern again for may decades. As the Naziism progressed, their attention was diverted from the Far East and their eyes once more pinned on Europe. But Japan was not forgotten. The invasion of China had evoked almost universal hostility in the United States; and, though it was insufficient to call forth so practical a measure as an embargo, it nevertheless crystallized antagonisms that had long been latent."

I love reading historical accounts written contemporaneously to or very soon after the events being described. This is one of the most interesting and most clear-eyed I've read in a long, long time.

that is a great find Jerry, and a nice review.

>118 rocketjk: That book is a treasure. I hope it's staying with you and not entering the marts of commerce!

#119 & #120> Thanks, guys. Richard, I will definitely be keeping this book and referring to it often. There's is a lot in terms of interest and value in this book that I did not mention in my review. Not least is the terrific way in which the authors get at the nature of propaganda itself: how and why it is created and how to recognize it.

Book 43: Natasha by David Bezmozgis



Read as a "between book" (see Post 1). This is a slim volume of lovely, loosely interconnected short stories about a Jewish immigrants in Toronto in the latter part of the 20th century, seen through the eyes of the family's only son, Mark, who grows from a young boy to a young adult over the course of the stories. The Berman family has moved from Russia to Toronto during the Glasnost period that saw a new wave of Russian Jews fleeing from the old world to the new. The early stories deal with the transition from one culture to the other, while the later ones deal largely but subtly with issues of identity and loss. My two favorite stories were "The Second Strongest Man," which portray, through young Mark's eyes, some stark differences between the family's old existence and their new one, and "Minyan," the volume's final story, which is deals in very human terms the gradual fading of the old world Jewish culture as the generation that had brought that culture to new shores dies out. "The Second Strongest Man," by the way, is the only one of these stories that I recognized as having read before, in some anthology or other somewhere along the line.

Here, from "Minyan" is a sample of Bezmozgis' perfect-pitch writing:

"After the rabbi spoke he asked if there was anyone who wanted to say anything more about Itzik. Herschel, who sat between me and my grandfather, wiped his eyes and looked over at Itzik's son. Itzik's son did not look up from the floor. Nobody moved and the rabbi shifted nervously beside Itzik's coffin. He looked around the room and asked again if there wasn't someone who had a few words to say about Itzik's life. If someone had something to say and sat in silence, they would regret it. Such a time is not the time for shyness. Itzik's spirit was in the room. To speak a kind word about the man would be a mitzvah. Finally, using my knee for support, Hershel raised himself from the pew and slowly made his way to the front of the chapel. Each of Herschel's steps punctuated silence. His worn tweed jacket and crooked back delivered a eulogy before he reached the coffin. His posture was unspeakable grief. What could he say that could compare with the eulogy of his wretched back?"

Book 44: Degree of Guilt by Richard North Patterson



This is the second of Patterson's Christopher Paget series. I read the first, The Lasko Tangent while on vacation this summer. Degree of Guilt is weightier than Lasko, less fun but deeper, having rape as its central issue. The story is good, and the book is certainly, as the back cover promised, a "page turner." Not for the squeamish, however, as there are several harrowing descriptions of rape and physical abuse. Patterson makes a good attempt to bring some real life to his characters and their relationship to each other, in particular to Paget's role as a single father and his relationship with his son. A nice break from cliche. One odd and rather dismal element, however, is that Patterson has the hack writer's penchant for referring to his characters way too often by their full names. As in, "Christopher Paget gazed at Mary Carelli and wondered what she was thinking." I find that seriously distracting when it is repeated throughout the narrative, as it is here. And it's curious, since Patterson is not a hack writer. Perhaps some hack editor went through the manuscript inserting the full names without Patterson's knowledge. Despite that, this is a pretty good thriller. I'll eventually read the third in the series, Eyes of a Child.

Book 45: The World, the Flesh and Father Smith by Bruce Marshall



This is a kindly, sly comedy about a Catholic priest, Father Smith, in an unnamed Scottish industrial town. The tales takes us through 50 years of Father (and eventually Canon) Smith's life, from early in the 20th century into World War Two. It is a gentle tale about the foibles of man and the Catholic Church. Smith is portrayed as a devoutly religious man, sincere in his belief of Catholic philosophy and theology. Through Smith, we get lengthy descriptions of these beliefs and of their value as an ultimate source for good in this world and of their importance as a road to the next. As someone with an abiding suspicion of organized religion in general, I found it interesting to have these ideas presented in such a purely positive manner. Being Jewish myself, quite a bit of the philosophizing about Catholic dogma came as educational to me. It was nice to read that there are people who really do try to use these ideas as tools for good in the world. There are times when the good Father comes across, maybe, as a little too good to be true, but as a reader I was willing to forgive this from Marshall.

The most important attributes of this book are that is is, as I've said, kindly and therefore more than a little refreshing, and also that it's funny. As Marsall decribes Smith's journey through life, and his attempts to help his poor and often beset parishioners (the Catholics in Scotland are a minority and often, at least in this telling, a harassed minority), his observations often make us chuckle, such as thusly:

"Canon Smith hadn't been in the Carlton-Elite since five years previously, when he had taken the last sacraments to a dying Portuguese admiral, and he found the vestibule very worldly, with painted young women standing about with their overcoats thrown loosely over their shoulders and smoking with aggressive venom as though they were doing something both wicked and complicated, like committing adultery in Russian."

The book was published in 1945. Marshall was a converted Catholic who served in the British Army in both World Wars, although he lost a leg in the first. This gives weight to his description of Smith's time as a chaplain at the front during WW1. A particularly poignant and painful scene involves Father Smith assuring a scared young soldier that he was fighting for something valuable, and that after the war the world would be quite a different one indeed. Both Smith and the soldier live to learn how hollow this belief would become. This is an entertaining and in some ways enlightening book which I'm glad to have read.

...smoking with aggressive venom as though they were doing something both wicked and complicated, like committing adultery in Russian.

Beguiling! Still, I'm not inclined to pick uit up, despite your persuasive praise.

Book 46: The Norman Achievement: 1050-1100 by David Charles Douglas



My final book of the year was a history that's been sitting on my shelf for several years. All I had really known about the Normans was that they were from Normandy, that they left castles all over the place in Europe, and that they conquered England in 1066. Like, for example, the facts that, in addition to England, Norman invaders conquered and set up shop in Southern Italy (taking it from the Byzantine Empire) and Sicily (from the Saracens), all during the second half of the 11th century. The Norman leaders operated mostly independently of each other and sometimes took the time to fight wars against each other. In the conquering and subduing of new territories, they were as a rule savage, bloodthirsty, cruel and extremely acquisitive. But in the administering of their conquered land, they were generally relatively benign. Their politics helped restore the papacy to both political and religious authority after it had endured a very weak period, and they were instrumental both in gathering and leading the First Crusade and in causing the friction that led to the final break between Eastern and Western Christianity and brought about the eventual sacking of Constantinople by Western forces. There's more, but that, basically, is my report on the Normans. I found the information quite interesting, in a "fill in one more hole in my knowledge of Western history" kind of way. Douglas was, however (he died in 1982), a traditional, old school, academic historian, and his presentation here is pretty dry. This is not the sort of literary history writing that we've come to know and love more recently. There might be more entertaining accounts to be had on this subject by now, but still I'm glad I read this.

And that's a wrap for me at 46 books for 2012. Not the 50 I was hoping for, but better than last year's 40. This bookstore ownership does take its toll on my reading time!

Happy New Year!

Wow! You got closer than I did! Happy New Year!

good health, may all your wishes come true and a fantastic reading in 2013.

I hope you'll join the 50s group in 2013, too.

Thanks to both, and right back atcha!

Amiese1, if by "join{ing} the 50s group in 2013" you mean starting a new 2013 thread in this 50-Book Challenge group, absolutely! If you meant something other, can you let me know?

No ;-), but I'm glad to know that you'll make a new thread in 2013.

OK, katz n' jammers. I've finally started my 2013 50-Book Challenge thread.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/148451