rocketjk on the 50-Book prowl in 2015

I haven't gotten to 50 books over the last four years, or since I bought my used bookstore. My last three totals are 46, 44, 46 and, in the first year of the store, only 40. Hope never dies, however!

In case you're interested:
2014 50-Book Challenge thread
2013 50-Book Challenge thread
2012 50-Book Challenge thread
2011 50-Book Challenge thread
2010 50-Book Challenge thread
2009 50-Book Challenge thread
2008 50-Book Challenge thread

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: Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad
2: The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash by Charles R. Morris
3: We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen
4: The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943: the Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1936-1943 by Conte Galeazzo Ciano
5: The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana
6: Sentinel by Matthew Dunn
7: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
8: What Are the Seven Wonders of the World? by Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish
9: Time of Hope by C.P. Snow
10: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin
11: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach
12: Beyond Einstein: the Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe by Michio Kaku
13: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris
14: In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: a Memoir of Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue
15: Our Times: The United States 1900-1925 - Part IV, The War Begins 1909-1914 by Mark Sullivan
16: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
17: Murderers' Row edited by Otto Penzler
18: The Chase by Clive Cussler
19: The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis
20: Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter
21: Continental Drift by Russell Banks
22: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall
23: Sudden Country by Loren D. Estelman
24: Innocent in Death by J.D. Robb
25: Tevye's Daughters by Sholom Aleichem
26: Before the Machine: the Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Cincinnati Reds by Mark J. Schmetzer
27: Why You Crying?: My Long, Hard Look at Life, Love, and Laughter by George Lopez
28: A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle
29: Nightmare in Pink by John D. McDonald
30: The Cleaner by Brett Battles
31: The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
32: Then and Now: An Anderson Valley Journey by Donald Smoot and Stephen Sparks
33: 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson
34: The Gentle Bush by Barbara Giles
35: The One from the Other by Philip Kerr
36: HardWired by Walter Jon Williams
37: Queen Lucia by E.F Benson
38: Short Story International: Volume 3, Number 15 edited by Sylvia Tankel
39: Perish by the Sword: the Czechoslovakian Anabasis and Our Supporting Campaigns in North Russia and Siberia 1918-1920 by R. Ernest Dupuy
40: The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth
41: Mackerel by Moonlight by William F. Weld

HAPPY NEW YEAR and Happy Reading 2015, Jerry.

Thanks! Same to you.

Book 1: Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad



Continuing my tradition of several years' standing, I begin each calendar year with a re-read of a Joseph Conrad novel. This year it was Under Western Eyes. This is the second of Conrad's "political" novels, with The Secret Agent being the first. Under Western Eyes is not as good as The Secret Agent, and is in fact not considered one of Conrad's major accomplishments. But it is still Conrad, and that means, at least for me, it still provides an enjoyable reading experience. The book was originally published in 1911, and starts off in the St. Petersburg of that time, with the assassination by bombing of a high-level Russian secret police officer, along with several innocent bystanders. That night, the bomb thrower, Haldin, appears in the apartment of Rasumov, the book's protagonist. Rasumov is a university student with no interest in revolutionary activities. But he is one of those poor individuals whose penchant for silent listening to the political harangues of his fellow students has produced the misconception that he is a deep thinker and sympathizer to the cause. With Haldin's sudden appearance, Rasumov at once sees his life's plan of quiet, diligent study and modest career advancement crumble into dust. The story takes us along Rasumov's rocky path as the consequences of Haldin's appearance unfold. Rasumov travels a treacherous road among sinister secret policemen and hardened revolutionaries, mostly in a conspirators' den in Geneva. Throughout, Conrad delves into his accustomed themes of honor, duty, self-deception and betrayal.

Given that the book was written before the Russian Revolution, reading it now makes Conrad seem quite prescient. The book has several clear flaws. For one, the Rasumov character is somewhat overdrawn: not quite real. For another, as in The Secret Agent, Conrad cannot conceal his disdain for the revolutionaries (despite being no lover of the Tsarist autocracy), and those characters are mostly caricatures. Thirdly, Conrad's distaste for what he saw as the antiseptic, mediocre nature of Geneva and its denizens, while sometimes humorously expressed, drains color from the narrative. This is one more respect in which Under Western Eyes suffers in comparison with The Secret Agent, with it's vivid portrayals of London's teeming, unwholesome, working class-neighborhood streets in the early 20th century that add so much dimension to the storytelling. Still, Conrad is Conrad, and there are stretches of wonderful writing and acute observation of human nature to be found. And we do come to care about what happens to friend Rasumov. So, for me, the book is worth reading. Just don't expect Conrad at his greatest.

Happy New Year!

I have between books too, and I count them the year I finish them as you do. I've been reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe this way since 2011 and still haven't finished. But maybe this year I will!

#5> Thanks! The idea of reading Acid Test that way sort of tickles me, as I remember devouring that book back in high school in the late 60s/early 70s. I couldn't wait to get out into the world (or in my case, to Boston for college) to start living that lifestyle. Sadly, for me at least, by the time I got to college in 1973, it was all dying, with just a relative few of us fighting a hippy rear guard action. Oh, well. We still managed to have some fun. Cheers!

Book 2: The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash by Charles R. Morris



In 2008, economic analyst and former banker Charles R. Morris published The Trillion Dollar Meltdown, outlining the global economy's credit woes and detailing the events he thought would follow. A year later, Morris published a revised & updated version: The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown. With so much happening in this arena on a monthly, if not daily, basis, the book is already out of date, of course. But for economic neophytes like me, who eyes glaze at the mention of any investment tools more complicated that stocks and mutual funds, Morris' book is an eye-opening and clear description of the many-faceted ways that the banking and investment industry put the world at risk in a mad, decades-long profit grab.

Morris' hero is Paul Volker, the former head of the Federal Reserve Bank, who, he says, stabilized the dollar and pushed the country away from the inflation ledge in the 1980s thorugh tough but disciplined monetary policies. His villain is Alan Greenspan, whom Morris accuses of siting by as the Free Market profiteers began their money-grab party. Morris describes (as the Businessweek review of the first edition put it) "the mechanics of slicing and dicing collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and why these and similar securitized credits and derivative securities went spectacularly bust."

The book is only 177 pages long and moves quickly. But still, for someone like myself, unfamiliar with all the terms and acronyms, some of the explanations can become hard to unravel. Morris clearly defines each of the security tools (like the aforementioned CDOs), but by the time he's talking about how all these things work together, and the acronyms start flying, it's a bit hard to keep track. Nevertheless, the overall picture comes clear, indeed. Also nice is that Morris isn't an ideologue. Although he believes the extreme free-marketeers have done significant harm and calls for better regulation of the financial industry, he begins the book by decrying the failure, also, of Keynsian liberalism. The Carter administration, in particular, comes in for a scalding.

Although you wouldn't know it from Meltdown, it looks like Morris sees better days ahead. I note on wikipedia that his 2013 book was titled Comeback: America's New Economic Boom.

Book 2 looks terrific. Do you listen to podcasts? There was a great one by the guys from Planet Money that was aired on This American Life called "The Giant Pool of Money" (I think). It really helped me to wrap my head around CDOs and what was happening in 2008.

I look forward to your list. We have a few similar interests such as baseball and the Civil War. I look forward to finding a few treasures.

#8> Yes, Meltdown was quite good. I was not always entirely clear about what was being described, exactly, but I was definitely able to get the overall picture in a way I found enlightening (and horrifying). I don't generally have time to listen to podcasts, but I may well seek out the one you mentioned. Thanks for telling me about that. I'll be following your reading, as well. All the best from northern California!

#4> I'll be reading more Conrad this year, too, working my way randomly through the anthology I have. Have a good reading year, Jerry!

Book 3: We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen



Well, that took a long time, but it was worth it. We, the Drowned is a novel spanning 100 years, or roughly three generations, of a Danish seafaring town, Marstal. In so doing, the narrative often, perhaps about half the time, takes us out onto the ships with the Marstal sailors. There is much description of hardship, cruelty and war at sea. But also we see the lives of those ashore, the women and families awaiting fathers, husbands and sons who are often gone for years at a time or who never return at all. Each generation has its war. The opening scenes in the late 1800s bring us aboard a warship as civilian sailors are drafted to fight in war against a German province revolting against Danish rule. World War One, however, is seen mostly through the eyes of a retired sailor whose vivid dreams show him the trials and deaths of the Danish merchant marines undergoing attacks from German U-Boats who respect not at all Denmark's official neutrality in the conflict. Then throughout World War Two we are aboard a merchant steamer traveling in convoys across the North Atlantic awaiting torpedoes and dive bombing Stukas. As important and vivid as their scenes are to the story, we also see the sailors at war against the sea itself and, occasionally, against sadistic ships' officers. We also see several characters through their lives, with experiences from childhood through old age related in very readable detail. Through it all, the town of Marstal itself is the constant protagonist, with the town's changing fortunes and position among seafaring towns affecting the sailors' experiences as they travel. Jensen manages this in a very interesting manner. Many of the stories of events that take place in town are narrated by an occasionally appearing, unnamed "we," as in, "We listened to his stories in the bar, not knowing what to think." This never specified "we" pops up unchanged throughout the generations, creating the effect of an unbroken continuum across the years. I suppose that could have been distracting, but, for me, it worked quite well to create an interesting effect. The book, in my edition, is 690 pages long. There are some slower stretches, certainly. But overall, I found this to be a work of often mesmerizing storytelling, a grand tale about the human condition.

Oh, and one more thing that's cool about this book for me is that I bought it last summer in Bellinzona, Switzerland, during summer vacation there, hauled it all the way home, and finally read it!

Congrats on this fantastic review, Jerry. It sounds very interesting.

Book 4: The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943: the Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1936-1943 by Conte Galeazzo Ciano



This was another book that took a long time but was worth the investment, but probably only for history nerds. Count Ciano was Mussolini's Minister for Foreign Affairs and also his son-in-law, and these diaries recount the day-to-day life of the Italian government during the years of World War Two, including very interesting descriptions of his interactions with such figures as Hitler, von Ribbentrop and Goering. Ciano was against Italy's entry into the war and against making a signed alliance with Germany, as well. He is clear about this in his diaries even in the early going. His distrust of and dislike for the country's Nazi allies only grows over the years. Mussolini is showed as being far less than intellectually acute, open to hearing and believing what he wants to believe, rather than what the facts should be showing him. He insists in getting into the war, for matters of national glory and personal ego, essentially, despite the fact that Italy's armed forces and industrial capacity are both woefully inadequate in quality and numbers. And as the German and Italian armies are being routed in Russia and Africa, he continues to believe that the Axis fortunes are about to change. The day-to-day progressive layering of these factors make interesting, if not exactly compelling, reading. What comes through most clearly is the unintended sub-text of the diaries, the bankrupt nature of the Fascist system as a whole. Almost everybody but Mussolini can see what's happening, but, since he is the appointed leader, they all follow along nevertheless. Also, one cannot miss Ciano's blithe acceptance and approval of the Italian occupation of Albania and invasion of Greece, not to mention the earlier invasion of Ethopia that Ciano had taken part in as a bomber pilot. But, finally, in July, 1943, at Fascist Party Grand Council, Mussolini was voted out of power, with Ciano voting with the majority. That vote would soon cost Ciano his life when, returned to power by the Nazi's, Mussolini ordered Ciano's execution. In the diary's final entry, we find Ciano sitting in his Verona jail cell, awaiting death. He managed to get the diaries to his wife, Mussolini's daughter, Edda, who managed to smuggle them out of Italy despite the fact that the Nazi's were intent on finding and destroying the work.

That looks fantastic. I'm a WWII history wonk, but didn't know this existed. Cool.

#14> Yes, it is fascinating indeed, for us of the wonkish persuasion, anyway. I should point out that there is no mention of that 1943 Grand Council meeting and vote in the diary. That all came from wikipedia. We go, instead, from Ciano being relieved of his position as Foreign Secretary and sent to the Vatican as ambassador to him suddenly making his final entry from his jail cell.

I have no memory of purchasing the book, although it must have been at a thrift store somewhere or the like, as there is a penciled in price of a dollar on the inside cover. It sat on my WW2 shelf for years before I decided to give it a look last month.

Book 5: The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light by Carlos Santana



Another long book! But once again, thank goodness, worth the time invested. This is, obviously, the autobiography of rock guitarist Carlos Santana. The book could have used a little editing, as it comes in at 520 pages and has more than a little repetition, especially about Santana's world view and cosmic philosophy. He goes on at length about his childhood, generally a stumbling block for me, especially in autobiographies, but he does manage to make it mostly interesting, so I mostly give him a pass on that. He tells about the real meat of his career, the 60s and into the early 70s, in fine fashion. His relationships with figures like Bill Graham, Miles Davis and the other musicians he crosses paths with are told about quite well. He also talks at length, and quite interestingly (at least for me) about his musical influences, and how he goes about incorporating their styles into his own. It took hours and hours and hours of listening to records, trying to replicate solos and styles on his own guitar, and then doing it again. It's a real insight into the kind of discipline and dedication it takes to attain artistic excellence at his level. For example, I was surprised to learn that he considers his most important influences to be the blues greats as well as John Coltrane. As a jazz fan, I did find interesting the descriptions of the later parts of his career, as he became more immersed in that music and began performing with greats like Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. Others might not care as much. And since Santana (and/or his co-writers) maintain a friendly, engaging, almost intimate tone throughout, I was willing to hang with the long explanations of Santana's long discipleship with Sri Chimnoy and his ideas about Cosmic Oneness and spiritual discipline, etc., although there was more of that than I would have cared for. Santana talks about his family lovingly: his parents, siblings, children and two wives. Certainly, if I want to know about the person, not just the musician (and, really, if I want to know what fuels the musician) than that's a very important part of the story, as well.

So overall, I give this autobiography pretty high marks. Four stars, I guess. I enjoyed learning about Carlos Santana the person as well as the musician. It could have been 50 or so pages shorter, at least, but so be it.

Book 6: Sentinel by Matthew Dunn



This is the second in Dunn's "Spycatcher" series, an enjoyable, relatively light reading experience, which is what I needed after the relatively lengthy and/or heavy tomes I've started my reading year with. I should point out, however, that the "light" read contains plenty of violence and other sorts of mayhem. At any rate, this is a good, not great, spy thriller, a touch on the repetitive side for a while, but with a nice twist at the end. I will read at least one more of this series (there are four, to date) and then probably call it a day.

Book 7: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri



This is the first book of Lahiri's I've read, and I did enjoy it quite a lot. It is the story of a family with a hole in the middle, a novel about how different people deal differently with loss, love, duty and regret. It's about how the choices people make can affect their whole lives and the lives of those around them, and about how culture influences those choices. The opening section, about two brothers, as close as they could be, growing up together in Calcutta, is wonderful. Somewhere around the one-quarter mark, though, the book hit a slow point for me, as I began asking myself whether I still cared about the characters and their fates. But then after a while the narrative picked up steam again and stayed strong the rest of the way. There is a melancholy feel to quite a lot of this story, though certainly the book has it's more joyous parts, as well. Overall, the insights into human nature presented, and the very high quality of the writing and imagery, made this a fine reading experience for me. I will sooner or later get around to reading more of Lahiri's books.

Book 8: What Are the Seven Wonders of the World? and 100 Other Great Cultural Lists--Fully Explicated bhy Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish



Read as a "Between Book" (see first post), this volume is a lot of fun and informative, too. Each entry presents and explains an list in human history. As the title explains, the seven wonders of the world make up one chapter. Other lists include "Who were the 3 Magi and what gifts did they bring?" "Where do the names of the 7 days of the week come from?" and "What are the 5 pillars of Islam?" Science, history, religion and the arts are all represented. The writing is good, with some occasional humor appearing as well. This is a great reference book and argument solver.

#18> I found it hard to keep caring about the characters, too. They were too locked away in their personal misery cocoons for me!

Set at a similar time as the opening chapters of The Lowland, but entirely in India, I much preferred Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance.

#20> Well, to be clear, my problem with caring about those characters only lasted for a relatively short stretch. At about the halfway point I was back in the swing of the narrative. I do know what you mean, though.

Book 9: Time of Hope by C.P. Snow



This is the first book in Snow's 14-novel cycle, "Strangers and Brothers." This first volume is the coming of age story of Lewis Eliot,, taking us from just before World War I to just before World War II. The setting for Eliot's childhood in a small Midlands (England) town, as his parents struggle with financial hardships and bankruptcy and the destruction of their hopes and dreams (especially Eliot's mother's). As he grows into young manhood, Eliot makes a daring bet on is own abilities and strikes out on a hazardous path to success through the British legal profession and it's many arduous tests and trials, especially for someone with no social advantages or connections. On top of which, he falls in love with a woman constitutionally unable to return the emotion. It all sound rather melodramatic, I know, and at places it is quite so. But overall, Snow's deft facility with language and the keen insights into human nature on display more than made up for that for me. At times, in fact, the story becomes quite intense and the pages fly along. Also, the look inside English society and mores of the time was very interesting to me. I will certainly be continuing on with the series, but whether I forge all the way through remains to be seen.

Book 10: Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? by Jimmy Breslin



I celebrated the beginning of baseball season by pulling this wonderful, short, book down off my shelf, where it had been waiting patiently for my attention for many years. This is Breslin's look at the very first season of the New York Mets. Those 1962 Mets set a record for futility, losing 120 of their 162 games. But in the process, they created a sensation, becoming much beloved in New York City, which had been starved for National League baseball since the Giants and Dodgers had left for California in 1957. Breslin has a breezy, Runyonesque writing style, and since the book was written and published in 1963, before the team even began their second season, it really is a time-piece.

While Breslin chronicles in detail the ways in which the 1962 Mets were terrible, describing many of the bonehead plays they pulled off during the year, he also gets inside the phenomenon they created on the way to their wild popularity. Breslin makes a believable case that the team came to represent an era that New Yorkers instinctually felt was fading in the city, a time of community and fun. He decries the ways in which the coming of television has kept people inside and away from smaller events like sandlot ballgames. So we get, in this book, not just a picture of the Mets, but one writer's look at New York in the early 60s, and earlier. For example, there is the following passage that comes up as Breslin is describing Joan Payson, the Mets' first owner, about a group of fans of those departed New York Giants:

"{Payson} was talking about the late Jack White, a comedian who subsisted on brandy and ran a saloon called the 18 Club. White was considered the town's number one Giant fan. It was natural that he considered Joan Payson a pal. The 18 Club is no more, and the only reminders of it are Pat Harrington, the great old comic, and Jackie Gleason, who was a third-stringer in the 18 Club lineup. When the 18 was operating, waiters would spit ice cubes at customers, and White either was loaded or was out on the floor telling unprintable stories. A linescore of the day's Giant game was always hung in front of the bandstand. But only if they won. The "No Game" sign went out after a loss. It was Mrs. Payson's idea of a helluva night joint.

Every afternoon when the Giants were at home, a mob from the 18 Club, White, Harrington, bartenders, waiters, a big singer named Hazel McNulty and the inevitable group of loan sharks would sit in the upper tier in left field, open shirt collars, lean back and get the sun. . . . "

Breslin also spends a lot of time quoting and describing the great and colorful Casey Stengel and providing snapshot profiles of some of those original Mets. He tries to understand what it must have been like to be a player on that team, often through the eyes of the players themselves, and tells us what it was like to root for them.

For a very busy man, you have managed some interesting reading so far in 2015. I enjoyed The Lowland. Lahiri's short fiction beats her novels, though, in my estimation.

Are you familiar with a small literary journal called Sport Literate? Apparently it's been around for close to 20 years, but not being particularly sport literate myself, I hadn't heard of it until this week, when a copy of the latest issue landed in my mailbox, courtesy of my friend and surrogate offspring, Holly Wendt, who had the good fortune to have an essay published in it. I just thought I'd warble it in a few places where it might find an appreciative audience.

Thanks for the information on Sport Literate. I will track that down.

Not a bad start on 50 books, Jerry. I predict success.

Thanks! But even if I get Gulp finished by the end of April, that will still only put me on a pace for 33! And unfortunately I won't be speeding through my next book, either, as I have The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin in the on deck circle. It looks interesting, but hardly a quick read. Still, I'm determined to finally at least try to understand what the heck string theory is, even if Lee Smolin doesn't like it. By the way, Richard, I see on that book's work page that you are the only one of my LT "friends" and yours is the only one of my LT "Interesting Libraries" to list the Smolin book. Have you read it?

Book 11: Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach



I always enjoy Mary Roach's books. Her combination of insight, humor and thorough, unstinting research add up to fun and educational reading experiences. Perhaps Gulp is the most relevant of her books to date, as it is about something near and dear to all of us -- our digestive tracts. So now I know more than I ever thought I would about the whole process, from intake to output, as it were. Most helpful, I learned some things about when and how nutrition uptake actually occurs that have made me think a bit. As you would imagine, there's more than a little "ick" factor here. It is tastefully handled "ick" factor, though, if that helps. High marks.

Full disclosure: Mary is a friend, my wife's college roommate and her frequent traveling companion in the years during and after college.

Book 12: Beyond Einstein: the Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe by Michio Kaku



I had been reading The Trouble with Physics: the Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science, and What Comes Next by Lee Smolin, but on the advice of LT member Limelite, I set it aside for the time being in favor of Beyond Einstein. The latter gives a relatively straightforward foundation for the issues and theories discussed in the former.

Kaku does present the "basic" concepts of quantum physics and relativity well enough for me to almost feel like I've gotten within spitting distance of understanding them. And he lays out the evolution of thinking on these issues, from the composition of the atom to the nature (and history) of the universe and time itself, in a coherent manner, as well.

The book has some problems of presentation, however: there is some very clunky writing in it. For one thing, Kaku, or more likely his co-writer, Jennifer Trainer Thompson, suffers from adverb-itis of the sort normally reserved for bad spy novels. When you tell me something is "incredibly small," for example, my general reaction is, "Well, if it's incredible, then I don't believe it." Because it's not credible, you see. OK, I know you got that. But mostly, when a scientist tells me that anything regarding science and/or scientific theory is "amazingly" or "incredibly" anything, I feel like I'm being talked down to.

Also, there are too many "cause and effect" mashups for me. For example, we read this (be prepared for your eyes to glaze over, but try to hang with me):

"Another example of O(3) symmetry is the atom itself. Because the Schrodinger equation, which is the basis of all quantum mechanics, is invariant under rotations, the solutions to the equation (which are atoms) should also have this symmetry. The fact that atoms have this rotational symmetry is a direct consequence of the O(3) symmetry of the Schrodinger equation."

OK, I don't really understand what that all means, either. With a book like this, I just try to read it through and accept as much as my feeble brain can make out. But as a long-time copy editor, one thing there jumps out at me: The fact that atoms have rotational symmetry is not a consequence of an equation. One might say that our belief or even our knowledge that atoms have rotational symmetry is a consequence of our faith in that equation, but the symmetry is not a consequence of the equation. I found enough such instances that I found them distracting and worth mentioning. But, still, the book did present the issues I wanted to begin learning about, and I am ready to move on (although not immediately) to another volume on the subject.

Book 13: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris



Read as a "Between Book" (see first post). I got a kick out of these humorous essays. Some are better than others, of course, and I know Sedaris' style is not eveybody's cup of tea, but I really did enjoy Sedaris' wry humor, observations on daily life and, overall, his writing style. My favorite was the essay about how it felt to be in France when the U.S. elected a black president for the first time. The wonderful final line of that entry made me laugh out loud. Of course, that wasn't the only time I laughed while reading this book, either; it's just the most memorable.

Book 14: In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: a Memoir of Iran by Christopher de Bellaigue



This is a fascinating book, although I'd say it's much more history and reporting than it is memoir. But that's not really a complaint. I guess there's enough of a memoir component to justify the subtitle. de Belaigue is an English journalist who, at the time of the publication of this book in 2004, had been married to an Iranian woman and living in Tehran for several years (according to Wikipedia the couple now lives in London).

At any rate, de Bellaigue provides many first-hand accounts of what daily life was like in Tehran 10 years ago. (I don't imagine it's changed much, but what do I know?) But, as I mentioned, that's only one element of the book. Most importantly de Bellaigue provides an in-depth social and political history of Iran, and the Iranian Revolution that toppled the Shah and eventually brought the Ayatollah to supreme power, bringing us from those events right up to the time of the book's writing. Also, the causes and execution of the years-long, horrific war with Iraq are explained clearly and in-depth, as well. But rather than just providing straight history, de Bellaigue uses his journalistic skills to offer up portraits of and interviews with several Iranians, often people who took part in the Islamic Iranian Revolution, served the government in ways often unsavory, and are, for the most part, now in calmer retirement. Also, de Bellaigue provides plenty of historical context, going back as far as the early days of Islam in Iran, and explaining the Shia-Sunni split. There's a lot to take in, but the way de Bellaigue personalizes events, both through his own eyes and those of his interview subjects, works very, very well.

Basically, de Bellaigue describes the Revolution as a thugocracy, even from its earliest days. And then it got worse. de Bellaigue describes how, at least in his own view, the Revolution has subsequently imploded and betrayed even its own fundamentalist beliefs under the weight of hubris, greed and decadence. There has always been a give and take between reformers and hard-line Muslim fundamentalists, but the latter have always, in the end, employed ruthless means to retain ultimate control.

de Bellaigue's status as a Westerner who had lived in Iran for many years and who speaks Persian allowed him to present life in Tehran from the inside out, to show us the culture and the attitudes in fascinating ways and perspectives that neither a visiting Westerner nor even an Iranian could have managed. Given de Bellaigue rather dour and caustic attitude about the direction the Revolution had taken, it's not a surprise to me that he no longer lives in Iran. I have no idea whether the publishing of this book had anything to do with his leaving the country, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Book 15: Our Times: The United States 1900-1925 - Part IV, The War Begins 1909-1914 by Mark Sullivan



There doesn't seem to be a touchstone for this, but it's here.

In 1930, journalist Mark Sullivan published a 6-volume history of the United States from 1900 through 1925. This, obviously, is the 4th volume. Sullivan was a confidante of Theodore Roosevelt and seems to have known Howard Taft, as well. So the final chapters of this volume, dealing with the end of Roosevelt's presidency, his strong friendship with Taft, and the events that brought about the end of that friendship and ultimate emnity, make detailed and very interesting reading. The opening of the book describes what life in America was like the day Archduke Ferdinand was assisinated. Mostly, the country had no idea what was going to come from that murder, and the ways in which life in America would be changed irrevocably from participation in WWI.

Otherwise, there are some interesting parts and some tedious sections. The profiles of Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie are both very interesting, at first, but both drag on too long. The sections about changes in fashion, dance and music styles drone on to very little interest, indeed. Sullivan's casual racism comes through most strongly in the section about music, especially about ragtime, and his description of the evolution of jazz into a mainstream music is just flat out wrong.

I don't really remember, but I'm sure I bought this book in some thrift store or library sale because I thought it would be about the beginning of WWI. It was sitting on my military history shelf with the other WWI books when I decided to give it a go. At first, after realizing what the book really dealt with, I considered waiting, ordering Book 1 in the series and gradually working my way through all of them, but in the end I decided just to read the one in hand, which, for me, was enough. I'm glad I read it, but there are other books on the period, I'm sure, more focused and enjoyable over all.

Book 16: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan



I enjoyed this book a lot. It's sense of whimsey and good-natured optimism was just the sort of reading experience I was looking for. Also, the fact that I own a used bookstore and lived in San Francisco for 22 years helped, as this tale centers around a mysterious bookstore in that city. This is a fun story about the intersection of an ancient reverence for the printed page, and for puzzles, and modern digital technology. The narrator is well done. The book is a clever fable, successfully rendered.

Book 17: Murderers' Row edited by Otto Penzler



Read as a "between book" (see first post). This is a fun short story collection of murder mysteries that all have a baseball theme. There are some big names, here, including Michael Connelly, Elmore Leonard, John Lescoart and Robert B. Parker. No big surprise that the Leonard and Parker stories were among the most enjoyable.

Book 18: The Chase by Clive Cussler



This was my first Clive Cussler. I sell a lot of them in my used bookstore so thought I'd give one a try. The Chase is the first in Cussler's "Isaac Bell" series. Bell is a private investigator for an agency that seems to be modeled after the Pinkertons. The action takes place in the western U.S. in the first decade of the 20th century. Cussler has his share, but only a modest share, of the modern spy/thriller writers' consistent sins: stilted dialogue and overuse of empty adverbs and adjectives ("incredibly," "unfathomable," etc.). But he's not anywhere as bad in this regard as other authors I've read recently. The story is fun and fast paced, the hero mostly infallible and the villain clever and dastardly. So all in all this was a mostly enjoyable reading vacation. I'll probably read a few more in the Bell series from time to time.

#33> It's lethal coming onto your thread, Jerry. Mr Penumbra now added to my ever growing list of books to read!

#36> In this case I cannot feel guilty, but only happy about a service rendered. If you have any sort of tolerance for whimsy and/or "magical realism," you will enjoy Mr. Penumbra.

Book 19: The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis



This is a wholly admirable history: fascinating, informative and very well written. Ellis is also the author of the very popular Founding Brothers. The Quartet is the story of the drive to move the 13 colonies away from the Articles of Confederation and into a more binding arrangement within a much stronger central federal government, a drive that eventually led to the creation and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The four main drivers of that movement, the Quartet of the title, were George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.

According to Ellis, during the Revolution, most of the colonies saw their union mostly as a matter of convenience designed to pool their efforts to fight off the British and gain independence. Past that, most Americans thought little of what a post-independence country might look like, and thought of themselves much more as citizens of their individual states than of a unified America. For example, as Ellis describes it, the states' refusal to hand over to the Continental Congress the tax funds they'd agreed to pay helped ensure that the revolutionary soldiers would starve throughout the war (leading to a prolonging of the conflict by at least a year if not more) and never receive their promised pay afterward.

In this telling, Madison and Hamilton, with Washington's approval, essentially pulled off a coup. Charged by the states with coming up with amendments and improvements to the Articles of Confederacy in a special meeting of Congress, the pair used the sessions to instead draft a wholly new document, the constitution, and a mostly new form of government, and then charged the states to either accept it or reject it. In the end, ratification, voted on state by state, was touch and go, to put it mildly.

I'm only scratching the surface of the fascinating story this book details. This book filled in some giant holes for me in my knowledge of the period and of that particular process. I truly loved reading this book, and will eventually work my way through the rest of Ellis' catalog. One caveat I'd add is that, as I am not as fully read on the period as I could be, I am only assuming that Ellis has his facts straight.

Book 20: Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter



Supposedly a taut psychological/erotic thriller, this book doesn't really have all that much to offer. A DA is trying to gather evidence to convict a vicious, but young and handsome, mob leader. In the meantime, the DA's wife begins an affair with the mob guy but, and here's the silly part, the mob guy doesn't realize this is a DA's wife and the wife doesn't realize this is a mob guy. Evan Hunter is better known as an author by his pseudonym, Ed McBain, creator of the 87th Precinct series, so it's no surprise that the most enjoyable parts of this book are the police procedural sections. In general, I felt that the first third of the book was obvious and cliche-ridden, the second third became tolerable, and the final third was more or less enjoyable, although still marbled with cliched side plots that go nowhere and seem to mostly be there to show how sensitive the author is. I don't mind having read this, but I don't recommend anyone else spending the time.

Book 21: Continental Drift by Russell Banks



Given the glowing review quotes on the back cover of this book, including one by Joyce Carol Oates, you might imagine that Continental Drift was a minor classic. But I found this book, first published in 1985, to be deeply flawed, and I wonder whether it was a novel that made a deep impression because it accurately reflected the tenor of its times, but just hasn't stood up that well. Continental Drift is the noirish story of Bob Dubois, a good man with a good, if normal, life -- steady if low paying job, good family life, good community -- who one day realizes the dead end he's in and wants out. So the family packs up and moves from New Hampshire to Florida at the behest Bob's older brother, who has a job and promises of "get rich soon" for him. It does not take a fortune teller to let you know this is not going to work out well. Additionally, there is a very good side plot about Haitians trying to get to America.

There is a lot of very good writing in this novel, which is what kept me going, but it's a book of bleakness and foreboding, a depressing book without the greatness of, say, Under the Volcano or The Executioner's Song, to help mitigate the sense of dread. Bob is presented as a good man, but his choices are all bad, and his self-pity made me lose patience relatively soon. I do think that atmosphere of bleakness is emblematic of the 80s, I time when whatever was left of the promise of the counter-culture was clearly gone for good, and what was left was the heartless politics and the mad scramble for cash of the Regan years. I was talking this over with my wife last night. We both agreed that while our current times feel somehow more desperate than the 80s were, that era was bleaker. So I can understand how readers then might have felt they were seeing their world represented. But while there's still plenty of insight into the human condition, here, I felt that the main character was too weak a figure for the book to hold up overall.

Book 22: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions by Lisa Randall



My second book about physics and string and particle theory this year, Randall's book is quite comprehensive and largely understandable for a non-scientist reader like myself. Warped Passages gives a good overview of the evolution of theory about the makeup of the particles, forces and and dimensions that our universe may or may not be comprised of. The trick is not to try to comprehend every single concept and theory or to wrestle every paragraph to the ground before continuing on. Randall is an all-star of the physics world herself, so it is interesting reading about the developments of various theories from her point of view. It took a long time to get through this book: it's 450 pages and the going is sometimes slow. Also, I thought that Randall did not need to go into so much detail describing every single theory that's come down the pike. On the other hand, the book is very well organized, and Randall is frequently candid in saying when upcoming sections can be skipped without endangering a reader's understanding of the overall chronology of string and/or particle theory. My 50-Book challenge for this year went down the drain a while ago, so this was as good a time as any to tackle this challenging but interesting material.

Book 23: Sudden Country by Loren D. Estelman



After the lengthy forced march of Warped Passages, something relatively short and easily enjoyable was indicated. This western adventure was just what the doctor ordered for me. Sudden Country is an adventure-filled coming of age story set during the last decade of the 19th century, ranging from the story's beginning in the Texas panhandle to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The tale is spare and well-written and in some ways reminded me of Treasure Island, in that it deals with a young first-person narrator who leaves home to experience adventure among a collection of colorful cutthroats and thieves. I would say, however, that Estleman's story is presented in more straightforward, less colorful fashion, as you would expect from a book written for adults in 1991 rather than 1881 (the year Treasure Island was published). At any rate, RLS comparisons aside, Sudden Country is a good, well-written yarn.

Book 24: Innocent in Death by J.D. Robb



This is the second J.D. Robb mystery I've read, and I've enjoyed them both. This was an engaging mystery, centering around the poisoning of a popular teacher in a posh private school. Robb's heroine is the super kick-ass detective, Eve Dallas, who comes equipped with a super rich, super handsome husband, Roarke. The writing is fine, the story, as I said, engaging, and the "romance" aspect of this "romantic suspence" novel is tolerable. The heroes are larger than life, but Robb, a.k.a. Nora Roberts, seems to have her tongue appropriately in cheek, so all in all some nice, goofy fun. Just perfect for a couple of quick-turnaround trans-continental flights, which is mostly where I read this.

>43 rocketjk: I loved it too. I'm a huge fan of this serie.

Book 25: Tevye's Daughters by Sholom Aleichem



I most highly recommend this collection of stories illuminating Jewish village life in Russia during the last days of the csars. Not all of the stories in this collection deal with the experiences and tribulations of Tevye the dairyman, a character made familiar by the rendering in the musical, Fiddler on the Roof. The Tevye stories, six or seven in all, are scattered throughout the collection and certainly provide the collection's backbone.

Aleichem, who of course knew his subject matter intimately, makes vivid the daily existence of Tevye and his townspeople, the slow erosion of their way of life and the slowly increasing hardships they endure, brought about by steadily more restrictive and punitive laws handed down by czarist officials desperate to retain power.

Aleichem uses the daughters, and especially the marriages they make, to illustrate the ways in which the passing of time has changed the family's experiences. When Tevye, distraught over his youngest daughter Bielke's choice for a husband, tells her (and for the rest, now, I will paraphrase, for I do not have the book in front of me), "Hodel (her much older sister) wouldn't do what you're doing," Bielke replies sharply, "Don't compare me with Hodel. Hodel married in Hodel's time, and I am marrying in my time." To provide more detail would create spoilers. To truly savor this book, a reader must experience each event along with the characters. You already know enough of the basic story if you've seen the play, although the differences in plot detail are considerable.

The joy is all bittersweet, here, and the tragedy, for Tevye personally and for his people, is ever-present and ever-increasing. And yet the book, as with all wonderfully written literature, is uplifting nevertheless.

I may have to pull that one off the shelves and re-visit it. Right? Of course right.

#46> Certainly!

Book 26: Before the Machine: the Story of the 1961 Pennant-Winning Cincinnati Reds by Mark J. Schmetzer



For baseball fans only, this is a fun quick read about the 1961 Reds, a team of relative unknowns and over-the-hills who somehow found the team chemistry to win the National League pennant in 1961, several years before the Reds coalesced into the powerhouse known as the Big Red Machine. There are some interesting historical insights into the players, such as eventual Hall of Famer Frank Robinson's chronic throwing arm problems, something I'd never known about.

The book was written a full 50 years after the fact, so Schmetzer's ability to conduct fresh interviews was limited. Obviously, though, he did spent a lot of time going over newspaper files, so was able to provide many nice comments written down at the time. However, the book does fall into the somewhat boring routine, perhaps unavoidable, that many accounts of individual team seasons do. There are long stretches taken up with day-by-day game accounts, such as, "On Tuesday, the Reds won when Frank Robinson hit two homers. But on Wednesday they lost when Jerry Lynch made an error . . . " C'est la vie. For baseball fans, this is a good, not great, and ultimately interesting look into a mostly forgotten pennant-winning season and team.

Book 27: Why You Crying?: My Long, Hard Look at Life, Love, and Laughter by George Lopez



This is the memoir of comedian/actor/TV star George Lopez. I picked it up from my store's Memoir section more or less on a whim, and ended up finding it more interesting than I expected. Lopez grew up in a severely disfunctional family, raising by a grandmother who was incapable of showing love or even expressing approval. "Why you crying?" was, evidently, her stock phrase in response to any expression of little George's unhappiness or disappointment, and it's a line he incorporated into his comedy.

The book works well in describing the despondency of Lopez's early life, and his self-loathing and destructive behavior in early adulthood. Lopez gives a lot of credit in his eventual rise as a person and as a comedian to his wife, Ann, who stuck by him during some very dark times. Even the accounts of Lopez's rise to fame and success are interesting, although one comes to distrust some of his claims. Every audience, once he becomes successful, if packed with "adoring fans," for example. And Lopez makes some bold assertions about the popularity of his long-running sit-com, George Lopez. (Wikipedia says, "Never a big Nielsen hit in prime-time, the show became a surprise success in syndication.") It's hard to know, however, how much of that is actually Lopez and how much is his "as told to" collaborator, Armen Keteyian.

Lopez was, indeed, the first Latin American to star in a network show since Freddie Prinz starred in Chico and the Man back in the 70s. Some of the best writing in this book deals with the inspiration the young and struggling Lopez gained from Prinz's success and the devastation he felt when Prinz committed suicide at only 22 years old.

It is also the case that Lopez has won a lot of recognition for his humanitarian work, especially within the Mexican American community. And while I could have done without the shot-by-shot description of Lopez's first appearance in the Pebble Beach Celebrity Pro-Am Tournament, mostly I enjoyed reading this book.

Book 28: A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle



This was an entirely compelling book, very hard to put down once I got into it. The story brings us on an uncomfortable journey through the vicious bloodfest of the Irish rebellion against the British, starting with the Easter Uprising of 1916, seen through the eyes of a somewhat larger than life protagonist, Henry Smart. Before being drawn into the fight against the British, Henry first gives us an account of his childhood via a tour of the horrifying Dublin slums of the early 20th century. Doyle's characterization of Henry is vivid, to put it mildly -- deep, murderous flaws and all. I finished the book just before bedtime but I was awake most of the night thinking about it all, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come.

Roddy Doyle packs a punch...I read Paddy Clarke, Ha, Ha, Ha a few years ago, and it was marvelous.

I've also read Doyle's The Commitments and The Woman Who Walked into Doors. The first is fun, the second very intense.

Book 29: Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald



This is the second entry in MacDonald's famous Travis McGee crime series. I didn't find this story quite as much fun as the first in the series, I must admit. Too much time spent describing McGee's relationship with the novel's female lead, for one thing. Still, the book was fun reading, and I will continue on with more McGee.

Book 30: The Cleaner by Brett Battles



Yea, finally! A fun espionage thriller nicely written and devoid of hackneyed phrases, stilted dialogue and tiresome thriller cliches. No ponderous intonation of the character's first and last names or useless adverbs ("Bob Cliffstone stood at the window and stared at the incredibly beautiful scene before him. . . . "), for a couple of examples. This book has taught writing, a nice, swift pace, and believable characters (given the standards of the genre). I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Our hero, Jonathan Quinn, is a freelance "cleaner," someone called in to monitor a planned espionagistical transaction, make sure things go to plan, and clean up any telltale problems left behind. Naturally, he is a man of integrity (within the confines of the industry). Needless to say, murder and mayhem ensue. Good fun if you like this sort of action.

This is the first in what is an 8-book series. I have the second book on the short list, but I don't know that I'll make a point of continuing past that.

Book 31: The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville



This is a hugely compelling crime novel, a savage but oddly sensitive book about the evil and soul-crushing nature of violence. Gerry Fegan spent his young adulthood as a "foot soldier" for the Catholic leaders during the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 80s and 90s. Put more directly, he was a thug and an assassin, but always believing he was a soldier fighting for a cause. He has been out for several years after a 12-year turn in prison for his actions. Now peace and compromise are gradually becoming the rule of the day, but Gerry has a giant problem. He is being haunted by the ghosts of 12 of the people whose deaths he caused. They do not speak, but at night those who died painfully scream out their agony. They silently make it known to Gerry the price he must pay, and the actions he must take, to earn the right to live out the rest of his live free of their presence and torment. He must use his skills as a killer to be the agent of the ghosts' violent retribution. As Fegan moves through his horrifying odyssey, the reader is provided a vivid window of the Troubles themselves, the bloody struggles to blast the counties of Northern Ireland free of British rule and Protestant domination, and the inevitable push-back by Protestant loyalists and the British themselves, and the society within which all this bloody chaos reigned. This is a disturbing book, in many ways a brilliant one, and the writing is excellent. I found it almost impossible to put down.

Book 32: Then and Now: An Anderson Valley Journey by Donald Smoot and Stephen Sparks



Read as a "between book" (see first post). I live in a place called Anderson Valley, in Mendocino County, California, USA. This valley is about 55 miles long and has a population of about 3,000. These is one two-lane "highway" running through the valley from Highway 101 to the Pacific Ocean. Mostly, the place is rural, with a lot of wine grape vineyards, with a few fruit orchards (the place used to be mostly all orchards) and some small farms and cattle/sheep ranches. The European population dates back to the late 19th century. Smoot and Sparks, two Valley historians, came up with the idea of producing a book of "then and now" photographs of 60 or so spots along the road. They only used spots for which they could provide historical photographs ("then") as well as current photos ("now"). Each spot gets its own short chapter, with a brief explanation of the history and owners of the original buildings and locales, at least as well as is now known. Some of the old buildings are still standing. At any rate, this slim volumes provides an entertaining time travel through the history of this valley I've called home since 2008.

Book 33: 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson



Silvana and Janusz are a young Polish couple separated at the outset of World War 2, to be reunited only after the war in England. Janusz, who's gone off to join the Polish Army in response to the German invasion, ends up wandering around the countryside, and then across Europe, eventually to end up with a group of Poles fighting as part of the RAF. Silvana spends years hiding out, with her young son, in the forests of Poland. The story takes place in Ipswich, as the now reunited family struggles to build a life together after 6 years apart. The war years are told via flashback. But while Silvana's experiences are rendered relatively vividly, Janusz's are vague at best, and it is left entirely unclear whether he ever saw any combat.

While the book has its stretches of good writing, it is marbled with cliche, both at the plot and at the sentence level. It also follows what is for me the rather irritating practice of withholding information--things one or another of the characters know the whole time but the reader does not--solely for the purpose of the "drama" of the telling. So several important plot elements are revealed only at the end, not because that's when the characters discover them but to create a heightened, but false, air of mystery about the proceedings. I had to fight my way through the first half; the second half got somewhat more interesting. But this is, essentially, a glorified romance novel.

>57 rocketjk: Hmmm....that one has been on my tbr shelf for some time. Maybe I should consider trying the first 50 pages soon. It might improve my culling numbers!

#58> Yes, Linda, trying the first 50 pages would be my recommendation.

Book 34: The Gentle Bush by Barbara Giles



Published in 1947, The Gentle Bush is an exploration of class and privilege along a south-central Louisiana bayou from the period immediately after Reconstruction through the early 20th century, or about 20 years. The story is told through the eyes of a young member of the landed gentry planter class, owners of a sugar cane plantation along the banks of the Bayou Teche. Slavery has been gone for decades, yet a black field worker can still be tracked down and shot for "running off." The relation between the old planter families, the Cajun population and the blacks of the area is the real meat here. Our protagonist, Michel, has from boyhood rebelled against the hatred and cruelty with which the planters treat their black workers.

The story got going slowly, I thought, with lots of exposition, but eventually it became fairly absorbing, as Michel's interactions with his family, and with his friend, Peter, a Cajun struggling to rise above the prescribed societal slot for people of his ethnicity, become more heated.

Through online research I learned that Barbara Giles was a relatively prominent member of the Leftist/Communist movement of the post-WW2 era. Having read that, it came as no surprise to me that this novel is at heart an exploration of class consciousness and that the book ends with a polemic. One might fairly say that this book is at least as interesting as an historical artifact as for the story itself. As I've mentioned previously here on LT, the book is listed in only three LT libraries: one is mine and one of the other two is Carl Sandburg's! For all those reasons, I'm glad I read this.

Book 35: The One from the Other by Philip Kerr



This is the fourth entry in Kerr's excellent noir series that features private detective Bernie Gunther and takes place in Germany before, during and after World War II. Here in the fourth Gunther book, it is 1949 and hard times for our pal, Bernie. Well, when is it not hard times for a noir detective? Anyway, this whole series has been terrific so far.

>61 rocketjk: This is a series I hope to get to one day. I read one Kerr quite a few years ago and liked it well enough. This series however looks very good. Glad you like it.

Book 36: Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams



I'm only an occasional reader of Science Fiction these days, but, wow, what an entertaining and thought provoking book. A good story, interesting and realistic (from a human nature perspective) characters and some very intriguing ideas about the nature of individuality and society.

Those who rule--and are despoiling--earth live in orbit, having solidified their power over earthbound society via a bloody and ruthless war of suppression. A small group of individuals are attempting to live outside the power of the Orbitals, as outlaws, via their own cunning and strength. Cue the action, and there is a lot of it, and it is very good.

The imagination and overall conception incorporated into this book is extremely impressive. I am very much looking forward to continuing on with this series, not immediately but in the near, if I may use the term, future.

I did find one thing amusing. The book was written in 1986, and imagines all sorts of cyber-based technology, including human-technological interactions, but there are no cell phones and the characters often pull up at public phones in order to speak with each other with minimized chance of being traced. I mean, Maxwell Smart was making phone calls into his shoe in the 1960s, so it's not like the idea hadn't already been thought of. But, look, I'm just saying this was amusing to me, not calling attention to something I found to be a flaw in the story. If Williams didn't foresee the ubiquitous nature of cell phones in what for him at that point was the near future, so be it. I couldn't have imagined any of the rest of it, let alone written any of it.

Book 37: Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson



This is an enjoyable British comedy of manners about life in a small English country village, first published in 1920 and taking place somewhere around that time. The title character is a self-important middle-aged woman firmly placed as the social head and cultural arbiter of the town, although she knows very little about anything much. The foibles and adventures of Lucia and her friends are satirically but affectionately rendered by Benson. There were only a few laugh-out-loud moments for me, but fans of this sort of British humor will enjoy the ride. In fact, this book is the first of a series of six Lucia books written by Benson, and they evidently have a hardy band of quite dedicated admirers. They were out of print for decades, during which time copies of the Lucia books were much sought after, but there have been a series of reprints, beginning in the 1970s, since then.

Book 38: Short Story International: Volume 3, Number 15 edited by Sylvia Tankel



Read as a "between book" (see first post). I don't know how long this monthly periodical of short stories from around the world was published. I have a bunch of them in my used bookstore, though. At any rate, this edition is from August, 1979. I found an article online from April 1979 that says the periodical was three years old at that point, but how long it lasted, I can't tell. Anyway, this edition was a lot of fun. It included stories by Leslie Norris, Ita Daly, Alan Sillitoe, Robert Granat and Tom Wolfe among its 16 stories. There were authors unknown to me from Egypt, Greece, India, Israel, Malaysia, Norway, Poland, Spain and Thailand.

>65 rocketjk: I had one of those! Mine was a lot older than 1979 if I remember - more like mid 60's. Cover looked very similar. I do not think I still have it but I had it for many years - I held onto it as a curiosity since for a long time I never saw any others. Like yours mine had stories from all over the world and I don't think I had heard of any of the authors. I thought it was very exotic when I was a teenager.

#66> Yes, it was certainly a fun and interesting publication. The review I found online implied that the publication had been started in 1976, but that may be in error or the editors may have had a similar series beforehand.

>67 rocketjk: Sylvia Tankel is apparently the editor of the second series of Short Story International. Samuel Tankel was the editor of the first series I surmise. If you do a search in Amazon for Samuel Tankel you will see a variety of issues dated circa 1964 although only one has a photo. That issue with a pic was not mine but it reminded me that my cover had the globe latitude and longitude symbol on the cover. Googling a little I didn't find my issue - I think I would recognize the cover instantly. Maybe some of yours are the ones edited by Samuel in the 60's.

#68> Samuel Tankel was the publisher of my edition, with Sylvia the editor. Perhaps 1976 was when she began editing the publication, taking over that seat from Samuel. That might be what the article writer meant.

Book 39: Perish by the Sword: the Czechoslovakian Anabasis and Our Supporting Campaigns in North Russia and Siberia 1918-1920 by R. Ernest Dupuy



This is the history of the 40,000 strong Czech Legion that found itself cut off when the Russian Army collapsed in World War One and, according to the Preface, "marched from the Volga to Vladivostok and back again, fighting both ways, held a new Eastern Front for two years and went home around the world to build a new nation." The history also includes an account of "our {i.e. the United States, within the context of multi-national forces assembled by the Allies of WWI} two assisting campaigns in Siberia and North Russia, both fought mainly after the Armistice of November 11, 1918." All of this is new information for me, and I've been very much looking forward to reading this history since I ordered it online several months ago.

The book was published in 1939, very soon after the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia. Dupuy was a U.S. Army major and the publisher was "The Military Service Publishing Company." As Dupuy concludes his Preface, "In the light of what has happened, in the light of what we may be urged to do again, it will be well to recall the past."

Dupuy also spends a good amount of time describing both AEF adventures, in Archangel/Murmansk and in Siberia. The point is made quite strongly that, in Eastern Russia, the ultimate success of the Bolsheviks can be attributed as much to the wanton savagery and sadism of the White Russian generals than to any attraction the populace had to Bolshevism. As to the Northern expedition, the American forces were part of a multi-national force, originally there to try to encourage a second front and keep the Germans from building a submarine base. They stayed after the Armistice, however (as did the Siberian AEF) in part in support of the Czechs and in part in support of the White Russians. The Northern Russian force was under the command of a British general whose doomed attempts to drive south and actually unseat the Bolsheviks Dupuy labels "inane."

The book is clearly written, and as well researched as possible for the time, I guess. At one point, Dupuy says that he has no idea how the Czech forces, spread out as they became more or less across the length of the Trans-Siberian rail lines, maintained communication with each other, but evidently they did. There are quite a few fascinating photographs. There are also a couple of maps, but these are much too sketchy to be of much use.

The book is listed in only two LT libraries, mine being one.

p.s. I had to look up the word "anabasis." According to Wikipedia, the word comes from the title of a classic text by the Greek writer Xenophon (431–355 BC), about the expedition of the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger against his brother, King Artaxerxes II. More generally, however it means "an expedition from a coastline up into the interior of a country."

Book 40: The Fourth Protocol by Frederick Forsyth



This is a, mostly, fun Cold War spy thriller, written in the 1980s when all the fun was still going on. This is very much a spy procedural, as we get a quite vivid look at how British intelligence would go about tracking down an undercover Soviet spy inserted into England and bent on pulling off a dastardly deed. The narrative really is quite good and the story mostly pulls the reader along. The book's only real drawback is the author's occasional foray into providing way to much detail about procedure and/or hardware. Those parts are easily skimmed, however, and Forsyth, happily, otherwise avoids most of my pet peeve thriller hack cliches, like excessive use of adverbs. So, all in all, this was an enjoyable book to read.

Well, I'm not going to make 50, but at least I've made 40.

I haven't read any spy thrillers in a long time...I might give that one a try one of these days.

#72> You could certainly do a lot worse! I had a good time reading this book, especially after the first 50 pages or so. It had good pacing and was even relatively believable. Cheers!

Book 41: Mackerel by Moonlight by William F. Weld



This is a fun but inconsequential novel about criminal prosecution and politics. The protagonist starts out as a Brooklyn-based federal prosecutor who does not mind bending a rule or two to get a conviction. Soon he has a job in a high-profile Boston law firm. Then he is running for District Attorney in Boston. Through this series of career moves and political campaigns, plus one or two other events, the protagonist tells his own story, supplied by the author with a breezy, sardonic voice. The book doesn't add up to much, as it just takes the character from spot to spot and then ends. We do get a look into the inner workings of law enforcement and political campaigns, as the author worked in both areas, up to and including his two terms as Governor of Massachusetts. But this is a first novel and shows it, as the narrative is basically a series of vignettes that present a pattern of behavior but doesn't otherwise take us anywhere. Still, as I mentioned at the outset: fun in the reading.

You're so close to 50!!! Read, read, read!!

#75> Sincere thanks for the encouragement, PP, but I have launched myself into T. E. Lawrence's 660-page epic, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and with holiday hours at the store and other time-consuming issues, I think old Lawrence is going to take me right through the calendar year. C'est la vie. I've tackled quite a few longer tomes this year, and it's been a fine year of reading, final tally notwithstanding!

Yes, in the end it's about quality, not quantity, right?! Good luck with 7 Pillars!

#76> One of my work colleagues started reading 7 Pillars this year. He had to take a break when he was halfway through!

I've enjoyed your reading year, Jerry, and have picked up a couple of recommendations for next year, too. Cheers!

Thanks, Jan. I can see taking a break from 7 Pillars, but I am enjoying the reading enough to push on through. Once I realized for sure that I wasn't going to finish by the end of the calendar year, I was able to relax and stop trying to rush the reading. Lawrence's descriptions of the desert and also of human nature are often quite well done. Cheers to you, and Happy New Year!

And so 2015 finishes up for me with a sub-par, numbers-wise, but wonderful, content-wise, total of only 41 books finished, my second lowest total since I began keep track here in 2008. Into 2016 we go!

>80 rocketjk: If you're starting a new thread, Jerry, please leave a link. Don't want to lose you!

#81> Here you go, Linda. And Happy New Year to you.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/210833