Meredy's 2015 Reading Journal: Part I

Thank you for your kind interest in my book reviews and comments. Here are my top titles from last year:

Best fiction reads of 2014
http://www.librarything.com/topic/185748#4981896

Best nonfiction reads of 2014
http://www.librarything.com/topic/185749#4983793

Least satisfactory reading experiences of 2014:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/184988#5001033

In 2014, just under the wire on the last day of December, I completed my goal of reviewing everything I'd read during the year. My goals aren't quantitative; I don't do challenges. But the reviewing goal adds a little after-the-fact discipline to my reading experience--worthwhile for me because an important part of the value of reading for me is reflecting on both the form and the substance of the work.

However, I am proud that in 2014 I finished a hundred books (weighing in at 28,046 pages) and a hundred reviews. Again this year my aim will be to post comments on everything I read. (And I never want to fall behind by as many as twelve again. I hope I learned my lesson.)

There are no spoilers in my reviews.

Solid star (★) = 1 star. Open star (☆) = ½ star. Post references are links. Reviews are posted on the works pages as well as in this thread, and I'm tickled to death when someone gives me a little thumb now and then.

To jump to the end of this post (which will grow long in time), click this link to message #2 and scroll up.

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January

• A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, by Donald Richie (2007), 1/6/15; 73 pages plus backmatter (★★★☆); review: post 12.
• WordPlay, by Glenn Bassett (2013), 1/3/15; abandoned after 11 of 308 pages (3.6%; not rated); comments: post 13.
• Gould’s Book of Fish, by Richard Flanagan (2001), 1/6/15; 404 pages (★★★★); review: post 30.
• Euphoria, by Lily King (2014), 1/11/15; 261 pages (★★★☆); review: post 28.
• In Praise of Shadows, by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (1933), 1/15/15; 48 pages (★★★☆); review: post 24.
• Last Night in Montreal, by Emily St. John Mandel (2009), 1/16/15; 247 pages (★★★☆); review: post 38.
• Fever Dream, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (2010), 1/21/15; 544 pages(★★★☆); review: post 35.
• Under the Dome, by Stephen King (2013), 1/21/15; 874 pages (★★★☆); review: post 37.
• The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman (2015), 1/28/15; abandoned after 39 of 329 pages (11.8%; not rated); no review.
• A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand's Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century, by Andrew MacGregor Marshall (2014), 1/29/15; 329 pages plus backmatter (★★★★); review: post 46.

January totals: 8 books finished (2670 pages); 2 books abandoned (50 pages)

February

• The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief, by Ben MacIntyre (1997), 2/1/15; abandoned after 74 of 295 pages plus backmatter (25.0%; not rated); no review.
A new category: suspended--not quite abandoned (and tracked but not counted):
• The Spinoza Problem: A Novel by Irvin D. Yalom, sidelined 2/4/15 after 17 pages of 317. Possibly may return.
• Orfeo, by Richard Powers (2014), 2/10/15; 369 pages (★★★★); review: post 41.
• Cold Vengeance, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (2011), 2/17/15; 356 pages (★★★☆); review: post 40.
• Two Graves, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (2011), 2/24/15; 484 pages (★★★☆); review: post 51.
• The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse, suspended 2/25/15 after 35 pages because it requires too much concentration for me right now. May resume another time. Note: This edition in English was published in 1969.
• Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers, by Amir D. Aczel (2015), 2/27/15; 224 pages plus backmatter (★★★); review: post 71.

February totals: 4 books finished (1433 pages); 1 book abandoned (74 pages)

March

• We Need New Names: A Novel, by NoViolet Bulawayo (2013), 3/3/15; 297 pages (★★★★); review: post 72.
• The Singer’s Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel (2010), 3/6/15; 288 pages (★★★★); review: post 87.
• The Bellwether Revivals, by Benjamin Wood (2012), 3/14/15; 420 pages (★★★); review: post 77.
• Without You, There Is No Us, by Suki Kim (2014), 3/16/15; 297 pages (★★★★); review: post 121.
• Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King (2013), 3/18/15; 531 pages (★★★☆); review: post 83.
• The Holy Thief, by Ellis Peters (1992), 3/23/15; 245 pages (★★★☆); review: post 85.
• The Lola Quartet, by Emily St. John Mandel (2012), 3/29/15; 279 pages (★★★☆); review: post 128.

March totals: 7 books finished (2353 pages); 0 books abandoned

April

• Rembrandt’s Nose: Of Flesh and Spirit in the Master's Portraits, by Michael Taylor (2007), 4/5/15; 163 pages (★★★☆); review: post 69.
• The Understory, by Pamela Erens (2007), 4/15/15; 172 pages (★★★); review: post 70.
• Me and Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald, by Judyth Vary Baker (2010), 4/16/15; 600 pages plus backmatter (★★★); review: post 82.
• Lexicon, by Max Barry (2013), 4/22/15; 390 pages (★★★★); review: post 76.
• Boston Strong: A City's Triumph over Tragedy, by Casey Sherman & Dave Wedge (2015), 4/25/15; 256 pages plus backmatter (★★☆); review: post 102.
• Our Game, by John le Carré (1995), 4/28/15; 302 pages (★★★☆); review: post 84.
• A Briefer History of Time, by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow (2005), 4/29/15; abandoned after 57 of 148 pages plus backmatter (38.5%; not rated)

April totals: 6 books finished (1883 pages); 1 book abandoned (57 pages)

May

• Trustee from the Toolroom, by Nevil Shute (1960), 5/4/15; 311 pages (★★★☆); review: post 92.
• The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry, by Lance Dodes & Zachary Dodes (2014), 5/6/15; 161 pages plus backmatter (★★); review: post 107.
• White Fire, by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (2013), 5/12/15; 368 pages (★★★ + bonus ☆); review: post 99.
• Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, by Erik Larson (2015), 5/23/15; 410 pages plus backmatter (★★★★); review: post 106.

May totals: 4 books finished (1250 pages); 0 books abandoned

June

• In the Wet, by Nevil Shute (1953), 6/1/15; 355 pages (★★★★); review: post 120.
• One Fine Day, by Mollie Panter-Downes (1947), 6/3/15; abandoned after 116 of 241 pages (48.1%; not rated; no review); comments: post 100.
• Revival, by Stephen King (2014), 6/6/15; 405 pages (★★★☆); review: post 115.
• Storm Front, by Jim Butcher (2000), 6/10/15; 355 pages (★★★); review: post 110.
• There Was an Old Woman, by Hallie Ephron (2013), 6/15/15; abandoned after 46 of 293 pages for being stiflingly inert (15.7%; not rated); comments: post 136.
• Lie Down with the Devil, by Linda Barnes (2008), 6/15/15; 318 pages (★★☆); review: post 135.
• Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher (2001), 6/19/15; 405 pages (★★★☆); review: post 157.
• Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice, by Adam Benforado (2015), 6/21/15; 289 pages plus backmatter (★★★☆); review: post 171.
• Grave Peril, by Jim Butcher (2001), 6/24/15; 246 pages (★★★); review: post 163.

June totals: 7 books finished (2473 pages); 2 books abandoned (162 pages)

Half-year totals: 36 books finished (12,062 pages); 6 books abandoned (343 pages)

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[Reviews owed: 0.]

New thread for July - December: http://www.librarything.com/topic/192771

Placeholder post.

Wishing you many happy hours of reading in 2015.

A hundred books is a nice round number! A Happy New Year to you, and I'm looking forward to more of your excellent reviews.

Thank you both.

I've posted comments on an ER book called WordPlay, but I'm not posting it here or listing it at the top of this page--not yet, anyway. I don't feel like looking at it all year as the first entry in the thread.

Hi @Meredy. I am pulling up my seat to where I can get a good view of your thread. I am looking forward to another year of our exchanging views and your six-word reviews.

>5 Meredy: I read your comments on WordPlay. As you suggested, the facts speak for themselves. I can understand why you did not want WordPlay at the top of your thread.

By coincidence I had an online discussion today about the unreliability of Wikipedia. I was not aware of the Wikipedia comments on using Wikipedia at the time or I would have used them. Thank you for contributing to my anti-Wikipedia war chest.

>7 pgmcc: Thanks. I hate being the bad guy, but this was truly the kindest report I could give. It took a lot of restraint to leave it at that.

I've used Wikipedia for plenty of research. If you use it as they suggest, it's a great resource: you can get an overview of the subject and then narrow your focus, pick up key terms, refer to the sources listed, and look for corroboration. It's a place to start; that's all. An academic ought to have known better than to stop there.

Incidentally, I never saw that page before I went looking for it today, but it's consistent with the same view of Wikipedia that I've encountered among teachers and professional researchers for the past ten years.

What a shame to start with such a disappointing book, I totally understand why you don't want it at the top of your thread for the year. I hope your next read is a boost and makes up for this one for you.

I hope the rest of your reading year improves after that frustrating start. Looking forward to more of your insightful reviews.

Somehow I knew you'd all understand. Thank you.

And this seems to be the ideal time to have happened onto a 73-page book that falls perfectly into line with one of my ongoing topics: A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, by Donald Richie. In a day's time I ought to be able to post that one at the top, and then it will be all right.

A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics (2007), by Donald Richie (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Deft, spare elucidation for Western audience.

Extended review:

For a Westerner, the aesthetic principles encountered in Japanese paintings, poetry, gardens, and other art forms can be elusive and mystifying. Donald Richie was an expert on Japanese culture (and movies in particular) and a gifted explainer. In this short work he conveys his understanding, through both form and content, about as well as I think it can be done for a reader who has not been an ardent lifelong student of the subject.

Without any facetiousness at all, I'll say that I think that after reading it three or four more times I may be able to tell you something about what it says.

Meanwhile, much as I've felt after hearing a dharma talk at the zendo, I can't tell you exactly what he said, but I think I understand something a little better.

My rating of this book means nothing at all. The book is a bound essay of 70 small pages plus glossary and bibliography. And I'm sure that, true to its subject matter, it uses as many strokes as it needs and no more. But the limitations of my scale prevent me from recognizing it on its merits alongside works ten times the length. Consider this a fault of my ratings or of ratings in general and not of the book.

WordPlay (2013), by Glenn Bassett (abandoned; not rated)

(An Early Reviewer review)

Rather than expressing my opinion, I'll confine myself to factual statements and let them speak for themselves.

But first--here is what Wikipedia itself says about citing Wikipedia in research papers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia):

As with any source, especially one of unknown authorship, you should be wary and independently verify the accuracy of Wikipedia information if possible. For many purposes, but particularly in academia, Wikipedia may not be an acceptable source; indeed, some professors and teachers may reject Wikipedia-sourced material completely. This is especially true when it is used without corroboration. However, much of the content on Wikipedia is itself referenced, so an alternative is to cite the reliable source rather than the article itself.

We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki, which means that anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize.

I read the preface and the first of twenty-one chapters and then examined the backmatter. Here are some of my observations:

• A section headed "Notes and References" contains 149 entries, of which 44 include or consist solely of Wikipedia articles. That's 29.5%. This count includes citations of Wikapedia and Wickapedia.
• A bibliography is a list of sources referred to in a scholarly work. In this book, there is a section headed "Bibliographic List," which may or may not mean that the author actually consulted those references.
• Gazzaniga is also spelled Gazziniga.
• Wierzbicka is also spelled Wierzbika.
• Immanuel Kant's first name gets three different spellings: Immanuel, Emmanuel, Emanuel.
• Isaac Newton appears as Issac Newson.
• Abu Ghraib is spelled Abu Garib.
• Lascaux is spelled Lescaux.
• At least one URL is misspelled and goes to a content-aggregating ad site instead of the (presumably) intended source.
• Chapter titles, running heads, and reference citations are styled inconsistently and do not follow established practice; for example, sometimes "and," "of," and "the" are capped, and some verbs and pronouns appear lowercased. Semicolons are frequently used instead of colons.
• There is no index.

The back cover blurb, which identifies this as a self-published work, contains a dangling modifier in the author paragraph and styles the book title two ways: Wordplay, WordPlay.

I searched in vain for the mention of an editor, copyeditor, or proofreader. If there was one, which I doubt, his or her name is wisely omitted.

I'll add only this: when an author puts a book before an audience, he or she is asking for a precious--indeed, priceless--commodity: the attention of that audience. A work that doesn't warrant the author's scrupulous care is not entitled to much of mine.

And that's all the time I'm going to give to this book.

>12 Meredy: Have you read Tanizaki's In praise of shadows? From your review of Richie's book, I think it would make a good companion piece.

>14 Sakerfalcon: I haven't, but it's going on my list. Thank you. I like to read related books in tandem. Books read in awareness of some resonance with each other often grow and gain dimensions.

>14 Sakerfalcon: And now I've ordered it. I can't even call that a proper book bullet. You didn't have to spend any powder or pull a trigger. You just sort of held out the bullet and I walked into it.

I've just finished Gould's Book of Fish and am pondering how to review it. It's one of those difficult ones that cause a split between how good I think it is and how well I liked it.

Meredy, I think the exchange between you and Sakerfalcon might be referred to as a book bayonet. Or maybe a book saber? Perhaps a book spear. If you just "walk into something"...

>17 jillmwo: "A woman walked into a book bar..."

>17 jillmwo: The way that one snapped and caught me, it was probably a book booby trap.

>18 MrsLee: Haha. I'd like to hear how that one goes.

My work here is done *sheathes book sabre and walks away into the sunset*

And now I have the book in hand. I do love that free two-day delivery.

@Meredy, I have started reading The Cry of the Sloth and am finding it great fun. I love the submission guidelines for Soap magazine and I love the rejection letters he sends to unsuccessful submitters. These are the rejection letters I have always wanted to write.

>22 pgmcc: Happy to hear it! I thought you would like it. I generally don't care much for epistolary novels, but that one . . . well, I found that if I just set aside my expectations and conventions (not out of reach, but just not directly in my path) I could enjoy it in its own terms.

Have you read The Egyptologist? It reminded me a little bit of that, even though that's not the comparison I made in my review.

>20 Sakerfalcon: I've finished In Praise of Shadows, and you were right. A better companion piece to Richie's analysis and commentary could hardly be imagined. (And indeed, Richie knew the book and referenced it in his bibliography.) Thank you. I'm glad to have read both of those books before tackling Ozu's films in toto. It would have helped me a lot when I was studying Zen.

In Praise of Shadows (1933), by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (3½ stars)

Six-word review: The beauty in things seen dimly.

Extended review:

Earthy and sublime by turns, this brief study sheds light--and shadow--on the aesthetic principles of a culture that typically mystifies Westerners. Never on my own would I have thought of the still, spare lines of a dim and empty Japanese room as a showcase of shadows. Never would I have realized that the bold glare of black lacquerware was meant to be seen as a muted glow within a darkened space.

The Japanese novelist writes with an awareness of Western sensibilities that enables him to look at his own native tradition as if from the outside, zeroing in on what seems so alien to us, while at the same time honoring the sense of beauty and harmony so prized in that tradition.

Donald Richie's 1977 A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics clearly owes something to this 1933 work, which Richie references in his bibliography, and the two essays make excellent companion pieces. Together they have significantly enlarged my understanding.

This is a five-star work on its own scale, not possible for me to rate appropriately alongside books ten times its size and scope.

>23 Meredy: I need your postal address. The hospital will be sending you an invoice to cover the costs of healing my BB wounds and The Egyptologist one was particularly nasty. You picked me off with such aplomb. I didn't see it coming. You are a skilled marksperson. Did you train with the Navy Seals? You fired off that round in passing. You didn't miss a stride.

I generally don't care much for epistolary novels, but that one...

I am finding this one fine. As I mentioned before the non-stop self-pity at the start caused me to delay my reading of this book, but I am enjoying it now that I have entered the correct frame of mind.

I have been put off slightly in the past by the epistolary structure, but not simply because of the structure. I was reading The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Literary Society and, while I thought it was a very good book, was put off by what I felt was quite a contrived scenario and that the tale was too predictable. It was not the structure that put me off but the predictability of the content of each subsequent letter wore me out. As you know I like to be surprised in a book and Sam Savage has the knack of doing that, even if it is simply by writing an unconstrained rejection letter.

Dracula has an epistolary structure and I didn't even notice that until someone mentioned it after I had read the book. I find that if a book is well written and interesting I hardly notice the structure. People have complained about first-person and present tense novels, but I have read and enjoyed books with these attributes and not noticed any problem with them. Of course, I have started to read other books that were not well written and found it difficult to get past the first few pages, regardless of the structure.

(I can't even answer that until I can manage to wipe the expression of smug satisfaction off my face and achieve a posture of becoming modesty. No telling how long that will take. How did Robin of Locksley look right after he won the Golden Arrow? The camera always follows the arrow.)

>25 pgmcc: If misery is looking for company, she got me with The Egyptologist as well...and when I went to look at its page, also found this: The Dig. One bullet mysteriously became two.

Euphoria (2014), by Lily King (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Love triangle threatens anthropological research expedition.

Extended review:

A lonely anthropologist conducting research in New Guinea encounters a pair of fellow researchers, a recently married couple at work on separate projects among the indigenous tribes. Inevitably he is attracted to the wife, and a dangerous triangle is the result. The husband, meanwhile, envious of his spouse's academic success, resolves to distinguish himself professionally by collecting a uniquely valuable artifact regardless of the risk it entails.

Loosely based on the story of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead and her second and third husbands, Euphoria evokes the passionate intensity with which dedicated scientists pursue knowledge in their field. At the same time it chronicles the growth of an irresistible attraction and the dissolution of the relationship that it displaces. The interweaving of the personal with the professional spotlights the way a shared commitment to mastery in a field of learning links both minds and hearts.

King skillfully seeds the storyline with clues that enable us to go beyond conjecture in the end. Several other novels that I've read in the past year or so, notably Her (Harriet Lane), have likewise accomplished the admirable feat of giving us an inexplicit outcome for which we nevertheless have enough information to piece it together. That moment of realization packs a considerably greater punch than would a literal conclusion.

For all that, I'm disappointed to say that I just didn't like this book very much. None of the principal characters struck me as someone I'd like to know. I didn't much care for the way any of them behaved. My sympathies tended to be with the people they were there to study, and in all cases I thought they'd have been better off if left alone. I can't say that the author discourages this view; but it does detract from my ability to relate warmly to the trio. Rather, I'm inclined to see them as specimens of their own tribe and consider their customs, conventions, and behaviors dispassionately without wanting to adopt them myself.

>24 Meredy: I'm so glad that In praise of shadows was such a good read for you. I really need to get to my copy of The Makioka sisters this year.

Gould's Book of Fish (2001), by Richard Flanagan (4 stars)

Six-word review: Elaborately realized fantasy of self-emancipation.

Extended review:

When I see that a book is good, meaning well written and (according to my best understanding) successful in accomplishing what it set out to do, but I just don't happen to like it very much, I have a hard time writing a review. I've had that problem a few times lately, and here it is again.

It's hard to say why this novel didn't appeal to me. The subject matter is not at all pretty, consisting as it does primarily of the narrator's account of life in a brutal prison environment peopled by some remarkable characters: the Surgeon, the Commandant, Twopenny Sal. Yet there is a strange beauty in the language of Flanagan's descriptions, fluid and brilliant as painted fish. A filmy veil of delusion or hallucination seems to overlay the storyline, giving it a dreamlike quality even as the horrific details nail it in reality like spikes in flesh. In most cases (and for me The Enchanted is a recent five-star example) this level of authorial skill is enough to trump any revulsion at subject matter, just as so many paintings of tortured saints rank with great art.

Yet something simply didn't work for me here; or perhaps I was after all not quite receptive enough. I can't say that I was put off by the colored ink of the body text, but it did sound a gimmick alarm in my mind; instead of enhancing the effect, for me, it became something of a distraction that I had to overcome.

There is a stratum of historical fact underlying this extraordinary work of fiction. The paintings that head each chapter are the actual work of one William Buelow Gould, convict, whose imprisonment in an island penal colony in Tasmania in the mid-nineteenth century is a matter of record. If anything, that factual basis and surrounding documentary detail make this product of artistic imagination seem even more fantastic than it would if it had been sheer invention.

The very notion of wrapping a complex surrealistic narrative around a series of fish paintings would tax the inventive powers of some authors to the limit, but for Flanagan it's only the beginning. It is a sure credit to the author's seductive storytelling that the leap at the end carries us with him across another dimension.

The narrator quotes Erasmus (page 252): "The reality of things depends solely on opinion." This is the faceted crystal that reflects in rainbows throughout the text.

It's for books like this that I try to maintain a clear separation in my mind between "I like it" and "it's good" (a distinction that also leaves me free to dote on things that aren't terribly excellent), even though I don't think it's possible to achieve objectivity in judging a creative work. I'll call this book very good and leave the loving of it to others.

>13 Meredy: Thank you so much for this review. You've saved countless souls from wasting space or time on this book {well, at least this soul :-)}. "when an author puts a book before an audience, he or she is asking for a precious--indeed, priceless--commodity: the attention of that audience. A work that doesn't warrant the author's scrupulous care is not entitled to much of mine." Well said.

>23 Meredy: I have just finished The Cry of the Sloth and I really enjoyed it. Savage has a great way of amusing his reader while writing about important issues like depression and isolation. I hope to write up my thoughts on the book this evening and then enjoy your review of the book.

I thought it had a lot in common with The Confederacy of Dunces in that it used a somewhat antisocial/misfitting person to highlight issues in society and did so using humour. Unlike The Confederacy of Dunces it did not end on a hopeful note.

@Meredy, I have just read and enjoyed your review of The Cry of the Sloth. I loved the quote, "...to imagine another, better, life, one without so many commas."

I laughed out loud when I came across that.

>33 pgmcc: I liked your review, too. I didn't make special mention of the rejection letters, but I probably felt about them pretty much the same way you did. Over the years I've been the editor of seven or eight group-newsletter publications, ranging from very small to pretty large, and dealt with a lot of member contributions. There were certainly times when I'd have loved to say what he did. And of course I'm thinking of the experiences that Sam Savage himself must have had along that line; many of us can sympathize from both sides of the editorial desk.

I'd never have thought to compare this book to A Confederacy of Dunces, which I read such a long time ago that a lot of detail has faded, but I can see a case for it. I'm sure other comparisons will come to mind as we reflect on this particularly eccentric work.

Fever Dream (2010), by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Pendergast page-turner without monster chase.

Extended review:

The tenth Special Agent Pendergast novel begins a second trilogy, "the Helen trilogy," with Pendergast's staggering discovery that his wife's death in Africa twelve years previously had been no accident. Now he trains his full range of powers on tracking and punishing those responsible for her murder. His ability to penetrate deep mysteries is as remarkable as his resourcefulness and raw nerve in tackling an adversary directly. In the process of his investigation, considerable collateral damage occurs.

Despite the Louisiana setting, two of his very appealing collaborators return: NYPD officers Lieutenant Vince D'Agosta and Captain Laura Hayward, the latter unwillingly. I must note with interest, however, that there is only one brief dive into a sub-basement archive, and there are no signs of a supernatural presence, an unnatural monstrosity lurking in some subterranean hall of horrors, a hallucinating madman, or a deadly pursuit through underground tunnels. To me that's very much like a breath of fresh air, even if it is the stifling, mosquito-laden air of trackless swamps and bayous.

Unlike most of the others in the Pendergast series, this novel does not stand alone. Even the Diogenes trilogy, it seemed to me, could be read with sufficient comprehension by someone who hadn't followed Pendergast from the beginning. But here there are loose ends both fore and aft. For instance, Constance Greene's strange behavior and bizarre backstory would seem to come out of nowhere and be related to nothing if we hadn't followed along from the third in the series, Cabinet of Curiosities, onward. And it's plain at the ending that the story is far from complete; despite major revelations and several deaths, there is much unfinished business.

The Preston-Child collaborations have the virtue of being complex without being too intellectually demanding. We may at times need a strong stomach, and if we want to follow the development we have to pay attention, but in time it will all be laid out for us without any need to interpret language or penetrate symbolism. For me in certain moods, they're an ideal escape.

After thoroughly enjoying Ben Macintyre's A Spy Among Friends: Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal, I've abandoned The Napoleon of Crime: The Life and Times of Adam Worth, Master Thief at the 25% mark. It just seemed bogged down to me, entangled in too many characters with their respective biographies and not enough forward movement. Maybe it takes more patience than I have right now. I've moved on to Richard Powers' Orfeo, which, if it's anything like The Gold Bug Variations, will have no trouble holding my attention.

Under the Dome (2013), by Stephen King (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Chaos overtakes a suddenly isolated town.

Extended review:

If 11/22/63 was Stephen King the Author pulling out all the stops in a virtuoso display of everything he'd mastered while successfully publishing some 50 novels over 37 years, Under the Dome was King the Trickster playing God in the sandbox, blowing up anthills with cherry bombs, laughing his head off the whole time.

And honestly, I don't begrudge him the joke. I'm recalling the old Zen koan about the goose in the bottle. Steve knows how to get the goose out.

There was a time when I'd kept up with King, read everything he wrote as fast as it came out. That ended with Christine in 1983. From there it was an occasional return (Misery, Needful Things, Rose Madder), only to back off again, and a few abandonments (forgotten). As far as I was concerned, he was straining to recapture the essence of what had made his early work so gripping, using a formula that more or less boiled down to "a magic X" (touch, necklace, cemetery, car), and it wasn't working for me any longer. I moved on.

But I couldn't resist delving into his take on the defining moment of our youth--ours, because King and I are only months apart in age--namely, the Kennedy assassination. With that he won me back completely, reminding me of what he could do and how well he could do it when he focused and gave it his all. 11/22/63 rated four and a half stars from me, and it was probably only the H.G. Wells Time Machine ending that kept it from being five. I could happily have gone on with it for several hundred more pages, experiencing my own time travel as King took me vividly back to scenes of my youth in New England--and hoping against hope that even for just one fictional moment I might see a different outcome on that terrible November day.

And so, when my husband suggested it, I was ready after all this time to tackle another voluminous King novel. He enticed me into reading--or, rather, listening to him read--Under the Dome by promising me that it was loaded with instances of things that King oughtn't to have done as an author, but he did. (An odd footnote here is that my husband had already read all 874 pages of the thing, and here he was offering to go through it again, this time at a slow read-aloud pace that would take months.) And that made me curious. More: it whetted my appetite. After 16 years of weekly read-alouds, my husband well knows the pleasure I take in picking on an author's mistakes--continuity errors, egregious repetition, malapropisms, et cetera--and, even more so, editorial lapses, frequently a different breed of error entirely. Think of it as a variant of how a sports fan reacts when an athlete blows a play: calling out his screwups is part of the entertainment. I began my editorial career just about when King published The Dead Zone, and I've been reading with an editor's double vision ever since. Retirement doesn't shut off the instinct.

And this was, you might say, a target-rich environment.

So we hooted when King suddenly slipped into cinematic mode and gave us crane shots panning a crowd scene. We jeered when he switched into present tense and hopped from vignette to vignette as if he were narrating a double-page spread in a Where's Waldo? book. We groaned when he lapsed into a paternalistic nineteenth-century voice with dear-reader asides commenting on characters' motives and behavior or remarking on what was about to happen. And we scolded when he forgot what he'd just said and repeated himself or lost track of the location of a character or prop.

But we also forgave him for going with the impulses, for goofing off and breaking the rules. He can afford it. He can even laugh at us. It's his game.

Because he has nothing more to prove. He still tells a thumping good yarn, always did. He creates characters and builds suspense like the pro that he is. And he has that special knack of creating a distinctive character, even a minor one, out of just a few words and giving him or her a moment--even if only a cameo--in which to be seen. Just as we are all cameos or indistinct faces in the crowd scenes of someone else's drama. The camera rolls on and the moment is past, but we contributed something--a little color, a little perspective, a space-filler--that enriched the story somehow. King's novels are full of people like us.

King's novels are full of people just like us.

And we, King reminds us forcefully, all have our little lives.

Under the Dome didn't quite wrap up the way I hoped it would. I wanted a complete, logical answer to what and why and how. I expected a real confrontational come-uppance for the bad guy, with justice overflowing to slake a thirst for payback. What's more, it was too stretched out in places and could have stood to lose a couple hundred pages of nonessential authorially self-indulgent verbiage.

Still, I enjoyed it very much, enjoyed seeing how a single dramatically weird premise played out somewhat realistically (an impenetrable dome settles over a town and isolates its inhabitants from the rest of the world; now what?)--not, however, a unique one: any number of authors have stranded a group of people on an island, in a remote country house, on a ship, on a spacecraft or an airplane, on a planet, and so on--and then watched to see what would happen. This is just the first time it's been done this way.

So, Steve, it did take me a couple of days after finishing Under the Dome, but only a couple, and then I knew whose the leather faces were.

Thanks, I get it now. And you've earned a good laugh.

Last Night in Montreal (2009), by Emily St. John Mandel (3½ stars)

Six-word review: The search itself is the destination.

Extended review:

Mandel's first novel has a mature quality you'd expect to find in the work of a more experienced author. Not surprisingly, some of the same characteristics noted in the recent and very popular Station Eleven are apparent in this one: interesting characters with unusual backstories, plots that seem to move in both directions along the paths of concentric circles, like this,



and an open-ended conclusion that nevertheless seems to be enough. The pieces fit together. We see more than she shows us. There's a rightness to it.

In Last Night in Montreal, a young woman is driven by her troubled history--including history that she herself does not know--to live a nomadic existence. She is loved by a young man who does not accept her compulsion to repeatedly abandon cities and lovers and move on. He tracks her to her next destination, determined to try to win her back. Sounds simple enough, but it isn't. Her early life on the run with her father, the mother and brother she left behind, the detective who searched for her, and his own daughter add layers of complexity to the story and lead to an unpredictable ending.

An intriguing feature of Mandel's work--in these two books, at least--is how characters have a way of affecting one another's lives even when they never meet directly. Action at a distance is a kind of magic, or, if you prefer, a gravitational effect like that of bodies in space, pulling one another this way or that even though their orbits seldom or never intersect. People probably really do exert influences on each other that are never seen or directly felt; we have nothing in our ordinary lives to show us how this occurs, but an omniscient author can do it for us.

>38 Meredy: This sounds interesting. I really enjoyed Station eleven and had been wondering about the author's earlier work. I'll have to see if the library has this one.

Cold Vengeance (2011), by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Pendergast overmatched by ruthless unseen forces.

Extended review:

Cold Vengeance is the second book of a trilogy (the "Helen" trilogy) in the Special Agent Pendergast series. The first (Fever Dream) began with the stunning (to Pendergast) revelation that the death of his wife twelve years earlier was no accident but a bizarre, exquisitely planned murder. This discovery set Pendergast on a course of investigation and retribution that easily outpaces anything he's done before on a less personal motive.

Part 2 delivers another major revelation early on, drastically shifting the course of the search to expose the killers and uncover the complex, horrifying web of secrets into which Pendergast's headlong quest has plunged him.

Unlike numerous other novels in the Pendergast series, this trilogy deals with human monsters minus any supernatural agency or power. There's a different sort of "underground" chase, through a metaphorical labyrinth, without actual physical caves and tunnels and subterranean mazes.

As characters from earlier in the series resurface and seem to be preparing to converge, the betrayals and reversals pile one upon another. The novel concludes with an unabashed cliffhanger that makes no pretense of being anything but a hook for part 3.

That's okay. I made sure I had all three in hand before I started. Give me a few more days to get through Two Graves and I'll fill you in (unspoilingly, of course) on the conclusion.

Orfeo (2014), by Richard Powers (4 stars)

Six-word review: Musician-chemist becomes fugitive from authorities.

Extended review:

Orfeo. How do I review this book? I have a notion that Powers has in mind an ideal reader, his peer, one who is qualified to follow his musical line wherever it leads, missing none of the subtleties or allusions or nuances, and decode all the secondary themes, mark the motifs, detect the elusive harmonics; and that I am not that reader. I should perhaps humbly beg his pardon for presuming to read his book.

Or is this nothing but a defensive reaction on my part, exposing a chip on my shoulder, because I lack the degree of musical knowledge that it would take to recognize and comprehend the extent to which this novel wants to be played on an instrument--or indeed performed by an ensemble?

Let's talk about the story. The story is that of Peter Els, a one-time chemistry student who fell in love and switched to music. He's a composer. A distracted call to 911 when his dog dies brings the police to his home, and they spot his do-it-yourself chem hobbyist's home laboratory, where he has been experimenting with DNA. Primed for suspicion, the cops tag him as a possible bioterrorist. He isn't, but he decides to go on the run. His flight takes him back into his personal history, causing him to reconnect with several people who have been important in his life and also recapitulating his musical biography.

This book didn't impress me in quite the same way that The Gold Bug Variations did, or maybe I just missed more of it; but what stands out to me especially is its texture, the way so much of it is rendered like a musical tapestry, a weaving together of sensory dimensions. I wish I knew enough to call it a fugue, but I don't, except in the literal sense of running away or fleeing.

The title is, I presume, a reference to Orpheus, the hero of ancient Greek mythology whose musical gifts gave him special powers.

Unfortunately, only ten days after finishing the book, I've forgotten how it ends. However compellingly written it seemed to be at the time, I'd say that that is not a good sign on the memorability scale.

Loved your review of Under the Dome. I haven't read it yet, but even when King isn't at his best I still enjoy the trip he takes me on.

Ever since I became an ER reviewer last summer, I've taken on an obligation that catches up with me at the end of the month. Receiving books early (and free) is a privilege, and so I feel that I have to give serious thought to what I write. And sometimes I am just perplexed.

My current one is about political crisis in Thailand. I finished the book in January and have been chipping away at a draft of a review ever since. The topic is so big and complicated that I hardly know where to grasp it.
   (Just review the book, not the subject matter, Meredy.)
It's not that I'm afraid of revealing my ignorance
   (it would be impossible to conceal)
but that a distorted impression could be unfair both to the author and to the content.
   (He's already got the whole government of Thailand mad at him. How much harm can you really do?)
My due date is February 25, 90 days from notice of acceptance of the November batch, and I'm stewing about this one more than usual.
   (Note that putting this one off has got you caught up on all your other outstanding reviews.)
It's worth more than the minimalist six-word treatment, and yet without a framework in which to place it, I'm having a real struggle composing any sort of intelligent remark about it.
   (In a pinch, will this count as a review?)
   (No.)
On the other hand, some reviews have taken weeks, even months to come together. Very few actually just roll off the keyboard.
   (And the point is--?)
Public commitment, I guess. Now I have to finish this one by the 25th. Even if no one is waiting for it.
   (Or else the ER police are going to come and take you away....)

Are the ER police a branch of the LT thugs?

>43 Meredy: - Really though, they don't take you away. You just get put lower on the algorithm to receive new books until you review the old one.

When I first started participating in the ER program, I requested any and all books which I thought might possibly interest me. Now I may go months without requesting because I only request books I'm sure I want to read. It's a matter of time for reading in my case. Although I do take more time with my ER reviews, I don't sweat it, but then, your reviews are quite beyond the depth that I ever achieve. :) The joys of being an amateur!

A Kingdom in Crisis: Thailand's Struggle for Democracy in the Twenty-First Century (2014), by Andrew MacGregor Marshall (4 stars)

(an Early Reviewer review)

Six-word review: Story behind potentially explosive political drama.

Extended review:

I don't want to insult the author of this book or his subject by speaking of them as if I had the knowledge and authority to comment. I haven't. Apart from an interest in the twentieth-century history of Southeast Asia and a greater-than-average amount of reading on the subject (especially in reference to Cambodia and North Korea), I have no qualifications for discussing this subject. I hope that by acknowledging my relative ignorance up front I may be forgiven whatever lapses my ignorance may cause me to commit.

I am, at least, aware that a major drama is playing out in Thailand, where a weak and dying king with a shadow over his own past still holds nominal rule over a fractured, suffering nation whose threatened collapse has incalculable ripple effects for the region and the world.

King Bhumibol of Thailand can't live much longer, if indeed he's still alive. Also known as Rama IX, of the Chakri dynasty, he is now 87 years old, the oldest living monarch, and he has reigned since 1946. In recent years, ill and depressed, he's been withdrawn from government, hospitalized and largely nonfunctional. There's reason to believe that some would want to conceal news of his death for as long as possible; so at least a particle of doubt exists as to whether he has already passed on. At any rate, once his death occurs and becomes known, there will be upheaval in this southeast Asian nation of some 67 million people.

The passing or abdication of any monarch causes a certain amount of turmoil as the nation makes its transition. Even an orderly, publicly anticipated change of an elected government by established procedures involves some disruption. In Thailand we should expect chaos.

There is a natural successor to the throne of Bhumibol, his only son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn. For this reason some say that succession is not an issue. But the king's son is hugely unpopular, and the question of who can and will influence and control him is central to the conflict.

My current information comes from a book entitled Kingdom in Crisis, written by a journalist who is said to have taken great risks by telling the truth about the state of affairs in Thailand. In so doing he has not only broken societal taboos but violated explicit Thai legal prohibitions against making any public comment touching the royal family that strays from the officially sanctioned narrative. Marshall's story strays considerably.

These are some of the major points that I extracted from the book; if they are inaccurately understood or expressed, the fault is mine and not the author's:

•  Most of Thailand's so-called history is a fairy tale, revised as often as necessary to support the mythology of the ruling class.
•  Despite having become a constitutional monarchy many decades ago, Thailand's gestures toward democracy are mostly show. The powerful appear to support it when supporting it serves their interests.
•  Regardless of the nominal system, Thailand is controlled by a few families of the elite, powerful, and fabulously wealthy; the role of the people is to supply taxes and labor.
•  The royal succession IS the crisis, whatever others may say. And that crisis is not in the future; it is well under way and has been for a decade.
•  A key player is one Thaksin, a former prime minister whose power with respect to the monarchy and the ruling elite is the sword that divides the country.
•  The country has undergone several uprisings and is currently under military control.
•  The dark shadow of a terrible secret has hung over Bhumibol's entire reign: namely, that Bhumibol gained the throne by killing his older brother, possibly accidentally, when they were both youngsters.
•  Among the people who consider themselves royalists, their devotion is not actually loyalty to monarchy per se so much as it is a learned, long-imbued worship of Bhumibol himself, who at one time (with his beautiful queen Sirikit) were seen almost as gods. This dedicated affection does not extend to the crown prince.

When King Bhumibol dies, there will be crisis, there will be casualties, and there will be fascinated and possibly horrified spectators. Even if we in the West don't take any direct hits, we'll be seeing the news as it unfolds. A few minutes of broadcast coverage in an average nightly news lineup is not going to yield any understanding of a situation as complex as this one. Marshall's book supplies indispensable context and interpretation for anyone who would like to understand a fraction of what's going on.

I'm aware that we're talking about real people here, but I'm going to pretend I'm not. Being king of a country means you're going to be thought of and spoken of as something other than a flesh-and-blood human being whose bodily functions are the same as everyone else's and who either likes or doesn't like jazz and football and broccoli. It's not for want of empathy for someone whose misfortune it is to be born in the shadow of a throne; it's only that the present subject is the welfare of a society—and its effects on the global society—and not the career of an ordinary man.

As an interested reader, I found the author's language clear and his well-documented reasoning persuasive. I'm ready enough to believe everything he says, having neither the knowledge nor the framework to evaluate what he's written.

Those who already have an interest in Thailand's government and its place on the world stage should find this book strikingly and perhaps even shockingly informative. Those who are new to the subject will discover a deeper and more complex tale of power and intrigue than we typically meet in fiction. Whether out of a genuine interest in understanding a contemporary political drama as it plays out before us or just out of curiosity about the real story behind a frequently romanticized and very ancient Asian nation, readers of A Kingdom in Crisis now have access to a story that many influential people would like to prevent being told.

I would say that you have more than adequately fulfilled your ER obligation, and with four days to spare! The book looks interesting, even though modern Asian politics is a subject that I have never explored.

>39 Sakerfalcon: I hope you enjoy it. I've now got The Singer's Gun from the library.

>42 heathn: Thanks. I have to remember to look around and see if anybody else had the same take on it.

>44 suitable1: I think they're a special ops branch.

>45 MrsLee: I wasn't really scared. Really. I wasn't. I've just always had a love-hate relationship with deadlines, and I can't seem to take the keep-it-simple approach to most of my reviews--a skill I find enviable.

I never request more than one or two ER books at a time, though, just in case I end up with more than one. So far I've been lucky: one and only one selection awarded each month.

Oh, and...

>47 SylviaC: Thanks. That was nothing compared with my race to the finish line at the end of December, posting something like eight reviews in two or three days. Self-imposed deadlines are just as stringent. Well, almost. Usually.

The book was indeed interesting, and it plays curiously alongside the ER I'm on now, which would seem superficially to have nothing in common with it: Finding Zero. So far quite fascinating.

>49 Meredy: Oh, that looks good!

Two Graves (2012), by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Personally motivated, Pendergast goes into overdrive.

Extended review:

The conclusion of the "Helen" trilogy is more like a B movie than most of the others I've read so far in the Pendergast series (this is number 12). It boasts a full complement of murder, mystery, and mayhem, maybe even overfull. Special Agent Pendergast must overcome a Holmes-like malaise and launch himself into a remote destination in order to penetrate the heart of a dastardly Nazi plot for world domination. Special effects include not only bursts of gore and hails of bullets but violent explosions and, yes, flight and pursuit through dark, watery underground tunnels.

We meet hitherto unknown members of Pendergast's family, learn the full extent of the terrible secrets his late wife had concealed from him, and discover an aspect of Pendergast's character that has not been seen before.

There are also a couple of bizarre subplots that one might expect to see come together at some point, but they don't. Fodder for future episodes, I'm guessing.

All this crazed adventure is borderline corny, verging on self-parody; and yet by now I know the series well enough to regard it as just part of the fun. Despite some superficial (and probably not accidental) similarities to Sherlock Holmes, Aloysius Pendergast is more like a Bruce Willis action-movie character, albeit with a heaping dose of class and a limitless bankroll.

I'm still following.

I'd just like to whisper an aside to the authors: No, I'm not expecting literature when I read your books; but please go look up "nexus" in the dictionary and stop using it as if it meant "crux." Also please use the search function to notice how many instances you have of someone or something "sporting" something, as in "The village sported stuccoed buildings" (page 344), "most sported classic Nordic looks" (page 346), and "Many of the buildings sported window boxes" (page 347), and replace at least half of them. (You might also check the frequency of "gingerly.") And while I'm at it, I'm tired of seeing "dogleg" (or "doglegged") in place of "corner" or "angle."

That's all. Thank you. Carry on.

*wince* As a writer, I hate it when I realize I've gotten a word stuck in my head and have unconsciously used it far too many times. Thank the FSM for eagle-eyed copy editors.

Postscript to my review of A Kingdom in Crisis above:

A brief item in this week's Time magazine (March 9, 2015, page 11) says:

CENSORSHIP. A court in Thailand sentenced two activists to 30 months in prison on Feb. 23 for "damaging the monarchy" in a student play they staged in 2013 about a fictional King [sic]. The ruling military junta says enforcing Thailand's strict law against insulting the monarch is a national priority.

Just how seriously this law is taken in Thailand is discussed in frank terms in the introduction to Marshall's book. He says that the reason foreign journalists' reports about Thailand tend not to make sense of the situation there is that no one can write truthfully about Thai politics and recent history without breaking Thai law. Truth is no defense.

As the Time item shows, even fiction is no defense.

>52 Marissa_Doyle: Oh, my dear: you want to know about the Hermetic Word Frequency Counter. I use it even when I'm working on a piece of only 1500 words, and I've used it on a client's 350-page novel. Just about everyone I've ever edited gets runs on words, and I always root them out. But this tool will do it for you.

Even as a reader (not getting paid to spot lapses), I'll notice as common a word as "gingerly" even if it occurs only twice in a full-length book. I won't call it out, but it will bother me a little. However, an attention-getting novelty such as "inchoate" is overused if it appears more than once, no matter how long the book is. (And it had better be used correctly. If the author fished it out of a thesaurus and doesn't have a full, nuanced grasp of it, he or she is better off not using it at all.)

I'm always interested in the connections I find among books, especially books read simultaneously or consecutively, and especially-especially when you might never expect to find any commonality between them. They tend to illuminate one another in unexpected ways.

I've just read We Need New Names followed by The Singer's Gun (both very good). Both include a major theme of immigrants to the U.S. who are here illegally and can't go home for a visit because they would never be allowed back in. Now I've begun The Bellwether Revivals and note that one of the main characters is a cello player. One of the main characters in The Singer's Gun is also a cellist. These threads are sheer coincidence, but they still cast light and shadows that enhance a sense of the book's dimensions.

That is fun when it occurs serendipitously, isn't it? I have Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy and Reveille in Washington through two different avenues (and without any conscious interest in reading about the Civil War), but now both are sitting on my ottoman.

Yes--and sometimes even a bit creepy. (Actually, The Bellwether Revivals was creepy all the way through.)

And in another odd correspondence, I've just begun Without You There Is No Us, a nonfiction work about North Korea--my fourth or fifth book on the subject. The narrator explains first what it was like immigrating to the U.S. from South Korea at age 13 and the effect on her of the loss of the homeland, culture, and language she'd been born to. That's exactly the situation of the first-person narrator of We Need New Names, who came to the U.S. from Zimbabwe at the age of 13.

Off topic, and why not? I've just watched Quartet on Netflix, and for once I don't care whether the movie was actually good or bad--I simply loved it. I replayed the quartet at the end (the quartet, from Rigoletto) three times. It's always been one of my utterly favorite pieces from all of opera, and this particular performance (sung by Sutherland, Pavarotti, Milnes, and a mezzo I don't know, Huguette Tourangeau) was breathtaking: amber, crystal, velvet, gold.

>58 Meredy: We enjoyed that one a lot too.

>58 Meredy:, >59 Jim53: I had no idea it would be opera music, I had a vague idea it would be classic rock that they sang. Was a little concerned that the folks that I drug with me to see it would be put off by the music. Come to think of it, I don't remember whether they were or not. Regardless, amazing music throughout and Maggie Smith, too! Happy sigh in remembrance.

I think this is the version used in the movie soundtrack, at the end, over the closing credits:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HknAWa0br50

The storyline itself is rather corny, preposterous, and a mite too precious, but I didn't care. The music throughout is glorious. It's not all opera: there's some instrumental, some Gilbert and Sullivan, and even some music hall. I enjoyed every bit of it.

We saw that with my mother-out-law (a trained soprano) and thoroughly enjoyed it. As you say, it's pretty corny, but I felt it rose above itself with the music and the charm of the cast.

Oh, dear, I'm in trouble again. I haven't reviewed a single book that I read in March, including two by Emily St. John Mandel (both good), and I owe an ER review. I seem to be in input mode right now; my output device is stuck. Or rather, it's the software of the device manager that's stuck. I'm having trouble coping with "gottas" right now, and I guess overdue reviews have become gottas. Gotta change my head on that.

Good luck with catching up, Meredy. I'm having the opposite problem--so busy with output that I've had very little time to read over the last month.

>64 Marissa_Doyle: To that I can only say hats off: congratulations. Nothing feels better than being productive in your chosen art, and I know what a formidable task a writer faces even when it's going well. Thanks for your good wishes, and here are mine for you:

>58 Meredy:

That's a gorgeous and very famous version of Rigoletto; one of the best Bonynge-Sutherland productions. Pavarotti in his prime, Sutherland's magnificent vocal bling compensating for her emotional humbug, Milnes in a signature role, Tourangeau formidable--and even the smaller cast featured Kiri Te Kanawa in her golden mellow-voiced youth and--personal favourite--the giant, unique Martti Talvela as Sparafucile.

I loved this opera so much, I loved the many many transcriptions, spoofs, parodies, homages etc. almost as much. Here's one brilliant example, the Delta Rhythm Boys harmonising precisely on the quartet from the third act (the recording's from mid-1940s so the sound's not perfect--they did record this favourite more than once but this costumed early version is most interesting):

Rigoletto Blues

>66 LolaWalser: That was wonderful! A thoroughgoing parody by gifted artists and not mean-spirited in the least. Do you agree with me that Verdi would have loved it--I mean falling-off-the-chair-wildly-cheering loved it?

There was a simple piano version of the quartet in a book I used to play from as a kid, long before I ever heard a performance. So this music has just always been there for me. Your description of the Bonynge-Sutherland version shines.

>67 Meredy:

You know, I think he would--at least I would hope so. He doesn't seem to have been a light-hearted type and he suffered from depression, but I think he would have always known to recognise and enjoy admiration.

Rembrandt’s Nose: Of Flesh and Spirit in the Master’s Portraits (2007), by Michael Taylor (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Central feature defines Rembrandt's compelling portraiture.

Extended review:

Through discussion and analysis of 49 of Rembrandt's images, both etchings and paintings, author Taylor draws attention to how the subject's nose in Rembrandt's treatments creates dimensionality and expresses artistic ideas. Much has been written about Rembrandt's handling of light and shadow, but this author's estimation of the importance of the nose in relation to light and shadow in his portraits claims to be original. In any event it is, if I may say so, illuminating.

Even though the reproductions here are all small and sepia-toned (apart from the full-color endpapers), there's enough clarity in them to support the text. I've spent a lot of time in the past few days looking up these and other images online and studying them enlarged and in color.

Taylor's prose is easygoing and accessible while still imparting insight. With surprisingly few words, he places his studies in the context both of the art world inhabited by Rembrandt and of the artist's own life. He traces the changing themes and style of Rembrandt's renderings of faces from the earliest to the last while paying special attention to the constants that hold throughout. I appreciated the tenderness with which Taylor reflects on Rembrandt's treatment of elderly subjects and how his self-portraits evolve as he becomes one himself.

I've been a museumgoer since I was a little girl, and I love the Dutch Masters more than anything--even the Impressionists; if I could see the works of only one place and period forevermore, they would be my choice. This small book came as a revelation to me. I'm currently taking a portraiture class conducted by a fine artist who is a demanding taskmaster. With the enhanced vision acquired from examining Rembrandt's works with Taylor's commentary in mind, I will be approaching tomorrow's class very differently from those of the past three months. Specifically, I will be aiming to overcome my fear of using too much shadow and focusing on how I might follow Rembrandt's example in seeing and depicting the model's nose. Could this be the key to that elusive effect of volume and vitality? We'll see; I hope someone with my small skills can still make use of it.

At the very least, I am aware of seeing differently, and that alone is a worthwhile result.

The Understory (2007), by Pamela Erens (3 stars)

Six-word review: Eccentric loner faces challenges to survival.

Extended review:

I read this small book because it was recommended for people who liked Stoner. I loved Stoner. I did not love this.

It's the story of Jack Gorse, a disturbed individual--and what a popular theme that is these days! what endless metaphors for a sick society!--who faces eviction from his Manhattan apartment and finds himself irresistibly drawn to the young architect who is sent out to photograph the building. The story is divided between Jack's ritualistic daily routine of walks around the city and his eventual flight to Vermont to take refuge in a Zen monastery where Patrick, the architect, had once been a resident.

The real story, of course, is the inner one: the mental and emotional state of the man, his delusions, his obsessions and fixations, and especially his attachment to Patrick. He stalks Patrick with all the guile and single-minded persistence of a Golyadkin or a Charles Kinbote. And even while we recoil from his too-close pursuit, we can sympathize with the lonely, needy imagination that impels it. Jack is at once an alien being that we want to shy away from and the hidden self that fears deep down that it deserves to be rejected. We are involuntary eavesdroppers on Jack's interior monologue. Here he is at the used bookstore he always visits on his walk:

Each morning, before I settled in, I checked each shelf to see if anything had been sold since the day before. Carl's business was not brisk, and there were days when he did not appear to have sold a single book. This comforted me. I took an almost proprietary interest in his stock, and it pained me to find anything missing. So I would go down each row, scanning the familiar spines, stopping if I spied a gap. There, in U.S. History: a book called The Indian Wars had vanished. It was always possible that a careless customer had put it back in the wrong place, or that Carl had sent it out for rebinding. But more likely it was gone for good. I ran my finger over the row, wincing as I passed the closed-up spot. It was like feeling a phantom limb. (page 110)

Attachment, clinging, and loss in large ways and small are the very causes of suffering that Jack might have learned about as a sincere student of Zen; but he is not a sincere student. Rather, the zendo and monastery are nothing but means to an end, to get something he wants.

Jack is a pathetic specimen, his wants and needs gaping, his story poignant; and yet there is a resiliency, a canny knack for survival, that we can't deny.

So why isn't this short novel more compelling? Why don't I love it?

It's not so easy to cite a reason. I've read books with no more story than this, books with weaker style, books with less complex characters and with similar environments, that somehow resonated more with me. They seemed to go deeper while at the same time not taking themselves quite so seriously. There's a similarity to Firmin, for example, but without its quirky premise, its humor, and its cheerful, unapologetic moments of vulgarity. But the writing is fine enough, rich enough, that I feel I ought to like it better.

Do I suspect that the author herself really doesn't love her character? Possibly.

The gap between this work and Stoner seems immense to me. Perhaps the crucial difference is in the focal character himself. Stoner has an integrity that Jack does not. Both are lone beings driven by inner passions, but Stoner is not narcissistic, does not indulge in self-justification, and does not impose his demands on others. He possesses a moral soundness that is exactly what Jack lacks--Jack who, even as a youngster, malingered in order to hold hostage a young friend who'd visited him throughout his illness. Stoner is humble and yet quietly self-sufficient, never acting entitled to serve himself and his own interests at the expense of others; ultimately what we see in him is not turmoil but serenity. Jack's desperation and his craving are real, but that is not enough to compel affection, either Patrick's or mine. Unlike Stoner, he never becomes a person whom I would like to know.

In the end, I don't hope he gets what he wants. That seems to me to be a fatal flaw.

Finding Zero: A Mathematician's Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers (2015), by Amir D. Aczel (3 stars)

(an Early Reviewer review)

Six-word review: The drive to seek, find, know.

Extended review:

This is not a book about mathematics. It's the story of a quest, of a man on a mission to satisfy a personal desire as much as to solve a great mystery of the past.

An all-consuming question about the history of human intelligence and abstract thought drives the author's lifelong search. His goal is to locate the birthplace of the concept of number and especially of the number zero. For Aczel, this is not some bodiless mental pursuit but a thrilling intellectual and geographical quest for a historical moment of invention that stands alone among peak human achievements.

That the odyssey is a personal one is made plain by the structure of the book. It begins and ends with the author's connection to the man who set him on his course, a man whose own history lies in the shadows but whose enthusiasm for the ideas behind the numbers that are so familiar to us excited and inspired a young boy. In the course of his search for the ancient roots of mathematical understanding, the author sees links to religion and philosophy and especially to Buddhism, with its core concept of emptiness--shunyata. Here he refers to a passage in Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh's writing about the Buddhist idea of the void:

As I concentrated on these notions, I came to believe that I could even read the quoted verses above as saying: existence = 1, nonexistence = -1, and emptiness = 0. Emptiness was the door from nonexistence to existence, in the same way that zero was the conduit [sic] from positive to negative numbers, one set being a perfect geometrical reflection of the other along the number line. (page 106)

If this is mathematics, it's also mysticism; and the overlapping and merging of arbitrarily separated disciplines is one of the themes of this book.

It's not the discoveries but the passion that is the subject of this account; not the numbers but the zeal. An individual commits himself to a goal, and an ineffable something in him impels him to persevere and not give up. His hunger for the answer draws him on; his persistence and unflagging excitement infuse his tale, and that's what draws us on as readers.

If his ascription of supernatural significance to such things as the label number of the sought-after archeological artifact ventures over into woo woo territory, well, that might be one of the reasons for a moderate rating. That his approach and his narrative are not strictly rational simply confirms that this is not a book about math.

We Need New Names (2013), by NoViolet Bulawayo (4 stars)

Six-word review: Zimbabwe girl adapts to American life.

Extended review:

There's no way I can describe this book that isn't going to result in distortion. I hope I don't do it an injustice by trying.

It's not that my comments simplify too much. It's that I can't simplify enough.

Here we have a novel characterized by such a feeling of raw authenticity that it's hard to believe any of it is made up; but it would grossly devalue the author's command of her subject matter and her medium to suggest that--even if it were all literally, objectively factual--it was rendered with anything less than artistry. That would be like saying, "What's so special about a Rembrandt or a Vermeer? He just painted what was in front of him."

In Emily St. John Mandel's novel The Singer's Gun, the focal character ponders "the most obvious, possibly even the most important question you could ever ask anyone--How were you formed? What forged you?" (page 47). The answer to that same question is the core of Bulawayo's novel.

The first half of the book takes place in Zimbabwe, a suffering nation burdened by poverty, disease, despair, and political chaos. As a child and a young girl, Darling understands her environment and knows how to live in it. She has her tight circle of friends, children as savvy as she, whose daring expeditions, appearing lawless, reckless, and wild, are necessary for survival.

At the age of 13 she moves to Michigan to live with her aunt, and she must learn all over again how to live.

The expectation of a better life in America is quickly smothered by the reality of being a stranger in a strange land, ignorant of the language and the culture and lacking the means to rise above the most menial sort of work. Is the gain of a chance to make it in the U.S. worth the loss of friends and family and the sense of knowing who she is, of being where she belongs?

Bulawayo's narrative is enriched by startling, evocative figures of speech, perhaps only possible for someone writing in a second language that is profoundly different from her mothertongue. Here is an example chosen almost at random, by flipping the pages:

Because we were not in our country, we could not use our own languages, and so when we spoke our voices came out bruised. When we talked, our tongues thrashed madly in our mouths, staggered like drunken men. Because we were not using our languages we said things we did not mean; what we really wanted to say remained folded inside, trapped. In America we did not always have the words. It was only when we were by ourselves that we spoke in our real voices. When we were alone we summoned the horses of our language and mounted their backs and galloped past skyscrapers. Always, we were reluctant to come back down. (page 242)

The themes of friendship, family bonds, disappointed expectations, loss, adaptation, and survival are all expressed within a cultural context that is very far from what most of us know and understand. I won't insult the author by imagining that I understand it. But perhaps I have gained something in sensitivity to what it means to cross that divide.

>72 Meredy: That one is going on my wishlist. I'm so glad you take the time to review these books, because you do it so well, even when you don't like them. I marvel at your talent.

>73 MrsLee: That's so generous of you. Thank you. Very little of my writing has ever been published, and I've pretty much given up on completing a novel, so I put a lot of creative energy into my reviews.

>72 Meredy:

Reviews that make you want to read the book even when she doesn't like it.

Lexicon (2013), by Max Barry (4 stars)

Six-word review: Power of words, power of emotions.

Extended review:

It might not seem like it, but this is a book about love.

To be sure, it's also a cerebral thriller, an action tale with words at its center, a picture of an alternate society with enough crossover into the world as we know it (but do we? do we?) to tantalize with what-ifs. It traverses some of the linguistic territory covered so fascinatingly in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, though in an altogether different way.

But love. Love is it, ultimately. The story, the driver, the theme. The question and the answer.

Not that language doesn't come in for a major share of attention, enough to satisfy the language-loving reader on several levels, from the author's craftsmanship to the speculative premise of word as the thing of ultimate power. Here's a random example of Barry's smoothly evocative prose: "He righted a fallen chair and composed himself into it" (page 376).

One character enlightens another with this provocative definition of language, as well as the vulnerability that furnishes the basis of the plot:

"Words aren't just sounds or shapes. They're meaning. That's what language is: a protocol for transferring meaning. When you learn English, you train your brain to react in a particular way to particular sounds. As it turns out, the protocol can be hacked." (page 169)

Ideas about words, the use and abuse of words, and the magic of words have been a constant presence in my life since early childhood, formed the foundation of my career, and continue to occupy and entertain me in retirement. This book not only explores that realm from a fresh angle but introduces some concepts that were new to me. This, possibly, is why I liked it so much.

We are not by any means looking at perfection here. This novel is not (and does not aspire to be) deeply literary. And it has some flaws in the execution of its own plan. In the last quarter of the book, for example, I found the time sequences difficult to track and lost the connections among events several times, even though the plot structure is far less complex than, say, that of Station Eleven. I never did see an explanation for the surgery that was going on in the opening scene. I took points off for "Nahuati" (page 155), which should have been "Nahuatl", for "leech" instead of "leach" (page 299), and for saying "you could not underestimate Eliot" (page 374) when the author meant that you could not overestimate him--that is, any maximum you set on his abilities would be too low; his powers were greater than you could guess. "Could not underestimate" means that no matter how little capability you saw in him, it was too much; you were bound to rate it too highly because it was so low. People seem to get that one backward all the time these days.

On the other hand, I gave bonus points for spelling "analogue" with a ue (just because I like it), for the line about language as a protocol, and for an encapsulation of the basic principle of chess that makes more sense to me than anything I've read before:

She had been taught chess at the school, years ago, and the point was the pieces differed only in their attacking power. They were all equally easy to kill . . . The lesson was that you should be cautious about deploying your most powerful pieces, because it only required one dumb pawn to take them down. (page 164)

I'm not a chess player, but I learned the basics long ago and well enough to understand this analogy.

The story: A young woman who knows how to survive on street smarts is recruited by a clandestine organization whose most elite agents are dubbed poets. If she can withstand the rigors of their training program, she will become a wielder of words as literal weapons. Where this experience takes her is utterly unexpected as the craft of her former street life is multiplied by the esoteric skills she masters in the program. Meanwhile, a young man who seems somehow immune to the effects of weaponized language is caught in the crossfire of an organizational split. The deadly conflict is tied up with the history of a small, remote Australian town that was obliterated in a single day by an epidemic of unspeakable violence. And yes, this is all about love.

The Bellwether Revivals (2012), by Benjamin Wood (3 stars)

Six-word review: Youth exerts strange power over friends.

Extended review:

From the beginning, The Bellwether Revivals has a creepy Tana French feel. In fact, the story of an outsider who joins a group of five friends with a pronounced strangeness about them, friends who share some mystic bond and engage in unusual ritual practices, is more than a little reminiscent of The Likeness.

The story takes off in an altogether different direction, however; the similarity is more one of atmosphere than of plot and character, although in both there is a dominant figure whose exceptional qualities rule the group. In the present case, an almost unearthly charisma gives rise to a collective delusion, with traumatic results.

Even though I'd place this one several notches below The Likeness on the scale for style, execution, characterization, and polish, I think it's likely to appeal to very similar readerly tastes. The dynamic among strikingly different personalities and the way they complement one another, and the effects that occur as a newcomer attempts to fit in, drive the plot to an unexpected outcome with an otherworldly feel.

The main character, Oscar, does not make much of an impression; he is more like the host of the drama, the pretext that brings the reader in, than a central figure. As such, he is not especially memorable. I liked the treatment of several secondary characters and an odd subplot, which, however, never really answers all my questions.

In sum, I liked it well enough, and it held my attention through 405 pages despite a number of copyediting lapses, which of course I marked; but I don't consider it a standout.

And I'm always going to hold something back from an author who writes "Woah."

>76 Meredy: I drop by after a while away, and immediately take a bullet!

>78 Jim53: Just one, Jim? Whoa, that's a lot of misses. (Nice to see you here.)

>75 suitable1: And when you do--do you like them?

>79 Meredy:

Didn't say that I actually read them, rather the review makes one want to read them.

I've been on a technical book kick lately.

>78 Jim53: I know. I popped in to catch up, and I'm bleeding all over. 2 direct hits before I found cover!

Me and Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald (2010), by Judyth Vary Baker (3 stars)

Six-word review: Lover and beloved, loser and lost.

Very extended review:

It's not very often that my main feeling upon completing a book is relief--not that the story turned out all right, but that it's over. Usually if I'm finding it a real push to finish a book, I don't. But at some point in this 600-page tome, grim determination set in, so I toughed it out to the end. It was a real test of endurance. I longed to get it over with, but I couldn't slog through more than 25 or 30 pages at a sitting. It seemed to take a very long time.

And you know what? It wasn't worth it.

Willingly suspending disbelief is one thing; having credulity pummeled to death is another.

It's a stretch to call this opus nonfiction. If it weren't for the data points that jibe with fact, however, I don't think it would have held anyone's attention; marketed strictly as fiction, it would have been a ponderous bore. It's only the tantalizing possibilities that give this tale any traction at all.

I knew the basic scenario--who doesn't? I was in high school in 1963 and clearly remember JFK's assassination and its aftermath. President Kennedy was killed in November of that year, and the alleged assassin was one Lee Harvey Oswald, of New Orleans, Moscow, and elsewhere. This narrative purports to be a private history of the summer of 1963, in which (it is claimed) the accused perpetrator conducted a passionate, adulterous affair with the author of this book, then a 19-year-old newlywed from Florida who had supposedly been inducted into a deep circle of secrets on account of her vastly superior talent and knowledge of lab work with cancerous cells. Oswald, she claims, was innocent, a patsy, a CIA operative cut loose and set up by the real CIA baddies and their Mafia pals. And, says she, he was also the love of her life, who had planned to leave his family and run away with her to Mexico just as soon as his loyally heroic attempt to stop the assassination in Dallas was over.

Which obviously failed and ended with his ignominious death two days later on live national television, gunned down by a man she says was his old friend.

A single example of the preposterous character of this yarn might not suffice, but it does tell plenty: Judyth says (page 113) that she met Lee as they were standing together in line at a post office in New Orleans and she dropped a casual remark in Russian to a random attractive stranger, who just happened to be a recently returned former U.S. Marine who had defected to the USSR and then undefected. He knew Russian well and responded with a warning that speaking Russian in New Orleans was not a good idea. Later she tries to suggest that the meeting had been staged by powers that wanted her to meet Lee. Sound plausible? Ok, sure, then so does the rest.

Here's a case where a length of 600 pages (plus index) not only seems like but is far more. This oversize trade paperback, 6" x 9" and 1 1/4" thick, has the worst book design I think I've ever seen: scant 1/2" margins routinely broken by sidebars, insets, photographs, newspaper clippings, and other documentation, featuring badly reproduced photographs (on coarse, cheap stock, which does not hold images well), many with bleeds on two, three, and even four sides. Chapters are followed by long, dense chapter notes, as many as six pages of them, in the same killer 8-point sans serif as the sidebars. If all the ancillary materials had been laid out normally instead of being jammed into a layout that resembles the ruthless technique of an old-fashioned high school yearbook team, they could easily have added a hundred pages.

I'm not going to go into a point-by-point rebuttal or citation of errors and inconsistencies. Plenty of others with real axes to grind have done that and posted their findings on various websites. I don't know the truth about JFK's death, and maybe no one now living does. But I'm a competent enough reader to see that the mind-numbing detail and profuse documentation of Baker's story are irrelevant: they don't support the contention. Even if a person can produce pay stubs and bus tickets from half a century ago, they supply no proof of involvement with some other person, aside from her then-husband Robert, with whom she evidently shared a joint bank account.

Instead, what they show is a woman obsessed with keeping records of personal history at an astonishing level of detail, and also a person utterly enamored of the surpassing wonderfulness of herself. This woman's self-adoring preciousness is so extravagant that it doesn't even seem like ego but rather like an all-consuming appetite, an addiction. I honestly think this one could give lessons to Kim Jong Un.

Any attempt on my part to ascribe a motivation for assembling this suffocating chronicle would be irresponsible speculation; but it does invite these neutral observations:

• Assuming that all those reproduced newspaper clippings and other forms of recognition are genuine, Judyth Baker, née Vary, received an enormous amount of attention in her youth from the press, award-granting bodies, prominent researchers, and institutions. Whether it should have been enough to gratify anyone's hunger for celebrity, I can't say.
• Again assuming the accuracy of the reports (including some uncorroborated self-reports), young Judyth was lauded and showered with honors for her creativity, industriousness, persistence--her sheer genius, in fact--and credited with world-class breakthroughs in scientific research and experimentation.
• By her self-reports, she also enjoyed dazzling popularity among her school peers, with no end of admirers clamoring to be her favored beau and a stunning amount of virtuous self-control.
• If one were looking for an explanation for why her potentially brilliant career never materialized either academically or professionally, this story of clandestine operations, deadly secrets, and mortal danger would supply a justification.
• It can be thrilling to be or have been engaged in a secret love affair, especially one as sweetly intense as the author claims this one to be.
• An imagined memory can be as vivid as a real one.
• Judyth's alleged partner in her self-confessed romantic liaison has been dead for more than fifty years and cannot refute her assertions or respond to them in any way.
• A surprising number of other possible corroborators of her account either are dead or have disappeared, never to be heard from again. And some just don't remember things the way she does.
• Telling (and retelling) the tale has been good for a lot more attention.

Significantly, the book is not titled "Lee and I" or even "Lee and Me." First and foremost, it's about Judyth.

It's a curious thing about Baker's reminiscences. At several points in the book she claims to have an exceptional memory; here, for example, in chapter note 5 (page 462):

Getting lost all the time has kept me humble when I've been praised for my poetry, paintings, for my nearly eidetic memory of the past, or for my encyclopedic compendium of knowledge.

(Note the "humble" part, which seems laughable in itself.) Yet suddenly on page 500, 504, and 510 she's claiming fuzzy recollection because details have faded and memory can be peculiar. This is about the most important summer of her life, remember; in contrast to which, for long stretches of earlier time she reports the particulars of strings of consecutive days with practically minute-by-minute recitals of her doings, with never a mention of journal-keeping or any other aid to reconstruction.

A little poking around the Internet brought me to a wealth of related websites, some promoting her story and some debunking it. Among them I found this interesting revelation (here: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/judyth.htm):

In the first place, the line between fantasy and reality can be much more slippery than most of us assume. Judyth, for example, has stated that: "Dr. [Joseph] Reihl was the first one to gently suggest how to retrieve so many of my repressed memories, memories I had planned to take to the grave."

The notion that a person has memories that are "repressed" and can be "recovered" is radically suspect in the eyes of modern social science. The "recovered" memories often turn out to be fantasies – which however come to be believed.

Along similar lines, she has asserted "the writing of this book, including the reconstruction of the telephone calls I received . . . is based on principles I learned at the feet of Luis Urrea, 1999 American Book Award winner. . . ." She goes on to say, "[i]n Urrea's 'Creative Non fiction' courses taught at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, I learned how to better recreate my memories into the most accurate reconstruction of the actual events. Urrea's creative nonfiction works successfully bring to life his own extraordinary experiences, and include reconstructed dialogues. I have used Urrea's methods in reconstructing the events between April and December of 1963 in that same manner."

So that is apparently what we have here: creative nonfiction. Emphasis on the creative, all right.

Acknowledging that approach within the book would have made it a whole lot more palatable; but instead, the massive quantities of data are presented as recitals of fact, as if they were testimony drawn from exhaustive note-taking and journaling.

I found the bounds of belief stretched too far well before reaching the 100-page mark, by which time we'd already been treated to impressive quantities of anecdotes recounting not only Judyth's exemplary personal life but also her matchless scientific prowess, evinced by numerous interventions on her deserving behalf by high-powered figures from state governors and U.S. senators to educators, researchers, and heads of prestigious medical institutions. Here's one of many passages that rang false to me:

I was at the peak of my physical attractiveness, and due to some good looks, my natural ability to get along with the opposite sex, and my unrestrained joy at having escaped months of tyrannical isolation, I welcomed the attentions of a rather large group of smart young male suitors. (page 88)

By her own account, this girl is a prodigy not only in art, poetry, athletics, drama, science, and languages but also in beauty, personality, and popularity. I've deleted all the facetious and sarcastic comments I inserted at this point in my commentary, and instead I'll just ask: do goddesses of this order really talk about themselves this way, or does it sound more like a fantasy to you?

To me the entire work sounds less like a revelation of deep secrets of international import and more like the highly embellished fantasy--or delusion--of a woman who longed for adventure, intrigue, and romance, and, perhaps more, who wanted to justify her failure to fulfill her early promise.

At the very least, if it's an elaborate fiction, an incredible amount of effort went into it, with enough entertainment value to be worth a few stars as a curiosity. True or false, it seems to be the labor of love--and self-love is, after all, love, is it not?--of a self-aggrandizing exhibitionist whose appetite for attention is literally insatiable.

But if you're going to write fiction, I say make it good. You have to play by fiction's rules. You can't just gush about how awesome you are and how much somebody adores you. That is not enough to make a fantastic story plausible, not even with fifty-year-old bus tickets and pay stubs and everything.

Here's a little story. As an adult I was briefly in touch with a former classmate on whom I'd once had a huge secret crush. Turned out, to our mutual surprise and bemused regret, that back then he'd had a secret crush on me too. But we'd never got together. However, just to indulge in a little taste of what might have been, we jointly rewrote a memory of a time when we might have connected (innocently, of course, as youngsters), but didn't, as if we really had. We anchored it with just enough factuality to make it plausible. And guess what: that constructed false incident now inhabits my memory alongside the real and less pleasing one, just as if it had actually happened. I don't confuse the two, and I know the made-up experience is made up, but it has the same vivid quality in memory as the actual and inconsequential nonevent, much as a dream can leave a lasting impression. If I had been passionately committed to believing and propounding that fiction as true personal history, complete with repurposed mementoes, and perhaps a bolstered self-image thrown in, how real might it not seem to me? and how convincingly mightn't I be able to talk and write about it?

In the end, I thought the book was a washout. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny or even gentle questions. Cherishing an old piece of green glassware does not prove that it was given to you by anyone, never mind a president's putative assassin.

I know, it's my own fault for reading a book like this in the first place. I've never read any conspiracy literature before, and I'm thinking I probably won't again. I guess I learned something, but it wasn't something about the Kennedy assassination or the alleged culprit. It was more about the power of human self-delusion and the apparently inexhaustible capacity for self-promotion. Ultimately it just seems pathetic.

Doctor Sleep (2013), by Stephen King (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Engrossing, intermittently gruesome creepy-horror story.

Extended review:

Stephen King once said of himself, "I'm the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries." Sure enough. Even though his work began to take on some deeper themes around the time he produced Pet Sematary (1983), and his style and scope have certainly matured over the years, there is still a certain Kinginess that pervades his work. And it's not the sort of quality that English majors typically have to write about in term papers. Rather, it's the sort that turns a fast read into a best-seller, with the illusion of depth that you get from a pair of facing mirrors and not from peering over the edge of a fathomless abyss.

And all this is perfectly fine. It's what we pay him for. It's what we love him for.

Doctor Sleep gives us an adult Danny Torrance, last seen as a little boy in 1977's The Shining, who has grown up with the horrendous memory of what happened at the Overlook Hotel and also with a profoundly disturbing ability to see things that are not materially present to normal sensory awareness. It turns out that there are many among us, so the story goes, who possess special powers like his, some in greater bounty than others--and also that there is a race of once-human predators who derive their sustenance from torturing children gifted with those powers. What the grown-up Danny has done with his abilities and memory is drown them in alcohol; but his bond with a young girl who has prodigious talents like his own sets him on a heroic quest to defeat the nomadic band of vampirish murderers and in the process achieve his own salvation.

This breakwrist volume is thoroughly entertaining King, with a bonus helping of an insider's grateful but not reverential insights into the workings of a twelve-step program.

I can't rank it with literature, but as a fun read for those who have a stomach for the nasty parts, it delivers what it promises. And that's a big part of what I want out of a novel: to promise and then deliver. Not all of King's work has done that, but this is one that does.

Our Game (1995), by John le Carré (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Runaway lovers launch ex-spy's investigative odyssey.

Extended review:

Love, loss, and post-Cold-War intrigue featuring ethnic conflict in the North Caucasus region of the Russian federation.

I didn't know quite what to expect from le Carré. I'd always assumed he was hardcore when it came to spy novels, which are just not my genre. And I think he pretty much is. But here there was also a large helping of inner human drama, moral conflict, soul-searching, and ultimately something like redemption to elevate this novel above the level of routine cloak-and-dagger action.

The novel is a suspenseful story of a former Cold War agent's search for his longtime friend and colleague, who has apparently run off with the agent's girlfriend. Tim Cranmer's own doubts and questions and his lack of commitment to any ideal create layers of subterfuge and deception that lure us on to try to penetrate the puzzle, both of the escapees' movements and of the character himself. His application of spy tradecraft in the service of a personal mission interested me more than a motivation based in politics or commerce, where the side you're on seems fairly arbitrary and everyone's up to the same thing.

The author draws us in artfully, just as Cranmer is drawn in. As he begins to care about obscure ethnic combatants in the mountainous reaches of the Caucasus, so do I. Off I went to learn more about the setting and the background action. I had to look up the Republic of Ingushetia, which I'd never heard of, and do some reading about its history and geography. And I studied a map of the eastern half of Russia for a while. Abstractions such as statistics and names on a map became real-seeming people and places as Cranmer pursued the fugitive couple. The subtle shifting of his goal as time progresses adds an intriguing dimension to the focal character.

The ending was unexpected and surprisingly satisfying.

The Holy Thief (1992), by Ellis Peters (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Conflict and murder over sacred relic.

Extended review:

Politics, religion, and natural disaster converge in Brother Cadfael's penultimate outing as a problem-solving monastic in twelfth-century England.

Absurd premises no longer bother me in this endearing series. I just like being at the Benedictine's elbow as he teases out truth from deception and folly from rank evil-doing.

In the present instance, a saint's reliquary is the bone of contention among a most unlikeable brother who is on a fund-raising mission for a despoiled abbey, an aristocratic landowner, and Cadfael's own abbey, where the reliquary has been in residence as a destination of pilgrimages. The object of veneration becomes lost during a move to flee rising floodwaters, and foul deeds follow.

Into the mix come a troubador and his beautiful, golden-voiced slave, a young ex-novice, a dying woman, and a musically gifted brother upon whom suspicion readily falls. Cadfael's talents are well exercised as, with the help of his friend the sheriff, he wends his way toward truth and justice.

Isn't it amazing how many bits of saints were scattered about medieval Europe? I wonder how many of them actually came from the individuals in question, and how many were fake.

The Singer's Gun (2010), by Emily St. John Mandel (4 stars)

Six-word review: Personal history, formative experiences, choices, consequences.

Extended review:

Two characters are talking in the early moments of their intimacy:

"What was it like when you were growing up?" He couldn't quite see her face in the dimness.

"You mean Brooklyn?"

"No," she said. "I mean everything."

And it struck him instantly as the most obvious, possibly even the most important question you could ever ask anyone--How were you formed? What forged you?--but no one had ever asked him that before, and for a second he found himself flailing in the dark. (page 47; italics in original)

How we become who we are is a theme in many works of fiction. Here it is made explicit and stated in words that could serve as a template for many another discussion.

What's exceptional about this instance is moral ambiguity. The author doesn't represent her character, Anton Waker, as bad or good, but just shows us why he is what he is, how he becomes what he becomes, how he goes forward from where he's been. Says his mother (page 165): "...it isn't black-and-white, what we do or what anyone else does in this world."

Mandel's balanced restraint from judgment is one of the beauties of this work.

The inner life of one or more characters is, of course, the focus of vast tracts of fiction, from the endearingly normal rustics of George Eliot to the bizarre twists of humanity in the novels of Gillian Flynn. What Emily St. John Mandel gives us with uncommon skill is characters who manage to be well off the perpendicular without becoming alien beings who are nothing like anyone we know.

Part of understanding how we become who we are is recognizing who we are. One of the principal themes of the book is identity--identity in all its senses: personal, public, private, legal, documented, unknown. There are characters for whom one or more of these are crucial issues, including one briefly but poignantly depicted character who is there only to be unidentified. One of the things I love about this author is that she does things like that--takes time in a linear narrative to glance to one side and show us a figure who might otherwise be invisible to us.

I call a traditionally structured novel linear not because it's necessarily chronological but because it goes from one end to the other like a piece of music and we read the words in succession, unlike a painting, which we may take in all at once and also study in any sequence.

Another theme is family. Family and loyalty. Family ties and ties to homeland. Loss of homeland. These are all tied up with identity.

Perhaps the strongest and most pervasive theme of this novel is work, an aspect of life that for some people is so closely linked to identity that they literally do not know who they are without it. Using the search-inside function on Amazon, I found that the word occurs 62 times in these 288 pages, or once for about every 4½ pages. Virtually every character in the book reveals dimensions of work and the working life: choices, ambition, oppressiveness, necessity, sacrifice, satisfaction, qualification, reward, loss, desperation, humiliation, power. And especially identity.

Mandel's plotting and characterization are superb, and she has a fluid, surpassingly competent style that comes across as confident ease, belying the painstaking craft that underlies her carefully structured stories. But what I find most compelling is her development and exploration of themes through the elements of character and plot, giving them a resonant quality, a depth and precision of the sort that distinguishes faceted gems from polished rocks.

This author is only in her mid-thirties, with four published novels to her credit. I can hardly wait to see what she's doing in another five or ten years. She's good.

Here are a few excerpts that illustrate what I admire in her handling of English prose:

=====(Excerpt 1)

"...a man sitting alone on a bench with his possessions in plastic bags around him, singing quietly and scattering seeds to a congregation of pigeons." (page 103)

=====(Excerpt 2)

"The wedding was a silently approaching thing, like a hurricane spiraling closer over the surface of a weather map." (page 129)

=====(Excerpt 3)

"Anton's father was willing to put down his book to have a conversation if he saw Anton hovering around, but there were two or three hours after dinner when his mother was lost to them; she read with all of herself, immersed, breathing language, and couldn't be reached until she was ready to emerge." (pp. 163-164)

The following passages were especially significant to me because I too have always thought about last moments. This is the first time I have ever met this idea in someone else's writing, capturing my perception exactly and making me feel an especially sympathetic bond with the author:

=====(Excerpt 4)

"All her life she'd paid attention to last moments--the last moment before a catastrophe, the last moment before a surprise, the last moment before you open the envelope from Columbia University in the living room in your arctic hometown with your parents standing breathless in the doorway--and she'd come to recognize last moments when she saw them. This was the last moment she could stand to go on like this." (page 102)

=====(Excerpt 5)

"Every catastrophe has a last moment just before it; as late as eight forty-four a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, it was still only a perfect bright day in New York." (page 210)

=====(End of excerpts)

Final note: I think Mandel must be irritated by the number of people who insist on referring to her as "St. John Mandel." This is how my library catalogs her books, and I have seen published references to her as if she had a double surname. The first thing on her website's bio page (here), in large bold print at the top, is the statement: "St. John's my middle name. The books go under M." It seems to me that the least we could do to show respect for an author is to get the author's name right.

>86 SylviaC: I think I've seen it said that if all the pieces of the True Cross were put together they'd form something the size of a redwood tree!

>86 SylviaC:, >88 Sakerfalcon: Knowing that timber of any age is identifiable microscopically, I wonder how many species are represented by fragments of the True Cross. I'd guess, most of whatever was relatively cheap in the Mediterranean basin, ao make that several trees of normal size.

>83 Meredy:, I got a HB copy of this on sale for less than $10, and have been holding off on reading it until after I have actually read The Shining. I've only seen the movie version. I'm glad to hear that it is one that King delivers with.

Sounds like it could make for a good double feature this October for my Halloween reading.

>90 heathn: What a great idea! That'll be good for some savory chills. I still remembered a lot of The Shining, which I'd read when it was new (and not since), but it would have been great to have it fresh in my mind. I think the book is much better than the movie, although Nicholson certainly squeezed every available drop out of the role, and then some.

That book has the distinction of being the only novel I ever read that actually made me scared to turn the page.

Trustee from the Toolroom (1960), by Nevil Shute (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Mild-mannered homebody braves challenging journey.

Extended review:

Keith Stewart is a prosaic Frodo Baggins pulled out of his quiet everyday world to undertake a classic hero's journey, as Joseph Campbell defines it: he answers the call, he survives the ordeals, he returns with the elixir.

Keith is a plain, ordinary, home-loving man with no ego to speak of, content with a fixed, simple life, who suddenly finds himself charged with a duty that requires extraordinary measures. A man of meager means, he must find a way to travel from his home in England to a remote, uninhabited island in the South Pacific in order to carry out the daunting task entrusted to him by his sister.

Not so ordinary after all, though, our Keith: within the very small sphere of miniature-machine hobbyists, he is a world-renowned expert, engineer of designs for tiny working machines and author of articles about them in a weekly specialty magazine. Subscribers around the globe know and admire his work, and many have benefited from his generous-spirited correspondence. As he travels he is amazed to be greeted as a celebrity because of his stature within the engineering world. Although he is much too modest to realize it, he has earned gratitude from his readers because of his selfless courtesy and assistance to others over the years as they have sought his help through exchanges of letters. Now several of those are in a position to treat him handsomely and offer him significant aid in completing his mission.

But it is his own courage and endurance that see him through: those and his goodness of heart and simple honesty, which win him friends who can help him--just as in the old folktales where a humble hero befriends creatures he meets on his road to adventure, only to find in his own time of need that they possess special powers and are able to confer magical favors to repay his kindness.

There's no magic here, of course, other than the magic of invention and resourcefulness. Shute describes in loving detail the complex apparatus and processes involved in sailing, metal machining, and lumber milling. There's not enough pretext in either character or plot for all the technical particulars he supplies, which seems to be there for their own sake, much like ornamentation in a fabulously excessively detailed pen-and-ink drawing that you simply can't look at without awe. Somehow, though, all that obsessively intricate detail succeeds in showing a bigger picture, one in which skill is respected, expertise is valued, and dedication is rewarded. I'd guess that a story like this probably couldn't be published today; I can easily imagine a book editor insisting that all the technicality be drastically reduced in favor of more interpersonal drama.

Not that drama is lacking. A storm at sea is as chilling as any I've ever met in print, including in a Thor Heyerdahl voyage. There are touching moments as well, especially between Keith and his young niece. And there is nicely restrained humor. The centerpiece of the book is the leg of the journey taken with a modern-day Neanderthal named Jack Conelly, proprietor of a minimalist vessel that appears to be Keith's only hope for reaching Tahiti from Honolulu. Jack is a great secondary character--a natural man, somewhat appalling, but good-hearted, with the rugged, odoriferous charm of a bear in his den. Being trapped on a small boat with him on a 2700-mile journey, with no engine, no navigational devices, no radio, and no inhabited land in between, sounds more than a little intimidating; but practical-minded Keith considers his options and then takes the likeliest path to his goal, yielding no more to doubt once he's made his decision.

Written in 1960, the book reflects some attitudes that are long out of date, and in general those don't bother me. I'm not even too miffed that Shute's Americans all sound like uneducated bumpkins not long out of the boonies. But I did find myself cringing at the fact that they can scarcely speak a sentence that doesn't begin with "Say." Most of us don't talk like that and never did.

That's a small point, however. I enjoyed this book, and I especially liked the epilogue, which gives us a quick-take life trajectory for each of the principal characters. I wish more novels would provide such a satisfactory answer to the question "And then what?"

>92 Meredy:
Say, another bullet delivered!

I really enjoyed Trustee from the Toolroom, too. It is like a tribute to all the quiet, competent people who see a job that needs to be done, and just do it.

>93 suitable1: Haha, you. See what you say after you've met them thick on the page, sometimes more than one in a single utterance. The Americans' speech often sounds modeled on comedy dialogue in American TV and movies of the 1950s. But this really was a grain-of-sand-in-the-shoe matter on an otherwise lovely walk.

>94 SylviaC: As usual, I wrote my review before reading others on the book page, and now I see that some have mentioned Keith as a typical Shute hero. I liked what you said about its being a quiet book and full of kindness. I've never read any other Shute novels, but with those comments in mind I probably will.

I wish I'd used the epithet "problem solver" in my review because in that respect Keith is the quintessential engineer.

>95 Meredy:

This may be a book that hard to find at a reasonable price. So far I've found only one copy under ten dollars. I ordered it and was then told that the listing was a mistake and they didn't have it. Best bet so far may be a Nook e-book.

>96 suitable1: Hmm. Mine came from the library. Do you have access to one that's part of a network?

Barnes & Noble has it for the Nook

White Fire (2012), by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Adequate but uninspiring Pendergast series installment.

Extended review:

Not only is Special Agent Pendergast evolving strangely into a would-be reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes but Holmes himself, and his creator (together with the endlessly fascinating Oscar Wilde), actually come into the story, by way of a narrative flashback as well as one of Pendergast's mysterious mystical journeys.

The novel includes yet another "lost" manuscript of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, adding to such a substantial body of (fictitious) rediscovered literary treasures in the Holmes canon that it's amazing that anyone attempted this ploy again. But maybe it's an authors' challenge along the lines of coming up with an original "desert island" cartoon or a new joke that begins "A man walked into a bar."

This is not an especially successful Sherlock Holmes pastiche, being riddled with notes that ring false; but the authors get points for even trying it, much as you have to admire the bravado--or chutzpah--of someone who decides to mount a new film adaptation of, say, Hamlet. In fact, I actually awarded a half star more than I thought this novel was worth, just to acknowledge the effort.

Almost inevitably for Preston and Child, there's a chase through an underground labyrinth, complete with dripping, splashing, and shooting. No supernatural monsters this time, but some ugly specimens whose humanity does challenge the definition.

For series followers, it's adequately entertaining, and I don't wish I hadn't read it; but it's not going to make my "best of" list.

One Fine Day (1947), by Mollie Panter-Downes (abandoned; not rated)

There's some lovely writing here, and I've been enjoying the well-blended richness and lightness of the prose. A sample:

Bewilderment curdled the bright blue of her father's eyes as he rustled through The Times, appealing to someone to tell him what They were up to--They meaning the Labour Government, the Russians, the proletariat, the whole palpably insane and suicidal universe. (page 92)

Strikingly vivid descriptions such as this occur smoothly and naturally in the flow of the author's narrative style: "a big fresh woman like a horse dressed in blouse and skirt" (page 57). I can see her, can't you?

However, the walking pace of this short novel set in postwar England is just too slow for me right now. I need something that seizes and holds more of my attention. So, regretfully, I'm letting it go about halfway through and moving on.

(Edited to correct touchstone.)

One Fine Day is on my wishlist. It sounds like it is good, even though it isn't right for you just now. I've read two other books by Mollie Panter-Downes, one nonfiction and the other short stories.

Boston Strong: A City's Triumph over Tragedy (2015), by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge (2½ stars)

(an Early Reviewer review)

Six-word review: Marathon bombing: stories behind the story.

Extended review:

Is the age of scrupulous editing gone forever? Is everyone now his own gatekeeper? Does the rush to market trump all other considerations?

Certainly the release of this work is timely, coinciding as it does not only with the second anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing but also with the rendering of a verdict and sentence in the trial of the surviving Tsarnaev brother, which is, as I write, still under jury deliberation. No doubt there was pressure to bring out the book while the topic is still hot in the news. It wouldn't be the first time that speedy coverage of a tragedy or a disaster was strongly motivated.

But writing about difficult subject matter--terrorism, blood, loss, death--does not exempt an author from ordinary care; in fact, in my opinion the authors of such material should go to extra lengths to honor the subject with exceptional attention to every single aspect of the project. For the same reason, out of respect for the individual and collective victims of the atrocity of April 15, 2013, the authors don't get a pass from me.

The structure of the book is basically chronological, with considerable lateral spread. In each phase, before, during, and after the explosions, we're shown closeups of numerous individuals: a sampling of spectator-victims, first responders, and public officials as well as perpetrators. We read about who they are, their background, how they came to be where they were at that day and time, their experience during and immediately following the attack, and what happened to them afterward.

What makes the preliminaries compelling is only that we know what's coming. If it weren't for the awareness that all of those profiled were going to be involved somehow in the impending catastrophe, the long (seeming much longer than it actually is) series of sketches would seem disconnected and pointless. As it is, though, there are so many, across such a spectrum, from small children, out-of-town runners, and street cops to top public officials, that it's hard to remember who many of them are when things start to happen.

This is one of several ways in which an index would have been helpful, but there isn't one.

Granted, once the bombs go off and everything starts to move very fast, that would be the wrong time in terms of pacing to stop and fill in the biographical data for either the major players or those who have been singled out to represent larger groups, such as racers and firefighters. And it's the personal perspective that brings this terrifying story into close focus, making it a matter of people, not numbers--real people who might have been us or our friends, out to enjoy a traditional event on a beautiful spring day in our hometown or adopted city. Or--is it conceivable?--out to seek attention for a cause and revenge for centuries of perceived injustice. Figuring out how to handle such material appropriately is a job for a pro.

Which is what the two authors are, according to the cover blurb: veteran journalists with apparently respectable professional credentials.

So why, then, one wonders, is the book positively riddled with the sort of errors that your high school English teacher would have marked in your essays? They start right in on page 1 with "hearty" (warm-hearted, cordial, jovial) where the word should be "hardy" (sturdy, strong, enduring); the same misuse is repeated on page 5.

I noted down more than a hundred instances of problems ranging from poor word choices and sloppiness to outright, provable errors. My list of citations is very long. I put most of them in my draft of this review; now I'm doing readers a favor and taking them out. Instead I'll settle for just these few:

Spelling errors

• We have 46 instances of "Dzhokhar" (correct) and 14 of "Dhzokhar" (incorrect; e.g., 63, 134, 162), and even a Dhokhar (165). Also, we see "Dzhokhar" hyphenated between the z and the h, not just once but several times. You can't do that. It's one sound. That's like hyphenating "marathon" between the t and the h.

Stale, cliché-ridden language

• He was under heavy fire and was a sitting duck. (169)

Misquotes

• Whether or not Captain John Parker actually said the famous words on the nineteenth of April in 1775 is immaterial; the fact is, they're carved on a rock on Lexington Green: "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." The book quotes this incorrectly (page 2) as "...if they want to have a war, let it start here."



Poor verb choice

• She ambled up to the counter and said: "Please help me! Please help me!" (68)

To amble is to stroll in a leisurely fashion. That's not how you move when a piece of your leg has just been torn off and you're running into a store screaming for help.

General bad writing

• Sentences like this don't even read like an unedited final draft. They read like a rough draft.

In Viviers, Eric and Ann Whalley, a British couple in their mid-60s whose stroll from their home in Charlestown to the finish line on Marathon Monday landed them in the hospital with excruciating leg injuries and more than a dozen surgeries between them, carefully negotiated dirt paths and stone walkways to reach the top of a scenic plateau. (239-240)

And one more:

Special mention for creepiness

• People started running. A beefy, athletic man with short, black hair was running toward him, holding a woman's hand... (109)

Disembodied? In the present context of mayhem, bloodshed, and gross dismemberment, we can't be sure on first reading this whether or not there was a woman attached. This kind of jarring effect as a result of careless writing occurs repeatedly throughout the book.

I've deleted all the rest of my overlong, indignant review. I'll just say this: if you want to learn all about this horrific incident that traumatized a major American city, in decent prose such as the subject deserves, I recommend that you look elsewhere.

>101 SylviaC: I think that's a fair assessment. It's no reflection on the author that I'm in the wrong place for her book.

>102 Meredy: Excellent review.

>92 Meredy: Interesting. The only thing of his that I've read is On the Beach. Not sure I'd call it a bullet, but I'll definitely check it out at some point. Looks as if it might have been his last book, since he died that year.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015), by Erik Larson (4 stars)

Six-word review: Maritime calamity that shouldn't have happened.

Extended review:

Without realizing it at the time, I took this book out of the library on the one-hundredth anniversary of the sinking of RMS Lusitania. Reading of the events leading up to, during, and after this major marine catastrophe as they unfolded in the hours and days following her torpedoing on May 7th of 1915 added an unexpected measure of drama to the experience.

Larson's book bears comparison to Walter Lord's A Night to Remember, a narrative account of the loss of the Titanic just three years earlier. Both present a description of the ship, a sketch of key personnel and a selection of passengers, and a minute-by-minute account of the climactic events as they happened. Both bring a close-up-and-personal perspective to our comprehension of a tragedy that is very difficult to encompass on the large scale.

And, significantly, both of them catalogue a staggering list of if-only's, all the factors that had to happen just so in order for the disaster to occur, a minor variation in which--even by a matter of only a few seconds--might have averted the fatal outcome.

The crucial difference, of course, is that whereas the Titanic disaster came about as the result of a collision with an iceberg, with an ample helping of human error and hubris in the mix, the Lusitania was deliberately sunk by a German U-boat committing an act of war. And, as the text makes very clear, that act could have been prevented if a number of people possessed of critical information had taken the necessary steps. Accident, error, delay, miscalculation, design flaws, inattention, stupidity, coincidence, and many other everyday mishaps had their part to play; but worst of all was the conscious choice on the part of certain officials to leave the vessel unescorted and issue a vague, ambiguous warning about the presence of danger. Whatever rationale guided that course of action, nearly 1200 passengers and crew on a commercial ocean liner paid the price, along with their families, friends, and fellow countrymen.

Larson's telling sets a solid framework on both sides of the Atlantic, from an emotionally preoccupied American president to the high-stakes military operations of Britain and Germany. Personal effects and diaries of victims along with records of survivors and eyewitnesses bring the story home. A hundred years is not such a long time; it's much too soon to forget.

The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science Behind 12-Step Programs and the Rehab Industry (2014), by Lance Dodes & Zachary Dodes (2 stars)

(an Early Reviewer review)

Six-word review: Angry indictment based on mistaken assumptions.

Extended review:

Debunking the bad science behind anything that claims false credentials sounds like a good idea. But is that the case with Alcoholics Anonymous?

Let's imagine for a moment that someone tells a friend, "I've started taking yoga classes, and already I'm losing weight."

The friend decides to try a yoga class too, attends two or three sessions, and then complains: "I've been doing yoga, and I haven't lost any weight. Yoga doesn't work." This person then goes on to blame yoga for not being an effective weight loss program and, moreover, for preventing her from losing weight by not teaching her about diet and exercise, much less giving her diet pills. It's yoga's fault that the complainer hasn't lost ten pounds. Never mind that yoga was developed for another purpose entirely and that there is no such coherent entity as "yoga" to be making any claims about its own efficacy; somehow she considers it a system that's to blame for the fact that it doesn't provide weight-loss success for everybody who tries it.

Absurd, right?

How many times more absurd would it be, then, if a disappointed weight-loss seeker--or perhaps a disappointed weight-loss seeker's parent--published a book "debunking the bad science" behind yoga as a weight-loss treatment, and tackled the weight-loss industry as a predatory taker of advantage of people's weakness because profit-making weight-loss clinics incorporated yoga into their programs?

That is a fair parallel of what we have here in this book.

Disclosure: I couldn't read this book without bias, and I can't review it without bias. It's also hard for me to think of someone's choosing to read it who doesn't already have some history with the topic and therefore also a probable bias. So it seems best to me to go ahead and expose my bias and let my comments be viewed in that light.

On the one hand, I have a fair amount of direct and indirect experience with twelve-step programs, from long association with a sober 30-year member of AA, from attending AA meetings as a visitor, and from attending Al-Anon meetings (for family and friends of alcoholics) for several years myself. I've gained some knowledge and understanding that have been helpful to me.

On the other, I have no appetite for God-talk and no place in my life for magical thinking. I'm always going to favor a rational approach. But other people don't have to believe what I believe, any more than I have to surrender my brains to their credulity. Something might work for another person even if it's not the same for me; yoga for weight loss, for instance, or religion as an antidote to life's stresses.

So. This book takes up what I regard as an extremely important topic, namely, how we as a society (American, implicitly) respond to alcoholism, what addiction is, and what methods of recovery are effective. Included is the question of whether the prototypical twelve-step program is religious in nature and consequently whether it is or is not right for judges to prescribe attendance at AA (or NA) meetings for people convicted of alcohol-related (or drug-related) charges.

However: the first-person author (Lance, according to the preface) not only exhibits a considerable bias of his own but frequently uses loaded language, making it apparent that his findings are tinged by, if not guided by, his emotions--principally indignation. To me his tone sounds more like the bitter, scornful voice of a disaffected ex than that of a balanced, objective man of science, never mind a Harvard professor of psychiatry. Does sarcasm belong in a book that claims to be a sober application of scientific principles?

Given the way addiction works psychologically, it could be possible that some decreased biological tolerance of certain emotions could lead to a variety of symptoms, including addiction. But nobody in human history has ever walked into a bar because a gene told them to. (89)

Consider: Chapter 4 is titled "The Business of Rehab and the Broken Promise of 'AA-Plus'." Think "broken promise" sounds like weighted language? How about the fact that this chapter title is the only mention of "AA-plus"? The only mention in the entire book. The expression simply isn't used or explained (and it certainly isn't AA terminology). So--broken promise of what, then? Broken or unbroken, what promise? The authors don't substantiate this accusatory language; it just sits there, coloring the reader's perception.

And there's plenty more accusing going on, much of it sounding kneejerk and irrational to me. The book
• accuses AA of being based on bad science when it doesn't claim to be based on science at all
• blames AA for copycat twelve-step programs and for the fact that rehab programs too are typically based on a twelve-step model
• accuses it of not working for everybody (because we are all alike?) while in the same breath complaining that it doesn't individualize treatment (because we are not all alike?)--even though it never says it will work for everybody and in fact doesn't represent itself as "treatment" at all
• acknowledges that AA works for those it works for--which, yup, is all it does--so? The same goes for, let's say, yoga as a way to fitness and weight loss; is it the fault of yoga that not everybody who comes to a few yoga classes will get fit or lose weight? It's like writing about the "bad science" behind Zen meditation: Zen claims nothing, but that wouldn't prevent someone from attributing claims to it and then "debunking" them.
• blames AA for its popularity and thus for crowding out other solutions, as if it were somehow a matter of competing for market share
• confuses AA's practice and self-description with studies of AA done by others, as if AA were responsible for researchers' findings about it
• scorns the efficacy of free volunteer-run programs that meet in church basements and then asks: "[W]hy do people spend a fortune for programs that aren't fundamentally different from what they could find for free in a church basement?" (page 61)
It's almost as if the authors were so mad that at any given point they just want to say something derogatory or sarcastic right then, whether or not it's consistent with remarks made elsewhere.

Note that the authors repeatedly fault the AA program for being based on irrational premises. That may be so, but AA doesn't claim to be rational, whereas they do. You can't debunk something that doesn't make any claims. There's a reason why the twelve steps say "we" and use the past tense ("We admitted we were powerless," etc.)--it's not prescriptive. It's about what the founders did, their own story, which they then went on to share with others, together with testimonials of many who had followed their path. They're describing the path and posting markers, not taking hostages and dragging them down it.

It's not that there aren't fair questions that can be asked about AA and its view of recovery. For some people it's the only way, and for others it's simply not. Significantly, for some, it is the way that worked for them (or, rather, that they worked successfully--and that's an important difference), and it seems to me both pointless and destructive to try to invalidate that somehow. Reasonable questions--is alcoholism really a disease in the same sense that diabetes or pneumonia is a disease? should the court require offenders to attend a spiritual program?--are swallowed up in bile.

This book won't hurt AA at all or take anything away from people who have found help in the program. Perhaps it will encourage some who have not found recovery in one way to seek other solutions, and that's fine. But why spend all that effort trying to tear something down--especially through misdirection, such as trying to hold AA accountable for its imitators and those who make a profit from treatment facilities--when there is so much necessary and positive work to be done in the field of addiction and chemical dependency? If treating addiction as a compulsive behavior that's amenable to therapy is a more effective solution--and I'm not arguing against that; maybe it is--won't it prove itself? I can't escape the feeling that there is some personal disappointment, such as perhaps a failed recovery attempt in a friend or loved one, lurking behind all the highly colored rhetoric and that its taint impairs the very credibility that the authors are trying to establish.

It makes no sense at all to criticize AA for not doing this or that--for not having a medically based treatment program, for not systematically integrating newcomers, for not doing follow-up studies. You might as well criticize a spoon for not being a fork. There's no structural hierarchy, no formal management of groups, no set of rules governing conduct toward members or newcomers. There's just a bunch of folks with their steps and traditions and slogans, trying to get their lives straight, putting in volunteer time and effort to sustain the group, setting up chairs and making coffee, working on their own recovery and extending a hand to others. They strive for progress, not perfection. If it works for them, who are Lance Dodes and Zachary Dodes to say they're doing it wrong?

>107 Meredy: Nicely reasoned.

>108 MrsLee: Why, thank you. That was a pretty hard one to write.

Storm Front (2000), by Jim Butcher (3 stars)

I'm awarding just three stars to this book, the first of a series about a freelance wizard in private practice like a consulting detective. But they're three good stars, with room to grow. And I'll be giving the series a chance to do that.

I didn't expect very much. It's a pulpy page-turner, a lightweight fantasy-thriller with magic, spells, potions, demons, and more of the same, set in present-day Chicago. What's more, it's a bit awkwardly beginnerish, with some sitcom dialogue, cutesy repartee, and uneven exposition. The author also needs some comma therapy and a sharp-eyed editor who won't let him use the same verb two or three times within a short paragraph--a fault that occurs repeatedly throughout.

But the story is well paced and very well plotted, the main character is adequately appealing, and Jim Butcher definitely has a knack for the suspense-thriller device of putting your character into the worst situation you can think of and then making it even worse. He pulls off that feat quite a few times, and also manages some A-Team-worthy saves out of seemingly hopeless situations. Given that we suspended real-world plausibility by page two, the author has a lot of latitude; but he does appear to follow the rules of his invented world. And the book is not full of egregious errors and vocabulary gaffes.

There are some good one-liners, too. I liked this twist on a familiar cliche: "I took the keys and walked up, out of the light and shelter of McAnally's and into the storm, my bridges burning behind me." (page 311)

In sum, I enjoyed this book, and for me in the present moment it offers just about the right degree of diversion at the right pace. I've already put the second installment on request at the library.

Thank you, @MrsLee. We do agree on some things, after all. The Dresden Files series consists of 15 novels; that'll keep me going for a little while. For this you get credit not just for a bullet but for an entire fusillade.

:D I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you continue to enjoy them as I do. Great stress-relief therapy in these.

>110 Meredy:

What happened to the six-word review?

>112 suitable1: I forgot it.

Ok, how about this?

Storm Front (2000), by Jim Butcher (3 stars)

Six-word review: Frothy fun solving hideous magical murders.

Extended review: Above, post 110.

Revival (2014), by Stephen King (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Predictably weird, adequately entertaining fantasy thriller.

Extended review:

Query for the universe at large: did any work of fiction prior to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (published in 1818) entail the harnessing of lightning in the service of some unnatural goal? Apparently the idea of channeling electrical power to animate a nonliving being had its roots in the eighteenth-century experiments of Luigi Galvani (whence galvanism); but how about its use in fiction? Anybody know?

The power of electricity and the bending of that power to some hubristic purpose runs like a current through this novel and sparks a climactic scene in which we might--or might not--glimpse a reality beyond reality.

At the age of six the first-person narrator has a fateful encounter with a charismatic pastor, and from then on their lives remain intertwined, through personal crisis and tragedy, upheaval, and radical changes of course. The larger-than-life figure of Charles Jacobs is a compelling portrait of obsession and vaunting ambition. Along the way, King has plenty to show us about how people deal with tragedy, the cascade effects of decisions, the nature of addiction and the price of recovery, and the binding power of love.

Unfortunately, like so many other hefty King narratives, the storyline seems full of plot hooks that King left himself and never used, but didn't go back and clean up later. So there are numerous passages and entire sections that contain a huge amount of information we're never going to need because they don't add anything to the story. They just feel self-indulgent, if not downright sloppy. Stephen King can get away with this sort of thing because he's Stephen King; but I wish he had a fearless editor who would make him take out about 25% of one of these things and then get busy and tighten up the rest.

Nevertheless, we kept reading (it was our read-aloud book for about six weeks), and if I found the payoff a little weak--and one of the plot-driving relationships pretty darned implausible--well, let's say I wasn't shocked.

>115 Meredy: well, let's say I wasn't shocked.

I saw what you did there. :)

Re Mary Shelley and lightning--I'm not sure if anyone had used that device in fiction, but evidently the weather in Switzerland in the summer of 1816 during which Shelley wrote Frankenstein--the famous "Year without a Summer--featured not only a lot of rain but also spectacular thunderstorms, which may have proved inspirational.

>114 Meredy:

Much better.

>115 Meredy: Does Thor's use of lightening, or Zeus or any of those other gods and goddesses who might have used it count?

>116 Marissa_Doyle: Thanks! (g) Yes, I imagine the idea might have struck like a ...

>117 suitable1: (Whew.)

>118 MrsLee: Those stories would certainly lodge the concept in a lot of minds, but I don't think it quite counts because they cast the thunderbolts, and as deities they were using celestial power as a natural right. That's a little different from trying to attract and control a violent superhuman force for a human purpose. I'd say it counts as part of the lore, though.

In the Wet (1953), by Nevil Shute (4 stars)

Six-word review: Adventure-romance as future political history.

Extended review:

It took me a while to get oriented to the time frame of Nevil Shute's twentieth novel. I kept looking back at the copyright page to check the date: first published in 1953. If I had read it in 1953, it would have been obvious that references to coins minted in the 1960s and 1970s, to political events in England in the eighties (did he mean eighteen-80s? I wondered at first), and, startlingly, to a grown Prince Charles and his wife and two sons, were speculatively futuristic. At the time, the young Queen Elizabeth was newly crowned, and her two eldest children were preschoolers.

But, lacking experience with Shute's fiction (one previous title) and being unsure of twentieth-century British political history and the structure of the Commonwealth, as well as being a bit preoccupied with my own family matters, I missed some clues.

The storyline: In a remote area of Australia during the monsoon season, a pastor named Hargreaves is called to the bedside of a delirious alcoholic whose death agonies are being eased by opium. Feverish with malaria himself, the pastor drifts in and out of lucidity and either hears or does not hear the dying man recount his life story. Deftly handled transitions blend Hargreaves's wavering consciousness with that of the old man, who reveals a history as a pilot and captain of a special aircraft that provided elite transport service to the middle-aged queen and the royal family. In that capacity he facilitated a dramatic rescue from an attempted assassination. A tender love story intertwines with his aeronautic career.

What brought about the drastic change from "then" to "now"? How did the bold, heroic pilot become the wreck of a man we see in the frame tale? I raced through the last fifty pages to find out. The answer was . . . nothing like what I was expecting. I really missed something. As the explanation gradually dawned on me, I realized that as a reader I had simply not done Shute's work justice. I had seen the allegorical aspects, I thought, but I hadn't understood the paradox. That happens sometimes. I owe Shute another read.

I very much enjoyed and admired the evocative style, the rich descriptions, the psychological insights, and especially the dreamlike blurring of the line between perception and illusion. Some of the political aspects were especially provocative and seem to have given rise to some thought and discussion in the years since publication.

One word of caution. I found it very difficult to read past the casual racism that was taken for granted at the time that the book was written. The main character is three-fourths white and one-fourth Aborigine--a quadroon, as he labels himself. His mixed race is a factor in the plot. I generally manage to read books in the light of their own historical and cultural context and not blame people for seeing things as their neighbors did rather than as they (presumably) would see them now. Even so, the main character's chosen nickname (it begins with N, and it's a word we don't use) forces it in front of us on page after page after page. I'm not in favor of bowdlerizing fiction, but I couldn't help wishing for a version that substituted something innocuous for this character's name.

Without You, There Is No Us (2014), by Suki Kim (4 stars)

Six-word review: Glimpse of higher education in North Korea.

Extended review:

Every book I read and every documentary I see on North Korean society and politics adds something to my awareness (I can't say "understanding"--how can Westerners understand it?) of the so-called hermit nation that is now, with Kim Jong Un, in its third generation of dynastic dictatorship.

This book is unique in that it was written by an American who interacted directly with young people in the role of instructor and hence of authority. Kim, a journalist, served two terms as a visiting teacher of English in an elite Pyongyang university for the sons of the ruling class--a cover she adopted specifically to obtain this sort of insider's access to students and the system. As such, she was inducted--in a very small, limited way--into the suffocating system of rules, restrictions, and prohibitions that control those who teach the country's future leaders. There is apparently nothing like freedom for anyone anywhere in this isolated society, to judge by all accounts.

Born in South Korea and raised in the U.S., Suki Kim speaks the language and shares the ethnicity of her students and their administrators, so she was in a position to gain first-hand knowledge usually inaccessible to Western visitors. New to me and especially touching were the accounts of students who embraced the privilege of standing guard throughout long, freezing nights outside the campus study hall dedicated to the philosophy of their Dear Leader.

One great vulnerability in this staggeringly paranoid political system, or so it appears to me, is the Internet. Students, even students at this highly selective technical college in the capital, have no idea what the Internet is or how it opens up the outside world. They think their little intranet is it. But a chosen few must perforce be admitted into the secret knowledge of the real web in all its vast chaotic magnificence in order to perform service on it for their country. Once they've seen it, they can't unsee it.

The pressure of constant monitoring, the seeming arbitrariness of unexplained prohibitions, the ceaseless tattling, and the unimaginably impaired and distorted view of the world beyond the isolated nation's borders make it impossible for author Kim or anyone else to draw an easy breath. Somehow Kim pulls off her charade and manages to depart the country with extensive notes on which she based her book. She will never be welcomed back.

I read In the Wet more than 20 years ago, but it left a strong impression. It was fascinating to read about Nevil Shute's vision of the future. (At least there is a future in this one, unlike On the Beach.) It is a strange book, quite different from most of Shute's others, but still unmistakably in his voice. It's not one of my favourites, but I admired his workmanship.

>120 Meredy: - if you are enjoying reading Nevil Shute, you must try to find A Town Like Alice. I've read and enjoyed most of his books, but that is my favourite. Pied Piper is another excellent read.

>122 SylviaC:, >123 NorthernStar: This was only my second Shute, and yes, I'm seeking out more. So no more spoilers, please. I've just put On the Beach on my library request list. I'll check on A Town Like Alice too.

Because my city library shares its stacks with a university, a lot of older literature is on the shelves. I happen to love reading very much older editions that came out in hardcover at a time when the art of proofreading was still conscientiously practiced. Sir Walter Scott's novels from a leather-bound set that came out in the thirties appeal to me physically much more than something that rolled off the presses last year.

#120 - my mother loves Nevil Shute, she has a copy of In the Wet published in 1969 and it doesn't have the n word, so in 15 years it became unacceptable. She had a sudden desire to reread this recently and she was telling me how it portrays future UK as an empty place where everyone has left cause of that appalling socialism thing! As our news is currently full of illegal immigration stories, both about numbers at Calais and about African / Syrian migrants arriving in Italy and Greece, desperate to get here, this made us both laugh in cynical humour (or is it ironic humour?).
There was also a piece about Australia paying other countries e.g Papua New Guinea to take its illegal immigrants.

>124 Meredy:
I also recommend A Town Like Alice

>125 infjsarah: What is the character's name, then? It couldn't just be a straight substitution. It would have taken some substantial amount of revision to remove it because the character makes a big point of embracing the nickname and being very open about his mixed race, which he expects will be an obstacle in both his professional and his personal life. Did the author himself do the rewriting before he died in 1960?

My library does have A Town Like Alice. I'm looking forward to reading it now, thanks to all your recommendations.

The Lola Quartet (2009), by Emily St. John Mandel (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Interwoven threads of causality govern lives.

Extended review:

The Lola Quartet is the third of the four novels that Emily St. John Mandel has published so far, and for me it's the last one read. Not as strong as the other three, in my estimation, it still has most of the same traits that made the others so good, including a main character situated in a strange complex of circumstances and an admirable degree of skill in managing intertwined plotlines.

Gavin Sasaki, once a member of a high school jazz quartet, has sabotaged his journalistic career by some bad decisions and has to crawl home to Florida just as the economy is taking a plunge. When he finds out that his high school girlfriend, Anna, had had a child that was probably his, a chain of events unfolds that brings him back into contact with the other members of the quartet--and puts him in the path of a ruthless drug dealer out for revenge against Anna. The story could be a cautionary tale about living with the consequences of our worst choices, but Mandel's storytelling art clothes the lessons with the skins and psyches of believable people. It's one of her gifts to show us characters who inhabit very weird situations and yet seem like ordinary, flawed beings to whom we can relate.

I liked the depiction of Anna's half-sister Sasha, once the band's drummer, now a waitress, who has become a gambler struggling to master her compulsion. Her condition gives Mandel a chance to voice a minority view on addiction:

She'd known that this was her last chance and she'd fought every day since then to not gamble, but she could never bring herself to think of it as a disease. She'd had arguments with William about it.

"If I had pneumonia," she'd said, "I wouldn't be able to will myself to get better. There's no such thing as Pneumonia Anonymous. There's a difference between a disease and a character flaw."

"It's thinking like that that keeps treatment programs underfunded," he'd said, and changed the subject. (page 193)

Mandel has a good author's talent for making the course of events seem natural and inevitable without being predictable. The result is a suspenseful novel that comes together with a solid bang. To me the weakness is mostly in the fact that I simply don't find Gavin as interesting as the main characters in her other novels, and his quest to find his daughter doesn't feel to me like the sort of compelling passion that drives large actions at the core of great novels.

Nonetheless, I'm in Mandel's corner and will be looking forward to reading whatever she writes next.

-----

All caught up! Hurray!

I just checked my paperback of In the Wet. It was published in 1988, and David quite definitely has the N-nickname, and attaches considerable importance to it.

A Town Like Alice is one of my favourites, too. Another is The Chequer Board, which takes place partly in Burma. Given your interest in Eastern religion and philosophy, I think you would find Round the Bend interesting. You would probably get a lot more out of it than I did.

I think I'm going to be working my way through Shute's novels for some time to come. All the comments are so encouraging, combined with what I've already seen. Thanks for your guidance.

And one thing I deeply appreciate about the older authors, especially the British ones, is not only that they know their grammar thoroughly and make no mistakes but that they have an elegance of style that comes of a great deal of reading of real literature. I can relax with them, knowing I'm not going to be assaulted with bad prose.

To be sure, I leaven my reading with light page-turners (several of which I've lately reviewed), but beautiful writing is a sure comfort all in itself.

Ok, you guys, I'm a mess of bullet holes right now. I've just brought home from the library two Butchers and one Shute. Let's see some smug smiles.

:D

😊

>131 Meredy: :-)

Good shooting folks!

Lie Down with the Devil (2008), by Linda Barnes (2½ stars)

Six-word review: Last Carlotta Carlyle mystery is forgettable.

Extended review:

An accidental reread. And that's not good.

I'm sorry to say so, but when I picked this off my bookshelf I thought I still had one to go in the series. Apart from penciled notes (mostly in nonfiction), I handle books so lightly that this one looked untouched. Forty or so pages in, I kept having fleeting feelings of deja vu. But it wasn't until the midpoint that I realized: hey, I read this whole thing before.

Sure enough, there it is in my reading journal, December 2012. I wasn't writing reviews of everything then, but even if I had been, I don't think I'd have predicted that I could draw such a complete blank on a recently read murder mystery with a favorite series character that I wouldn't even recognize it in less than 150 pages. Even once I got to the part about a political controversy on the Cape over Indian casinos and I finally caught on, I couldn't remember a thing about how it turns out, who did it or why, never mind how Carlotta's romantic situation was resolved.

I really enjoyed the early books in this 12-book series. The character of Carlotta Carlyle, private investigator and part-time cabbie, was engaging and original. Unlike most series detectives, she sounded like someone I'd like to have coffee with. Perennially homesick as I am, I loved following her around the so-familiar streets of Cambridge and Boston and even down the South Shore; every book felt like a virtual trip home for me. I also got a kick out of the people close to her, charming Sam, serious Mooney, loyal Gloria, and infinitely quirky Roz. But her adopted "little sister" Paolina went from annoying to tiresome to an incredibly obnoxious presence in the stories, and I couldn't even stand to finish the one in which she played a central role--the eleventh book, Heart of the World. (I even analyzed the reasons for this as an exercise for an editing class.) Did author Barnes run out of steam on her too? There hasn't been a new Carlyle mystery since Lie Down with the Devil came out in 2008. I'm getting the feeling that there aren't going to be more.

Something just reminded me of advice I read years ago when I was editing a newsletter for my chapter of a national organization: when you burn out on the job, you should be the first to know it and not the last.

So, because I wasn't going to get a new library book for another few days, I kept on reading. This time, though, I expected the outcome to fade from mind rapidly. Too bad. Linda Barnes has gone on to write some other things, and I've read and enjoyed one of them so far: The Perfect Ghost. As for Carlotta, I wish she could have ended at a high point. I did enjoy most of the ride, and I'll miss her.

There Was an Old Woman (2013), by Hallie Ephron (abandoned; not rated)

Two characters, an old woman named Mina and her neighbor's daughter, Evie, are about to have tea. The young woman fetches fragile heirloom china teacups from a kitchen cabinet (not from a china cabinet in the dining room): the tea and the cups are stored in the same place. At Mina's direction, she puts a tea bag in each cup, and the old woman pours boiling water into them. Then Mina says the tea needs to steep and accompanies Evie into the living room to show her the marble fireplace and the memorabilia on display.

They talk much too long for the tea to steep in small porcelain cups; and why isn't an elderly woman with fancy china cups and a sculpted marble and mahogany decor using a teapot just for the sake of it?

While they are still talking in the living room, the doorbell sounds (front? back?), followed by a sharp knock, and Mina "scuttled into the living room" (page 43) to escape her nephew. When did she leave the room? Where was she? In this detailed account of every move and practically every heartbeat, there's no mention of her departing from the spot in front of the fireplace, and certainly not returning to the kitchen. She's going to the living room while still in the living room.

The nephew finds her in the living room, and while they talk Mina hears Evie washing up the china teacups in the kitchen ("Mina heard water running in the kitchen and the tink of bone china"--which shouldn't be making a tink unless the pieces are striking one another) even though they have not yet gone back and drunk their tea.

This author is not paying attention. Relentlessly and often irrelevantly or superfluously descriptive, she nevertheless fails to track her characters' positions and has one of them hurrying into a room she has not left.

This was the third strike.

The first was requiring the reader to plow through immense quantities of descriptive detail that serves no apparent point.

The second was a flat-out factual error committed while showing off. On page 39 we read:

Evie got up and walked through, pausing to touch one of the fluted columns mounted on a half wall separating the dining room from the living room. A memory flickered. Before the fire, her parents' house had had columns separating the rooms, too, only theirs had been plainer, not topped with these Doric scrolls--volutes, to use the technical term.

Volute: a term I didn't know. But I do know--and of course verified anyway--that the Greek columns with the scrolls are not Doric. The Doric are the plain ones. The ones with scrolls (volutes) are Ionic, and the ornate capitals decorated with rows of curling leaves and scrolls are Corinthian. Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. I learned those terms in sixth grade. Like everything else these days, it's easily checked online (although I used a heavy American Heritage dictionary); but Hallie didn't, and her editor (did she even have one?) didn't.

The cover says: "A novel of suspense." By page 46 the only suspense of any kind is wondering whether this stiflingly inert story that isn't even a story is ever, ever going to go anywhere at all.

I might have given it a chance, even then; but it failed a simple continuity check on page 43. Three strikes and you're out.

Oh dear, sorry to hear that. I was on Hallie's (and Rhys Bowen's) team in the Jungle Reds quiz game at Malice and have one of her books as a souvenir. At least it's not that one.

I've finally begun an Early Review book that's due in two weeks: Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice, by Adam Benforado. Only about 80 pages in, I'm happy to report that it is way, way better written than the last two ER books I reviewed.

I truly don't like to write those scathing critiques. I want to love everything and spend my reading time only on things that really rate the attention. But an honest review is an honest review.

>136 Meredy:

At Mina's direction, she puts a tea bag in each cup, and the old woman pours boiling water into them.

and why isn't an elderly woman with fancy china cups and a sculpted marble and mahogany decor using a teapot

Dreadful sins. It is even worse than you make out.

With china cups one puts milk in first to avoid cracking the cups by pouring hot tea into them. To pour boiling water into a china cup would be considered irresponsible by anyone who cherished china cups.

As for using tea bags: Don't get me started.

>136 Meredy: Not being the writer, I love your critiques. They are specific and help me to understand why I get frustrated reading stories sometimes. My daughter is also able to tell me why I don't like a book. Me, I sometimes can only say "It felt wrong" or something unhelpful like that.

I should read more Shute. I've enjoyed the one or two that I've come across. Probably a bit dated now, but still well crafted. No highway appears to be the only one I own.

>136 Meredy: - the tea making travesty is enough to abandon it on it's own.

Hurray! Sympathetic indignation!

It would be one thing if the old woman didn't know any better, and this scene were meant to show that. But it's all incidental action in an environment that impresses the young woman with its aged refinement.

I found it very jarring that Mina keeps her antique (Haviland? Limoges?) teacups and saucers in the kitchen, in a cabinet lined with green gingham shelf paper edged with pinking shears. Wouldn't you keep your bone china teacups on glass shelves in the dining room--and use them there? If you're going to dump boiling water onto tea bags in the kitchen, why aren't you using stoneware mugs?

We were doing this as a read-aloud, and I kept interrupting my husband to sputter and scold. Finally on page 46 he just closed the book.

>139 pgmcc:
Do you have something against tea bags?

>143 suitable1: - there's a whole group for discussion on the finer points of tea making. But in summary - tea bags constrain the amount of water that circulates through the leaves. To prevent this making an insipid cup (plus it's cheaper) manufacturers usually circumvent this with the very worst sort of tea, finely ground tea leaf dust, which infuses very quickly (large surface area) producing a very strong astringent flavour masking any of the subtleties tea can possess. Tea bags can also impart their own additional unwanted flavours to the brew.

>143 suitable1: What @reading_fox said.

Also, even when making tea with tea bags the use of a tea pot is a must in all but the most drastic circumstances.

>144 reading_fox:
Just trying to get pgmcc started!

>146 suitable1: You got me!

I love your apt discourses on tea. This is exactly why an editor has to be a generalist as well as a specialist and why I get so exasperated when people think the work is just about "fixing commas."

If I'd been responsible for editing Hallie's book, I might or might not have known all the niceties of tea (although in my case a lot of my cultural education has come from British novels and BBC dramas) and the orders of Greek columns; but I'd have known there was something to know and looked it up. This is why I'm so hard on authors who themselves show that they ought to know better but don't take the extra measure of care. There's an implicit assumption that the audience won't know the difference or will shrug it off, and that's an insult to the discerning reader.

A novel is not the place to parade all your special knowledge; but anything that appeals to fact must be either faithful to the fact or a literarily justifiable departure, such as inventing streets in a city or adjusting the date of a minor historic incident.

>148 Meredy:

I find it very disturbing when an author writes something that you know to be wrong. It can throw me off the book entirely. This happened to me with Veritas by Monaldi & Sorti. The book is very good but there was mention of domes that shone like gold. It transpired that they had been made with copper. The problem was that they were decades old but still shone brightly in the sunlight. The authors must not be aware that copper oxidises very quickly to give us the green domes that we see on so many buildings. Very disappointing.

>149 pgmcc: And before a book reaches the public, it ought to be read carefully by a lot of people, and sections entailing special knowledge should be seen by people who have the special knowledge. The lack of those safeguards is one of the big drawbacks of self-publishing. I wonder how many people had the opportunity to correct the domes error. I might not have known right off what was wrong with it (although I do know that about copper), but I'd have said, "Hmm, I wonder why I haven't seen any shiny copper domes" and looked it up.

I'm halfway through the second Dresden yarn and enjoying it. Just the opposite of a tight, elegant, faithful-to-perceived-reality literary novel, it's light and unpretentious. It offers itself as exactly what it is and no more, and for me right now it's practically perfect escapism (even if I could do with a little less brutality and grue on the crime side of it).

One of the less conspicuous virtues is the nice, quasi-scientific explanations that the author offers for magical conventions and phenomena, such as the use of magic words and the force that causes objects to fly through the air at the wizard's command. Within the context, they are perfectly logical. They satisfy a desire for explanation in much the same way that Peter Dickinson supplies a theory for the mechanics and physiology of dragonflight and how gold figures in the picture. As long as Butcher doesn't break his own rules, it's all fine with me.

>151 Meredy: That is one of the more gruesome books, it's also my least favorite, and yet still perfect escapism, as you say.

>127 Meredy: finally had time to check out my mother's copy of In the Wetand it does have the n word but it's written like this N-------R, like one of those old Victorian novels where they refer to Mr L----------.

Very, very bizarre. Who knows what that's about.

I always knew that tea bags were a source of friction between certain segments of our global society, but I'd no idea that it would flare up here.

@Meredy, I think your six word review of Butcher's first-in-the-series up there in #114 is entirely apt. And while I've not read all of Nevil Shute's works, what I have read (and can remember) was good.

I've just gone back and revised a number of my ratings of Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael series upwards by half a star. I think I was too hard on them, first because I considered them genre novels (and how could a mystery be rated against literature?--a bias, I confess), and second, because when I started them it had just been too long since I'd done much regular reading of whodunits.

I'm enjoying the Jim Butcher stories, but it's plain to me that if one of those is worth 3 or 3½ stars, I've been unfair to Peters. The literary quality of the Cadfael stories is far above that of many so-called literary novels I've read, and Peters' elegant style is a joy in itself.

Sure, our star system is coarse and hard to calibrate (especially if, like me, you're trying to rate on quality and not on liking), sort of like trying to draw a portrait using a brick; but to maintain anything like relative value, I do have to make at least this much of an adjustment.

I base my ratings more on liking than quality, and I too find myself having to go back sometimes to make adjustments based on something new that I've rated. I also find that I tend to rate higher immediately after reading something, and end up tweaking that rating after a few months of sober reflection.

Fool Moon (2001), by Jim Butcher (3½ stars)

Six-word review: Gruesome lycanthropic killings challenge investigator wizard.

Extended review:

Number two in the Dresden Files series gives us consulting wizard Harry Dresden on the trail of murderous werewolves. As in the first book, there is a lot of graphic detail involving limbs, organs, blood, and other organic matter. Within a context that's liberal with humor and casts frequent sly winks toward the audience, Butcher (whose name does resonate ungently with me) doesn't play those scenes for laughs, thank goodness; rather, he stresses their gravity by showing us the intensity of Harry's reaction to them. Still, I do find those passages hard to read. They're very far from the nice, clean, civilized murders of your typical cozy mystery.

But I wasn't expecting Mary Poppins, especially not after the first book. So this isn't a complaint, just a comment.

In fact, I'm liking the series well enough to have gone on to book three, Grave Peril, the minute I finished this one.

It's interesting to notice how Butcher keeps his main character sympathetic despite the supernatural forces that he can command. Harry's humanity is emphasized in a number of ways. For one thing, like many a popular fictional detective, he's perpetually in financial arrears and struggling to make the rent, so he has to take some jobs he really doesn't want. For another, he has uneven and often frustrating relationships with women. The wizard police (and the Chicago police) are often on his case. He's also prone to impulsive actions that backfire or compromise his position. Most especially, though, I like the fact that he has to work to perform his magical feats, and they cost him something--sometimes a lot. They're not always successful, either, as when he is already exhausted or when he lacks a focusing device such as a staff to help him channel his energy.

We also see him doing some reflecting and soul-searching--not enough to impede the action, but enough to show us that he is haunted by parts of his past and that he agonizes over moral and ethical questions, even tackling (page 388) the nature of evil. He is strongly tempted by the easy choices and the safe courses, and yet time and again he finds the courage to do the right thing even against his own apparent interests. Flawed, conflicted, and plagued by doubts, Harry nonetheless appeals to our better natures. I hope Butcher can continue to maintain that tricky balance.

Another noteworthy feature is something that I would call covert literariness. I see it in deft phrasing such as this:

The walls shook around the beast, as though its very presence were enough to make reality shudder. (page 206)

and apt images such as this:

The soreness lifted out of my muscles, and my cloudy, cloggy thought process cleared as though someone had flushed my synapses with jalapeño. (page 244)

and occasional lyrical passages like this:

She tensed at first, and then melted against me with a deliciously feminine sort of willingness, a soft abandoning of distance that left her body, in all its dark beauty, pressed against mine. (page 312)

Why covert? He doesn't call attention to it. He doesn't show off his vocabulary. He keeps the common touch, and we barely notice departures from ordinary conversational prose such as "without" in this sentence:

It was dim inside, and from what I could hear, it was still raining without. (page 257)

--for which I can almost forgive him his persistent use of "quirk" as a verb. He doesn't make self-conscious literary allusions or indulge in a lot of complex sentence structure. He does, as is all too rare these days, use the subjunctive correctly, as in constructions such as the quote from page 206 above; although he offsets it with expressions such as "if I'd have been" (which expands to "if I had have been"; the "have" should be struck out). Moreover, he slips in little indications of cultivated tastes, such as a reference to operatic overtures. I have an idea that Butcher is carefully managing his character to maintain an Everyman persona while hinting at other, broader, deeper dimensions.

What raised this installment from a 3 to a 3½ for me was the riveting description of the subjective state of a werewolf in the full grip of bloodlust and a mighty surge of bestial power. I've seen something like this done effectively once before, in Alice Hoffman's Second Nature, and there too I found it emotionally compelling. I don't think Butcher's handling of that portion could stand any improvement at all.

>157 Meredy: Now I'm hoping that you will continue to read and review all of them, because as I have said before, you speak what is in my heart about these books, even though I don't even know it is there. Like listening to someone who knows food or wine and can describe this knowing, when all I can manage is, "Yes, I like that."

The star rating system is something I've rather given up as having too much meaning, but what meaning it does have is according to my liking of a book and whether I will read it again, keep it or not, etc. For the very same reasons you mentioned above. One simply cannot rate graphic novels, Shakespeare and Steinbeck with the same values of five little stars.

@Meredy, can you provide an example of where/how he uses "quirk" as a verb? That sounds interesting.

>159 jillmwo: Sure can, and I'm glad you asked. Here's one of the great uses of Amazon's "search inside" feature, which frequently helps me with instances and verifications.

In Storm Front, I noticed "quirked" at the first occurrence, and then there were six more. These are typical:
"she quirked a smile at me" (p. 51)
"Murphy's mouth quirked at the corner." (p. 139)

By Fool Moon it's no longer just mouths:
"She quirked her head at me" (p. 29)

I'm now reading Grave Peril, and it's extended to eyebrows--and apparently now it's not just a visual cue (i.e., something seen from outside); it's something you can feel yourself do:
"I quirked an eyebrow and leaned over the case." (p. 342)

Jumping ahead, randomly, to the tenth book, I see three instances, still mouths and eyebrows. From this generous sampling, I would expect to find them throughout his work.

I have an idea that at first (and maybe well prior to this series) it was just a moment's gift of picturesque figurative language; and it would have been all right once--or twice, but not in the same book. My guess is that the author fell in love with his own little verbal improvisation and maybe even thinks of it as a fingerprint. To me, however, it's a grain of sandy grit in the shoe.

Nearing the halfway point in Grave Peril, I can't quite shake the feeling that this episode might have been written a lot earlier and perhaps with a different character in mind, shelved, and then later adapted once the series took off. The main character seems to have Harry Dresden's traits pasted on, and there's an awkwardness of style that just doesn't feel consistent with books 1 and 2. But MrsLee has said that the flow picks up with book 4, so I'll wait it out.

>160 Meredy: so, used as an indicator of raising or flexing some small set of facial muscles. It might have been worse. What if he thought one could "quirk" one's entire face. (At that point, doesn't it become a grimace?)

Grave Peril (2001), by Jim Butcher (3 stars)

Six-word review: Lively blend of humor and macabre.

Extended review:

It's not literature. It's entertainment. It won't appeal to the snob in you. Plenty of grue, plenty of lurid description of horrific beings and their obscene crimes. And a generous helping of humor mixed in:

Distantly, but quickly growing nearer, I could hear haunting, musical baying, ghostly in the midnight air. "Holy shit," I breathed. "Hellhounds."

"Harry," Michael said sternly. "You know I hate it when you swear."

"You're right. Sorry. Holy shit," I breathed, "heckhounds." (page 35)

Pretty juvenile, yup. But it made me laugh. And laughter is a great blessing to me right now. So is absorbing distraction.

Unfortunately some of the distractions are in the writing itself. Word repetition is one thing that never fails to bug me. When I see, for example, "scarlet" used twice in one sentence and then again in the next (page 326), I'm sure that the author isn't paying attention, and neither is the editor.

I also happen to have a raw spot where I've been abraded by a lot--an awful lot--of dialogue tags that labor to replace the simple, practical "said." Okay, varying the language and avoiding an excess of adverbs is good; but how many times do characters have to breathe, snarl, and pant their speeches in a short period of time?

By my count (thanks, Amazon), someone snarled lines of dialogue 18 times.

Someone who isn't a cat purred utterances 21 times, some of them on consecutive pages.

Characters hiss, moan, scream, wheeze, and even guess their words in a sort of endless, insatiable Thesaurus exercise that leaves me hungry for some ordinary saying.

However, these are relatively minor irritants that won't stop me from coming back for more.

I like Butcher's quasi-scientific explanations for magical phenomena, and I think that he mostly gets the human interactions right. He does do a creditable job of rendering the subjective states of inhuman creatures. Most important to me as a diversion-seeker right now, he tells a story well enough to hold my attention.

>163 Meredy: I am really curious to see if his books improve in the areas you mention. I do remember an interview in which he said he wanted to rewrite his first three books and re-publish them but was advised not to. He was (I think) in a writing group or class when they were published. It will be interesting if some of these blips disappear as you read on.

For me, those are things I rarely pay attention to, unless there are other glaring issues with the story being boring or bad and I'm looking for stuff. I eat his books like popcorn, hardly aware of what I'm doing, just enjoying the experience.

>164 MrsLee: I'm hoping so. Also the fact that I've read the first three pretty much back to back has the effect of concentrating the idiosyncrasies. They'd be less conspicuous if spread out more in time.

I eat his books like popcorn, hardly aware of what I'm doing, just enjoying the experience.

That's nicely put. Sometimes I wish I could do that. The critical read is an occupational hazard for me, just as, let's say, you're not going to be able to visit a hotel without noticing things about the service, amenities, etc., that I'd pay no attention to. (Are things clean and quiet, and am I comfortable enough? Ok, fine, good night.)

As one who follows your reviews with great interest, did you know, at this moment, you have no less than 5 reviews on the hot review page? Yahoo! http://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist/reviews

>166 MsMaryAnn: Why, no--thanks, I had no idea. I didn't even know there was a "hot review"page. I've only seen the four that show up when you click "reviews" on the Home page.

Thank you for your kind interest. I thought I had only about 5 or 6 readers and was mostly talking to myself.

>166 MsMaryAnn: I can well believe it.

>167 Meredy: You have a fan club!

Is anyone surprised that she has a fan club? (By the way, I didn't know there was a hot reviews page either. When did that happen?)

Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice (2015), by Adam Benforado (3½ stars)

(an Early Reviewer review)

Six-word review: Unconscious bias contaminates all criminal processes.

Extended review:

A law professor uses research in the social sciences, neoroscience, and technology to examine the many ways, from conspicuous to virtually unrecognized, in which the human factors in every aspect of criminal justice in the United States undermine the goal of fairness. The innocent are convicted, the guilty are overpunished, and the victims may even be treated as perpetrators. Benforado dissects a broken system, analyzes the respects in which it fails to uphold its own standards, and recommends reforms.

Like many another work treating social issues, the book follows a problem-solution structure, with ten chapters covering the broad topics of investigation, adjudication, and punishment, and two more devoted to what we can and should to do remedy the host of documented ills.

Benforado makes a strong case for his position, advancing quantities of research studies, statistics, and individual case examples to show not only that the safeguards we think we have against bias are largely ineffective but that many of them actually have the opposite effect: they increase the likelihood of false witness, jury partiality, unjust verdict, and unduly harsh penalty.

Along the way Benforado explores the issues of punishment versus deterrence, false confessions, the high incidence of known false eyewitness identifications, the disproportionate cost of our current penal system in both dollars and human terms, and the relatively new industry of trial consultants, who hire out their services to help litigants analyze juries and prepare witnesses. On the subject of solitary confinement, for instance, he says:

We are so obsessed with the idea that the experience inside prison must not be like the experience outside that we overlook how much harder that makes it for inmates to rejoin society once they are released. Depriving people of normal human contact does not eliminate criminal behavior; it eliminates the capacity to engage in normal human contact. (page 229; italics added)

What he advocates instead includes increased police presence as a preventive measure; elimination of courtroom proceedings that impede the quest for justice; use of technology to overcome subjective distortions; public policy solutions that address root causes; and rehabilitation oriented toward fitness for society rather than alienation from it. I was well impressed with his thoroughness and rationality in breaking down the causes of our collective irrationality as we deal with crime--right up until he left the rails.

In my opinion, that happened on or about page 271 (out of 286 plus backmatter). But things had already gotten shaky by page 224.

I guess here is where I mention my credentials, such as they are. I don't have a degree in a pertinent field, nor do I work in one. But I'm not without a frame of reference and some relevant knowledge. In my profession, I've edited a fair number of textbooks and scholarly works in criminal justice and the social sciences. (I've also done copyediting and indexing.) Out of personal interest, I've read numerous books on the brain, the mind, thought, perception, and decision-making; at the moment, I happen to be reading Mlodinow's Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. So, without being an authority on law and justice, I feel that I can still comment appropriately on this book as a book and also on the author's success in advancing his arguments. When it comes to logical gaps or omissions, it shouldn't take any special qualifications to point them out.

The first one that halted me as abruptly as having a shoplifting alarm go off when you're leaving the department store was this:

Even those of us who don't have a mental illness or substance abuse problem are subject to cognitive limitations, emotional states, and other distorting influences that make it hard to assess the cost of committing a crime. (page 224)

I was blown away by the implication that the decision to commit a crime is a matter of weighing the potential penalty against the advantages one might gain and that somehow we ought to grant extra consideration to those who aren't well equipped to make that computation. Is a choice to break the law really a matter of pros and cons? What should we see as the cost of NOT committing a crime?

My penciled marginal notations--a matter of habit with me--take on a decidedly challenging tone by the time we come to chapter 12, "What We Can Do: The Future."

Page 262, my note: "Where does privacy fall in this scheme of things?" The passage applauds the increased use of smartphones by the New York Police Department: "Coming across an individual on the street, the officers in the program can immediately pull up her DMV and police records." Tell me this capability won't be abused.

Page 264, my note: "Independent reports: do we imagine they can't be corrupted?" The passage calls for independent groups to provide research reports to the Supreme Court, replacing amicus briefs "filled with self-serving and misleading data."

Page 264, my note: "Doesn't this just move the source of bias?" The passage proposes giving independent expert panels instead of juries the power to make binding decisions because "We know that jurors don't understand the factors that can lead to memory distortions."

Page 265, my note: "People write them--and run them." The passage argues: "Computer programs can help by effectively 'thinking' for legal actors during the moments when biases tend to arise and errors most often occur."

Page 266, my note: "And yet we know from recent major air disasters that this reliance reduces the skill and experience they need to navigate manually in a high-risk situation." The passage cites jetliner captains' use of "rigorous protocols and automated processes designed to avoid pilot error" and assures us that manual overrides are possible in unusual circumstances.

Page 269, my note: "Look at the comments on any news site--let those idiots oversee trials?" The passage suggests that "criminal trials could even be broadcast through a court's website, supplementing the spotty error- and bias-checking done by attorneys and judges with crowdsourced oversight."

Page 269, my note: "All of it susceptible to hacking and human error." The passage advocates virtual courtrooms with remote participation by jurors, with a time delay giving judges more time to react and ensuring that anything struck from the record is never heard, and adding, "Similar technology already exists for conducting meetings and conferences, and virtual interactions are becoming commonplace."

So what happened on page 271 that made me write "LEFT THE RAILS!" in caps and with an exclamation point?

Page 271, my very indignant, disbelieving note: "Oh, yeah? What's it going to be like to live with him? Ask the family members who are relieved that he's in jail. Not to mention fear of reprisal among victims, witnesses, and jurors." This was my response to a passage that asks us to consider eliminating prisons in favor of a "virtual corrections environment": "Those convicted of crimes might continue to live in their homes...we would no longer have to house, feed, and clothe most inmates...only the convicted offender would experience the punishment, not his children, spouse, parents, and friends, as in the current system..." (italics added).

Page 271, my note: "Let's not forget some compassion for victims--and the offender's family may all be victims." What kind of suffering have they undergone long before a sentence is handed down--and probably even before an arrest is made? Never mind those against whom the criminal acts have been perpetrated. The passage says: "If we are going to make our system of criminal justice fairer...we have to be more compassionate. We need to stop viewing the people we arrest, prosecute, convict, and imprison as evil and less than human...We must challenge the structures that prevent us from seeing our commonalities...And we must build new mechanisms that encourage us to understand the perspectives and situations of others."

It goes on. You don't have to keep reading, but I have to keep writing.

Page 275, my note: "How do you ever get around an employee's serving whoever pays him?--and make sure you know who pays him?" The passage proposes an alternative to the current adversarial trial system: "One solution is to remove the legal work of collecting and probing the evidence from partisan actors and place it in the hands of one or more independent authorities."

Page 276, my note: "Seems like an unrealistic goal." The passage calls for lawyers to work under professional rules that "firmly articulate that winning is not the ultimate end."

Page 278, my note: "Sure, let's give offenders an advantage over nonoffenders too." This passage wants us to make sure "that most inmates have jobs when they reenter the labor market."

Page 279, my speechless underscore and no note at all alongside this question: "why not get rid of blame as an organizing principle altogether?"

And then on page 279 I simply wrote "oh, no" next to this: "The more we understand the genetic and environmental factors that shape criminal behavior, the more it looks like a disease..." (italics added).

I'm done excerpting. The remaining pages invite us to consider that the shooter and even the writer of bad checks might not have been acting out of free choice; that we quarantine only those who are "incurable" (isn't that a human judgment?); that we "understand and address the true sources of criminal behavior, like addiction or schizophrenia" (and do we know the "true sources" of those?); and that--blinding insight here--we're better off if we prevent crime than if we focus on punishing it.

I'll just add this thought: it takes a lot of passion to drive the slow, dogged, painstaking work of researching and writing a book such as this and seeing it through to publication. Passion is a powerful motivator. Perhaps as much as knowledge and skill, passion separates the would-be author from the one who actually takes a project to completion. I admire and respect those who accomplish that feat, regardless of what I think of their product. But here's the catch-22: passion must not color the reasoning process, or it compromises credibility. And this is an ironic result, given the present subject matter. If the author had put all his arguments to the same tests that he applies to the processes of criminal justice, I wonder how different the outcome would be.

=====

A comment on production:

The Early Review copy that I received in paperback is marked 'uncorrected proof.' Significantly (and deservedly), the author acknowledges an editor, assistant editor, and copyeditor, all of whom have done their jobs well. There's scarcely a typo and only two or three standout misses. (Here's one: on page 163 the author asks, "Should victims have to face their accusers in court?" Sound ok? Read it again. Victims don't face accusers; victims are the accusers. It's their assailants that they have to face.) I'm imagining a few lost editorial arguments over certain points; in the end, it's the author's call.

There's a very comprehensive bibliography, supplemented by exhaustive online endnotes (more than 300 double-spaced pages in PDF format) that keys text citations to the bibliographic entries. A spot check of the endnotes and the bibliography does not reveal any of the egregious errors and stylistic inconsistencies seen so frequently in the current environment of diminished publishing standards. (Note to the author: Next time, please use ragged right instead of right-justifying to avoid all those huge, eye-wearying word spaces; and single-spaced lines are fine once copyediting is done.)

The index has not yet been incorporated. I like to check an index as an important adjunct to a nonfiction work; but I know its creation is the last step in the process of content preparation. Its absence here is no reflection on the book. To judge from what I do see, I would expect a very competent one.

Oddly enough, when I read your opening paragraph, the first thing I thought of was another book by Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. The perspective is different, but it left me feeling that I never want to be involved in the justice system.

>171 Meredy: "Should victims have to face their accusers in court?"

It sounds to me that from the author's perspective, the criminals are the victims, and so that sentence would be correct.

>172 SylviaC: I found that one very interesting, too. I was afraid the present book was going to plow too much of the same ground, but it's different enough to be worth a read in its own right, to judge from the first three chapters.

After the last time I served on a jury, I walked away with the clear conviction: I never want the fate of myself or anyone I care about to be dependent on our system of jury justice.

>173 MrsLee: Fair point, but from the context that's not the case. He's been talking about, for instance, asking a rape victim to point out the perpetrator: "Do you see a person in the courtroom here today...?" He says that's mostly about theatrics and questions whether there's any need to put the victim through that, especially since it so often simply means that the victim recognizes the person whose photograph he or she picked out--whether correctly or incorrectly.

>170 jillmwo: I add myself to the long list of The Unsurprised.

I am a particular fan of @Meredy's six-word reviews.

I hope you do get to continue the rest of Harry DResden. We're up to about book 16 I think now, and fairly soon the backstory starts to have a much more cohesive feel to it, which I found really helped each book as part of Harry's continuing life, rather than a series of discrete episodes. They all stand on their own as complete books. But Jim's world building extends beyond that.

You're all making me smile. Thank you! I have a new thread for the second half of the year and hope you will look in from time to time. I enjoy your company and your comments.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/192771