Some Books I've Read Lately

• Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome - Laugh out loud funny, from his incisive skewering of mendacious anglers to slothful fellow boaters to "scenic" graveyards, Jerome spins a comic travelogue as he and two pals, along with his dog Montmorency, take a trip up the River Thames. The book was written in 1889, the height of Victorian propriety, but it has a bash at every sacred cow of the era--and was all the more successful for it. Amusing situations, humorous phraseology, biting social commentary and wicked sarcasm all take their turn, perhaps more evenly than the narrator thinks he takes his turn in skulling or pulling. Highly recommended for the Anglophile, lover of delicious language, or boater.
• These Are The Voyages: TOS series One-Two-Three by Marc Cushman - The three volumes of this series equate to the three seasons of the original Star Trek series. The main feature of the books is a blow-by-blow account of the conception, writing, pre-production and making of each of the 79 episodes. Included for each are key changes in each script during its development, some contemporary critics' reviews, memories of guest actors, and original TV viewership ratings reports (contrary to popular lore, ST:TOS did not languish at the bottom of the ratings, it was usually in the top thirty for the week). The books are well-illustrated, and also have numerous forays into the zeitgeist, from what was on TV the night before an episode began shooting, the #1 song on the radio and political events to "Save Star Trek" write-in campaigns. Must reading for Trekkies, and maybe reading for people interested in TV production.
• The Ark Royal trilogy (Ark Royal, The Nelson Touch, The Trafalgar Gambit) by Christopher Nuttall - Some time in the future, earth (aka humanity) has advanced to the point of interstellar travel and colonization, thanks to FTL technology called tramlines. Sadly, humans retain the blinkered political apparatus of nationhood as they do so. Starship defenses are geared toward their earth-based competition, and thereby utterly inadequate to an attack by a more advanced alien race from beyond humanity's sphere of influence. All the starships except one--the Ark Royal, an early prototype, slow, cumbersome, but well-clad. When the sleeker, faster, less well-protected craft are shattered by the superior aliens, the Ark Royal and its drunkard captain, left like her to fade away, suddenly become the last hope. Three improbable missions, one for each volume. If you like this kind of story, this is the kind of story you'll like: interesting technology, tactical warfare blow-by-blow, professional triumph over personal demons, in-the-ranks sexual peccadilloes, an English prince as undercover hero, and aquatic aliens with super-moist spacecraft.
• The Worst Motorcycle in Laos by Chris Tharp - Travelogue by an ESL teacher in Korea. This is a guy who really took advantage of his vacations from teaching, traveling the farthest-flung of places, doing the strangest mix of things. His travels are enviable. He is at least adequate with language and description throughout, but somehow doesn't make me feel the places he goes, or like the people he goes with or meets when he's there (well, except for Smokin' Joe).
• Breakthrough by Michael C Grumley - A strange mix of Special Forces derring-do, alien visitation and/or exploitation, and communication with dolphins. The story is always a bit over-the-top, but a good read, until right near the end when the good guys engineer an-earth-destroying tsunami expressly to ... well, I don't want to give it away.
• The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins - I had heard the name of this guy for years, so I finally picked up one of his books--electronically (A great thing about e-books is that public domain texts are actually free, due to the absence of printing costs.) Published in 1872, this is an early entry in the murder mystery genre. It is slow-moving in a way typical of Victorian-era fare, but interesting enough to keep me going. British Lord Montbarry throws over his English love and marries a mysterious European Countess. He dies while honeymooning in Venice, and his rooms in the palace they rented appear haunted. Whose body was shipped back to England and whose apparition appears in the hotel?
• The Trimmed Lamp and Other Stories by O. Henry - O. Henry was a master of "cuckoo clock" stories, along with Guy de Maupassant. My sixth grade textbook (I mean the one I use here in Korea) made numerous references to the story "The Last Leaf". The stories here are all well-written, precisely characterized, and crowned with a smart twist that can still surprise and delight a hundred years later.
• The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson; translated by Rachel Willson-Broyles - This guy spins a tale that requires some serious suspension of disbelief, but the reader who buys in is richly rewarded. Nombeko is born and raised in the infamous Soweto township of Johannesburg, absconds with a fortune in diamonds, but becomes a virtual slave of an Afrikaans nuclear scientist after he runs her over on the sidewalk while drunk (apartheid worked like that). Later, she finds herself in Sweden with South Africa's missing nuclear bomb, in love with one of two brothers whose father had a lifelong obsession with bringing down the King of Sweden. Oh, and there's an elephant, a pillow factory and an American who digs an escape tunnel because he thinks the CIA is after him.

Overdue Books

Wow! I haven't done this is some months. As a result, it's possible I've left off some of the reading I've done since the last "report". Heck, I read some of these while waiting for the rain to let up in Kathmandu! Anyway, forward the list:

• I Got A Name: The Jim Croce Story by Ingrid Croce and Jimmy Rock - This is a sad, short book, mainly because it covers the sadly short life of Jim Croce. There is some wooden dialogue in his wife's memoir, but there is gut-level honesty, too--I think she tried to present a loving but unflinching portrait of the man and his music. I have loved Jim Croce's music, his stories, since about age twelve, when they first got played on the radio. Happily, his music continues to be heard, even if his voice is silent. I remember being moved (this would have been around 1995) when I noticed one of my brightest students, great kid (Bo H for those in the know) had scrawled the lyrics to "Time in a Bottle" on the back of a notebook page--it was clear he had been up late listening, and just had to get those words written out. Twenty-odd years later. Now, it's forty-odd years later, and I feel sure Jim Croce's music is still touching people.
• The Great Bridge: The Inside Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge by David McCullough - It felt like it took as long to read this book as it took to build the bridge. But I'm confident that I can stack my knowledge of the subject now against anyone--at least, anyone who didn't read the appendix, too. This is a follow-up, thanks to The Stumbler, to McCullough's fine book about the Panama Canal. Curiously, McCullough is not of an engineering turn of mind, but perhaps that is what allows him to write so clearly on topics like this. Plus, it's an engrossing story, not just the mechanics of it, but the politics, the zeitgeist, the personal hardships and drama of the Roebling family, etc. Not, however, for the fainthearted.
• The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson, translated by Rod Bradbury - I don't read reviews before I've read the book or seen the movie--too many reviewers (over at www.goodreads.com) miss the point, or I do. The allegory of 100 year old Alan Karlson seems to split them right down the middle. Yes, I suppose it could be called 'the 100 year old man who drank a lot of vodka and went on a killing spree'. Yes, it is a bit too obvious for irony that a man who hates politics meets most of the key political figures of the twentieth century. No, I don't really know if it is a bona fide #1 international bestseller. But comparing it to Forrest Gump! You go too far, sir! This was an excellent book that does not talk down to the reader or the characters, even though it is written in straightforward, clear prose (at least in translation). It embraces coincidence, but not luck, and does not demean intelligence--though it does at times demean the intelligensia. Anyway, read it. It's on Kindle.
• Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Testsuko Kuroyanagi, translated by Dorothy Britton - In Japan, to be "at the window" is an idiom for failure--you hardly ever get fired in traditional Japanese companies, you just get moved to a desk at the window ledge and frozen out. The author uses this term in this metaphorical way, and also literally, to describe her school experience as a young girl, where she often spent time at the window, chatting with passers-by during classtime. The book is her memoir of her elementary education after she was asked to leave that school and was enrolled at a delightfully modern school housed in some old railroad cars, run by a truly amazing headmaster. This is a book every educator should read, and read again, not just because of the ideals of the school process itself, but because it reminds us of the potential inside each of our charges--that little girl grew up to become one of Japan's most beloved TV broadcasters.
• Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell. and Know by Alexandra Horowitz - After I read Marley & Me, I snatched up this book at Narita to read on a flight. While I can't say that everything in the book is entirely scientifically validated, it does convince me that we humans totally misunderstand a lot of is happening with our furry friends--but also that we do have a virtually unique emotional link with our dogs.
• Spycraft by Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, Henry R. Schlesinger - This is a lengthy, detailed treatment of the history of the CIA with respect to craft--that is, the codes,miniature cameras, secret compartments, kill pills, listening stations, "drops" and the like, devised by the engineers behind the scenes. There is plenty of discussion of the role of the the technology side in operations, but not much in the way of new secrets revealed about big successes or failures, because the authors are career CIA guys who had to have the book vetted. Still, good stuff.
• The Wisdom of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton - I read some Father Brown mysteries when I was young, but I don't remember them being this subtle, or Father Brown such a surprising non-entity. If you want a thoroughbred detective like Sherlock Holmes or action guy like Jack Reacher or Mitch Rapp (see next entry), the Padre is not for you. But if you like a well-crafted little cuckoo-clock story, give him a try. PS, he seems related to the Father Brown in the Tom Bosley CBS series by name only.
• Kill Shot by Vince Flynn - Mitch Rapp is a lone CIA assassin working his way through a terrorist hit list when his handlers back home get nervous. He's gone of the page, struck out on his own. Or has he? They try to call him in from the cold, but he won't pick up the phone until he figures out who at the Agency is trying to take him down. Pretty hackneyed stuff, but a diverting read with that satisfying good-guy-kills-everyone-that-deserves-it ending.
• Naive. Super by Erlend Loe, translated by Tor Ketil Solberg - Young guy drops out of college, confused and overwhelmed, and moves into his brother's apartment while the brother is out of town on business. He splits his time between ruminating on the nature of the universe while reading a cosmology tome, and obsessively playing with children's toys (a bit like little Oskar in The Tin Drum). They went crazy for this book in the author's native Norway, but I was just mildly intrigued.

Book Report: What I Read on My Vacation

• Marley & Me by John Grogan - tender, touching, and at times riotously funny, this is a book for anyone who ever loved a dog, or even just wanted to. John and Jenny wanted to practice for having a baby, so they got themselves a cute little yellow Lab puppy, who in short order became a massive, galumphing, barrel-chested beast with a tail as strong as a baseball bat. He is, the author says, the worst dog in the world. And that's true if your sole measure is gnawed table legs, missing mittens, and a decided disinterest in coming to heel. They eventually added two (human) boys and a girl to their family, and this book tells about their life with Marley the Dog. Fiercely protective, undyingly loyal, unfailingly optimistic. Still, the sad fact is that the canine member of the family ages at seven time the rate of the others, so Marley reaches infirmity before the oldest kid is an adolescent. The last chapters of Marley's tale brought tears to my eyes, to wit: The middle son writes a letter to be interred with him: "To Marley, I hope you know how much I loved you all of my life. You were always there when I needed you. Through life or death, I will always love you. Your brother, Conor Richard Grogan"
• Shakespeare's Landlord by Charlaine Harris - Lily Bard is the unincorporated Maid-to-Go of Shakespeare, Arkansas--she knows practically everything about everybody in town as a result. Except who killed local busybody and landlord Pardon Albee. Even though she did see someone steal her garbage can trolley and dump the body in the woods, er, arboretum, across the street. Lily has her own secret to keep, one of horrific abuse, and really wants to keep her nose out of the murder of Shakespeare's landlord.
• White Noise by Don DeLillo - Hitler Studies professor Jack Gladney and his wife Babette share many traits: devotion to the post-modern children of their blended family, a good sex life, and an almost obsessive fear of death. Then, their small college town is threatened by an accidental release of something called Nyodene D., a toxic black cloud that results in evacuation and Jack's fleeting exposure while he pumps gas into the car. This is a deep book about the modern situation, but is easy to read, humorous and rife with interesting characters. Published in 1985, so "microcomputers" are viewed with admirable suspicion.
• Kill Shot by Vince Flynn - CIA operative Mitch Rapp has been on a mission for the last year, knocking off top terrorists targeted by The List, until something goes wrong during his Paris hit on a Lybian oil minister with a past. Now his superiors want him to come in from the cold. He's worried there is a traitor on the team, as the assassination in Paris looks more and more like a setup. But by whom?
• Naive. Super by Erlend Loe, translated by Tor Ketil Solberg - first person rumination on the meaning of life and everything by a 25-year-old whose life has ground to a halt by the weight of his existential anxiety. His brother invites him to New York in order to gain some "perspective". Naive has the additional meaning in Norwegian of "alternative", and though I found the POV likeably offbeat, this is a rather slight effort.
• The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez, translated by Sonia Soto - a series of murders is taking place around Oxford, the killer writing notes to a mathematics professor, with strange symbols, as if taunting him. The math more or less wasn't there, and some of the symbology went explained. Still, I more or less solved this one early on, though there were a few interesting twists at the end. I'd skip it.

Book Report, Part Deux

• The Rho Agenda by Richard Phillips (The Second Ship, Immune and Wormhole) - A trio of teenage kids stumbles across a hidden cave in which they find what can only be an alien spaceship. Despite being smart and mature, they investigate it, and fitting peculiar headbands on, they eventually find themselves trainees of the ship's intelligence. They learn that there is another ship, in famed Area 51, possibly sent by a rival group of aliens. Donald Stephenson, lead scientist for the National Lab on the First Ship exploration project, and a nasty piece of work, is meanwhile performing unauthorized human experiments using the alien technology. His ultimate goal is to form a rapprochement with the aliens and rule the world. Can three teens stop him? Of course they can, but thereby hangs this engaging and imminently readable--if lengthy--tale.
• New World Orders by Edward G Talbot - On a planet Earth teetering on the edge of global meltdown, mass extinction and resource depletion, Samuel Tan heads a secret group of the super-rich and super-powerful with a long-term, even generational, goal of getting the hell off this spinning ball before it's too late. Mega-corporations, massive defense contractors and huge amounts of infrastructure are actually secret parts of the new world order to build their spaceships and transport them to a new terraformed home. Washington, DC police detective Jim Patterson {not my old college professor} stumbles onto their plans, and has only twenty years to stop them. That last bit makes it sound silly, but it did make for a fun read.
• Hell's Corner by David Baldacci - Hell's corner is a location in Washington, DC where Lafayette Park stands opposite the White House grounds. The jurisdiction here depends on who wants it most: the DC police, the Secret Service or the FBI--or indeed who wants it the least. A sixtyish Oliver Stone (not his real name} is visiting the park, one of his old haunts, before being recalled from a forced retirement to perform a mission at the special request of The Man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He's watching a State Dinner wind down across the street when suddenly a bomb goes off. Just like that, his mission changes, and he is thrown into a hornet's nest of terrorism and intrigue even more complicated than it was in the old days. Tight plotting, quirky characters and believable (mostly) action make this worth reading if you don't have anything better at hand.
• Black List by Brad Thor - The US government has a list of people to be "eliminated"--and once you get on it, there's only one way off. Counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath has just been added to the list. He's got to find out why, and by whom, and do it in time to prevent the worst terrorist attack in American history. Harvath reminds me of Lee Childs's Jack Reacher character--so proficient at fighting and killing there just isn't any point in the opposition's bothering to try. Of course, if they didn't, there wouldn't be a book. And I like books. He's also not that great a writer, this Thor (pseudonym, much?) but he does have a reasonable take on plot-driving action, which is to say the action seems to drive the plot rather than vice versa. If Brad Thor wants my advice, he would give up on invincible, murderous hero Scot Harvath and devote his career to spinning plots about one of the minor characters here, dwarf computer hacker Nicholas with the giant dogs and similarly outsize romantic desires. Until then, don't bother ...

Book Report, Part 1

The general laxity in my posting updates of my various fascinating thoughts and activities has been unforgivable, though I admire the persistaece (and perspicacity) of the Teeming Dozens who've stayed with me during this dearth of output. Most shocking of all, has been a failure to provide my deathless reviews/summaries of what I've been reading! Fret no more! i'll begin with two longish books, considered together for their similar theme, even if that theme is not apparent at first.

• The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kiernan, and The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 by David McCullough - Although united by unnecessarily long subtitles, these books have a great thing in common: the satisfying true story of what Americans can do, both individually and as a nation, when called upon to do it to achieve some greater good. The first book uses the words and stories of two dozen women lured or hired to Oak Ridge, Tennessee to perform tasks from nursing to janitorial work, secretarial duties to physics lab tech jobs during the so-called Manhattan Project. At Oak Ridge, a series of massive plants was built to enrich plutonium eventually used in the making of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, none of them knew it at the time, and it could be argued that the bombings only marginally accelerated V-J Day, but hindsight is 20-20, and it's also easy to argue, besides, that the Bomb nonetheless saved hundreds of thousands of Japanese and American lives.
  
  This book doesn't much concern itself with that, it is mostly about the wartime lives of the women the author interviewed at some remove--their country called on them, and they responded as best they could. Their stories are dramatic, ordinary, at times comedic, and at times tragic, but make for a great read. For many years, I took my school's seventh graders to Oak Ridge every spring as part of a week-long science trip focused on "Energy". The Museum of Science and Energy had an exhibit about the lives of those who Built the Bomb, but it merely scratched the surface of the story this book plumbs so well.
  
  David McCullough, who later became one of America's best, and best-known, biographers, wrote the biography, so to speak, of the Panama Canal in the mid-seventies, when it had become newsworthy once again. Like the Manhattan Project, it is about a country's strategic needs and willingness to surmount almost impossible odds to meet them. The country was France. Well, for thirty years or so, until they had ultimately to admit they couldn't do the job. I'm sure we all know the famous palindrome "a man, a plan, a canal, Panama." That man was Ferdinand de Lessop, who had triumphantly engineered the Suez Canal a few years earlier. He took on the Isthmian canal project as a money-making venture for ordinary Frenchmen, who ultimately lost their investments because of poor decision-making and dogged persistence in wrong ideas by de Lessop, his son, and his board.
  
  What I previously knew about the Panama Canal was mostly wrong--though TR deserves some credit for it, he gets considerably more than he deserves; while American medicos eliminated malaria, they did so by continually fighting their higher-ups, conventional wisdom, and the US Congress, none of whom believed mosquitoes were responsible for its spread; while the US did indeed have a treaty involving the canal territory's return after X number of years, that treaty was with Colombia, who no longer controlled the territory by the time the US actually started to build.
  
  And that's just for starters. Great book. Well, two great books!
• J. Edgar Hoover: The man and the Secrets by Kurt Gentry - As far as I can tell, this book is exhaustively researched, and yet does not reveal any of the salacious scuttlebutt I was expecting in such a thick, detailed, and thorough book, about J. Edgar's rumored transvestitism, homosexuality or fetishism. Disappointing as it is, I have to conclude that it turns out not every homophobe is a closeted gay. Still, there are revelations aplenty about this foul man and his iron grip on American law and "morality" for the nearly forty years he ran the FBI until his death in 1972. He personally destroyed the lives of many good men and women, while supporting the worst kinds of cretins and elevating them to rhe hallways of power. And he still impacts American culture in negative ways. For example, even though the American Communist Party was always a tiny, ineffectual group of aesthetes and wannabes, their disproven approach still serves as a rallying point for conservatives to this day. Though his illegal surveillance techniques were eschewed in the seventies and eighties, the dramatic news of programs like Echelon and Prism seem to bore Americans, in part because Hoover's FBI (or rather the revelations about it) has somewhat normalized them.
• The Hornet's Sting: The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum by Mark Ryan - Thomas Sneum indeed was an amazing spy; sadly, he was a poor excuse for a human being. He abandoned his wife and daughter, he threatened his biographer with a loaded pistol, he left his brother to freeze to death, he was a misogynist and all-around asshole. However, he wasn't a coward. The key thing abouut him, that makes the other stuff less important, is that he performed several feats of amazing bravery or derring-do to assist materially in the Allied cause during WWII. Sneum was Danish, and got involved in the war effort after his homeland crumbled under Nazi power without even testing itself. Near his home, the Germans installed a new kind of radar; he took pictures of the installation, and unable to provide the photos to the British any other way, he and a buddy rebuilt an old Hornet Moth, filled it with extra fuel cans, and flew it across the north Atlantic, climbing out onto the wing to refuel it along the way. Wow! That was just the beginning of his remarkable tale, which is replete with British spy agency bumbling, double-agent shenanigans, assassination by crossbow, and seducing a mother and her daughter. Long derided as a double agent, Sneum was ultimately exonerated and rewarded with the King's Medal for Courage.

Part 2 of this installment of the book report will have a slightly more sci-fi leaning. Coming soon!

Last Book Report of 2013

• The Return of Sherlock Holmes and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle - While some stories and their denouments, like the Empty House or the Norwood Builder, are indelible (at least to me), many others can surprise me over again upon each re-reading, as long as I have allowed sufficient time to pass. For my brain, softened by decades of bad living, ten years is ideal--The Blue Carbuncle and The Beryl Coronet don't ring a bell and so are as fresh as when last I read them. And besides, even if you do remember what happens halfway through, the storytelling is so strong, the language so lovely and the characters so comfortable that you don't even mind. Since the tales are now in public domain, the price is right, too--iBooks, the Apple version of Kindle, has them all downloadable for free, along with hundreds of literary classics that have stood the test of time. Oh, joy!
• The Pioneer Detectives by Konstantin Kakaes - Launched in the 1970s, Pioneer 10 and 11 were space probes set on a course that would take them past the planets then off into interstellar space. But by the late 1980s, trackers began to notice the spacecraft were inexplicably slowing down--the Pioneer Anomaly. What was causing the deceleration? The answer could be the long hoped for gravity wave, or even more tantalizing, so-called "dark matter" upon which a whole new type of physics depended. Or a software glitch. Or even more mundane, the failure to account for a small quantity of heat loss from, say, an oddly-shaped bulwark. I'm not going to give away the answer, but I will note that scientists are still looking for definitive proof of dark matter.
• The Frozen Sky by Jeff Carlson - Humans make their first contact with aliens, blobby denizens of Jupiter's moon Europa which live in the icy shell, the "frozen sky" that covers it. This book is a fast-paced action adventure, a political intrigue and a good quality hard sci-fi read. This is good stuff, and the ending hints at a sequel. I hope so, and that is an indication of high esteem.
• People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry - Disturbing true story of the disapperance and murder of a 21-year-old ex-British Airways flight attendant named Lucie Blackman who moved to Tokyo to make some money as a club hostess in the ex-pat friendly Roppongi district. She was not a stripper or prostitute, not a drug maniac, she was just looking for some adventure and quick yen to clear up her debts back home. A hostess sits and talks (or mainly listens) to frustrated milquetoast Japanese salarymen while encouraging them to buy more liquor. But they were also obliged to escort certain men to dinner outside the safe confines of the club--and Lucie disappeared while on an unscheduled jaunt to the seaside. The book details the grotesque inertia and incompetence of the Japanese police forces (while they cound not have saved her in this case, they could have locked up the perpetrator years before), the mind-numbing slowness of the judicial system, and the harrowing price paid by Lucie's family and friends because of the above. Lucie's killer was a Japanese of korean descent going under the name of Joji Obara, who had probably committed his first sexual crimes at age seventeen. He is incredibly wealthy and still uses his minions to harrass the book's author, a longtime journalist in Japan, from his jail cell.
• Brilliance by Marcus Sakey - Starting in 1980, there was a substantial uptick in the number of children born with abnormal (abnormally high) intellectual or sensory abilities. Because of their great skills, the "brilliants" as they were initially called began to take over many aspects of public life--for example, playing Wall Street so well they shut it out down--and the tide of public opinion turned against them. Abnorms, or "twists" are identified at an early age and packed off into "academies" at age eight; the government has a powerful agency to hunt down activist or terrorist twists. Meet Nick Cooper, a twist himself and key agent of the Department of Analysis and Response, who goes under deep cover to assassinate the most dangerous and devisive abnorm of them all, John Smith, only to discover that all is not as it appears. The plotting is good, the characterizations are fair, but the dialogue is always leaden. Still, an exiting and occasionally thought-provoking read.
• Operation Mincement by Ben Macintyre - Yes, the British spy agency did indeed dress up a dead guy as a Marine Captain, attach some brilliantly faked documents to him, and dump him from a submarine so that he would wash up on the Spanish coast. They knew that there was a good chance that Axis-leaning Spanish general staff would help the documents make their way to Berlin, where they may convince the Nazis that the Allies had no real plans to attack Sicily, that Sicily was just a cover for the real attack being developed for Greece and Sardinia. The story has been told in the book and the movie, The Man Who Never Was authored by Ewen Montagu, the MI6 officer who was one of the deception plan's key instigators. That book was intentionally and necessarily incomplete and mendacious in certain ways. Ben Macintyre's new work names names, fills in the blanks and shows us how successful the plot really was.

This is the first time I read every book on the list via an electronic medium. I still love paper books, and have a stack of them ready to go. Meanwhile, here is an interesting documentary of the printing press from Stephen Fry, in which he actually builds one:

What I'm Reading

I guess I haven't posted a list in a while! Here goes:

• The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith - This is the ninth in the No 1 Ladies' Detective series set in a charming and delightful version of Botswana. Those familiar with these books recognize they aren't exactly edge-of-your-chair whodunits. Which probably is more closely attuned to the real life of detectives anyway. In this entry, Mma Ramotswe helps an adopted woman find her birth relatives. She also deals with some threatening letters sent to the agency, and Mr J. L. B. Matekoni's pursuit of an expensive miracle cure for their foster daughter Motholeli.
• The Last Van Gogh by Alyson Richman - I recently read a book called The Lost Van Gogh, so I thought this would make a good book-end. The earlier read concerned a painting from van Gogh's time in the hospital at Saint-Remy in 1889, but this one is about his time in Auvers-sur-Oise at the end of his life (it is, after all, the last van Gogh). Van Gogh was being looked after by a Dr Gachet, an amateur artist, and a depressive like himself. Gachet has a beautiful but sheltered young daughter, Marguerite, who catches the artist's eye as a subject for both his art and his infatuation. Well-researched, charming, but slow-moving like the time it was set in.
• What Doesn't Kill You by Iris Johansen - What doesn't kill you ... puts you to sleep. This is the first Iris Johansen book I've read, and it was the stupidest. Catherine Ling is an indestructible yet voluptuous ex-CIA operative who has a young son and an inscrutable Chinese herbalist/martial arts master named Hu Chang as a mentor and best friend. Hu Chang has created a special poison that everyone in the dark trades wants to get their hands on, and ... oh, who cares! The characters are unlikeable, the plot is unbelievable, and the writing ordinary.
• The Colonel's Mistake by Dan Mayland - Retired CIA station chief Mark Sava rescues operative Dara Buckingham from a prison in Azerbaijan, only to find himself in the middle of complex plot between the US, China, Iran and various terrorist groups centered on oil. This is a first novel, and it has some problems, like the open space between characters the plot holes, or the uneven jumps between locales (speaking of which, I don't think I've read another book set largely in Azerbaijan--though the story also carries Sava to Dubai, Iran, Washington, DC, and somewhere in France). Still, it's good enough to give the next installment in the Mark Sava series a look.
• On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison - Almost exactly fifty years ago, events in Dallas, Texas occurred that changed the world in ways large and small--the killing of John F Kennedy. I don't remember where I was that day, but I have heard and read repeatedly of the conspiracy theories, the eyewitnesses, the magic bullet, the reversed film frames, etc. Never mind the incredible public dispatch of the only suspect. I even saw the Oliver Stone film (ha!) Nothing has given me anything like the clarity and perspective of this book, authored by the New Orleans DA of the period, who used his office to investigate the assassination's NOLA connections. Garrison seems as solid and rational as they come, and indeed the book puts us on the trail of the assassins, but doesn't lead us to them--or even attempt to burnish any particular conspiracy theory, though he does insist there was a conspiracy--a point bolstered by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. Anyway, good read.
• CyberStorm by Matthew Mather - This is a ripping good electronic Armageddon story set during the holiday season in Manhattan. Suppose the Iranians, or the Chinese, or the Russians launched a cyber attack that shut down key power stations. At the same time, the East Coast is ravaged by powerful snowstorms. You would expect that within a few days, the authorities would get the power going, the streets ploughed, and everything back to normal. But what if they couldn't? What if the attack crippled the whole country--or at least east of the Mississippi? The internet goes down: no trains, no planes, even your apartment building can't perform essential functions anymore. Soon, the stores are empty, the TV and radio stations shut down. You huddle together with friends to conserve warmth, you forage in co-operative groups; in just a week or so everyone you see on the streets is a competitor for resources: an enemy. This is the situation young IT pro Mike Mitchell and his small family find themselves in a hundred pages into CyberStorm. And it's bound to get considerably darker before the dawn.
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - Genius is a word much bandied about thesee days, and when we describe Steve Jobs as a genius, we should be clear what we mean by that term. I think it's more along the lines of "a person who is very good at something" than "a person endowed with transcendent mental superiority". Isaacson isn't really strong about this distinction, and as a result he creates a portrait that isn't a hagiography, but that isn't as unbiased as you might expect if you interviewed over one hundred people. Jobs was really good at something, of that there is no doubt: Apple products are almost always a pleasure to use, and that is due entirely to his ability to control every aspect of their design. But, Jobs was not, let's be clear, a designer himself. He was not an electrical engineer. He was not a filmmaker. Based on the book, he typically had an intuitive idea of what he wanted a product to be like, but he wasn't good at articulating it: usually, a design was "shit" until it was "the best thing ever". Unlike most successful businesspeople, he wasn't very "good at" people: he was cruel when he didn't have to be, and created unnecessary enmities along the way; he created what many co-workers dubbed a "reality distortion field" in which his view of events, let's say the timetable for rolling out a new product, was so strong and convincing, people nearby were convinced that it could happen. Many times it did, but sometimes Apple could be two years behind the announced delivery of a new widget. This also caused problems when he convinced the board to back-date some stock options--a questionable but not downright illegal gambit that the book mentions in less than one paragraph. What makes him interesting, though, as a CEO, is his unlikely combination of "visionary", big picture man (we need to create our own stores to sell our brand, not commoditize the Mac between the Compaq and the Asus on Circuit City shelves) and detail man (we must get our limestone tiles from the same quarry in Italy that Venice got theirs). In sum, I probably wouldn't have liked the guy, but I think he was a genius.

Read A Book!

Well, I'm off for a week in the sun and surf of Samui. Read a book!

• The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz - Izzy Spellman has been a private investigator since age 14, working in her family's detective agency; a good detective agency, one gathers from the story, but extremely disfunctional family. The mom and dad split their time between working cases and following Izzy around. Older brother David was a model of perfection growing up, and is now a high-price corporate lawyer, who happens to be dating Izzy's best friend behind her back. Uncle Ray has survived cancer gotten from a lifetime of clean living and has decided to live it up, and so part of Izzy's work is trying locate him after he disappears on one of his periodic, debauched "lost weekends". And fourteen-year-old sister Rae has a detecting compulsion that leads her sneak out at night and shadow random people. Somewhere in there, Izzy is working a cold case about the disappearance of a teenager from camping trip twenty years ago.
• The Secret of the Stones by Ernest Dempsey - I don't mind a story that stretches credulity, but this one exceeds the snapping point by quite a margin. On the other hand, it's set almost entirely in Georgia, so I liked the "local" flavor. An artifact has been found which may unlock the secret treasure of the Cherokee Indians and their link to the ancient Egyptians. Our hero is in a race to solve the mystery in time to save his archaeologist friend who's been kidnapped by minions of "The Prophet. To do so, he must decipher long-misunderstood clues at locations like Etowah Indian Mounds (I took eighth graders there for years) and Rock Eagle (4H camp locale). Still, it's just too unbelievable for me.
• The Martian by Andy Weir - Imagine being left for dead by your team when exploring a remote location: little food and water, few supplies, no communication. Now imagine that you're on Mars, and the next manned mission is years away. Fortunately, you're a botanist and a mechanical engineer. What are your priorities, what are your longer-term goals? Read how astronaut Mark Watney answers those questions in this well-researched page-turner, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury--it hasn't got Bradbury's lyrical qualities, but it makes up for it with technical exactitude and creative problem-solving.
• Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre - The story of Eddie Chapman has all the earmarks of a Hollywood tall tale--in fact, there have been a few fictionalizations of his life, but none as good as the real thing. Chapman, a career criminal in his late twenties, volunteered to work for the German Abwehr intelligence agency in order to get out of a Jersey prison. When he made his way to England to sabotage an airplane factory, he turned himself in to MI5 and became the most effective British double agent of the War. In his four journeys across the channel, he bedded women, charmed men, and did untold damage to the Axis war effort in Europe. Bravo to him, and to this well-told, well-researched book about him.
• Hidden Genius: Frank Mann, the Black Engineer Behind Howard Hughes by HT Bryer - Thanks to my friend Chris for this tip (and many others), or I would never have heard of this remarkable guy. Even serious engineering types have never heard of Frank Mann, even though he designed cars for the Big Three, solved mechanical engineering problems for Howard Hughes, became an honorary member of "Doolittle's Raiders", piloted airplanes for Southwest Airways, created the coupling system for NASA that attached the Shuttle to the 747, and even sat aboard the famous 'Spruce Goose' in its only flight. He was also a singer, dancer, and MC at Huston's Eldorado Club, and hung out with movie stars like Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart and John Barrymore. Big life--slim book, only 109 pages. The book came about because the author's brother Paul befriended Mann in the eighties, got to know him and his remarkable story, was given the "rights" by Frank to his life story, but backed out of a Hollywood miniseries when he learned they planned to sensationalize it with his penchant for the ladies and the celebrity scene. It is based almost completely on Frank's conversations with Paul, his supply of memorabilia, and interviews with people still around from his days at the rather secretive Hughes Corporation. Fascinating, and a great role model no matter what your skin color.

Ex Libris Tuttle

Off to Malaysia Saturday. Here's some ideas for stuff to read while I'm gone:

• The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers - The Iraq War presented in grimy, poetic clarity; the geopolitics (and peculiarly American politics) are the unacknowledged raison for the day-to-day of a pair of foot-soldiers trying to survive senseless combat missions together. The lyrical quality of the narration exposes the ugly betrayal of the truth even as it appears to hide it. What, after all, did the narrator do to deserve his time in the stockade?
• Poorly Made in China: An Insider's Account of the China Production Game by Paul Midler - Fascinating expose of the truth behind China's rise to manufacturing (or manufactured) might. The author's account of his long experience as a go-between helping US firms find factories in the Chinese hinterland reveals the cynical tricks, ploys and outright lies Chinese firms use to attract overseas customers. Quality fade, secret substitution and false partners are jusrt some of the methods used by Chinese companies which ultimately lead to the poisoned baby milk, contaminated pet food and dangerous toys, that inhabit today's headlines.
• Out of Time by David LaVigne - A professor of archaeology finds a time travel device in Mikola Tesla's desk-carefully, academically, he travels around in historical time, until he realizes a more cynical time traveler has found a similar device: a Nazi officer who he believes is altering history so the Third Reich can rule the world of the twentieth century. So begins a race though space and time, stretching from ancient Rome to the American Revolution. It took time to warm up to this story, but it became quite a tense and enjoyable read by the end!
• Relics by RD Shaw - You won't realize this book's premise is absurdly impossible until halfway through, by which time you'll be hooked on the lead characters, and the not-quite impossible premises of the secret societies to which they belong or interact with--starting with the Knights Templar. Yeah, them. Still it's quite a good read, with reader-as-detective moments, unexpected plot twists, and a long, action-packed race to the climax.
• The Lost Van Gogh by Al and Jean Zerries - Clay Ryder, manufacturing scion and NYPD major case detective, was at first happy to get the stolen art beat, after his wife's death--until he realized that it only lowered his esteem in the squad room. However, when he is able to link a series of delivery van hold-ups to the recovery of Nazi-era art pilfering and the recovery of a long-lost van Gogh ... well, the intricacies are almost impossible for even his trusted mentor to follow.
• The Expats by Chris Pavone - Katherine, Kat, Kate--no matter what you call her, she is an ex-CIA clandestine officer, married to milquetoast banking IT guy Dexter, who gives up her analyst job when he decides to move their young family to Luxembourg, the lower-profile version of secret-banking-hub Switzerland. They befriend another ex-pat couple, Bill and Claire, but Kate comes to realize she is not the only one keeping secrets--for example, a fifty million Euro hidden bank account. At times a bit samey, with Kate obsessing over how to come clean about her past to her husband, this book still delivers some great twists and turns.

Recent Reading

• In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith - Yet another wistful visit to the Botswana of Mma Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies Detrctive Agency, and her new husband, Mr JLB Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. The story told here continues the arc of the lives of the above-mentioned, with interesting, if non-sinister, twists, such as the usurpation of Mr JLB Matekoni's old home as a speakeasy.
• Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding - A young publicist, spurned by her 'Famous Club" lover, devotes four years of her life to running a refugee camp in a war-torn region of sub-Saharan Africa. An impending crisis magnified by bungled NGO bureaucracies causes her to return to London to ask the celebrities she once for their assistance. At once a piercing indictment of charity "events" and convincing plea for recognition of the troubled political situation that leads again and again to mass starvation in this part of the world.
• Eleven Days by Donald Harstad - Solid police procedural about a gruesome murder spree with Satanic overtones in a sleepy Iowa backwater. Ex-cop's first novel may have some trite elements, but his believable characters--on both sides of the law--suggest this is a name to watch the publisher's lists for.
• Bangkok Bob and the Missing Mormon by Stephen Leather - Bob Turtledove is an ex-pat who runs an antique shop in the City of Angels--aka, Krung Thep or Bangkok. Some time ago, he set up a website for his shop with a Q&A section; some requests are easy, some are hard. A Mormon youth has gone missing, around the time of a disastrous bar fire in a seedy district of Bangkok, and the boy's parents plead with Bangkok Bob to find their son. Regular visitors to Thailand will recognize many of the names, places and environments described in the story, and probably decide never to become an English teacher there. Fair enough.

• Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? by Thomas Kohnstamm - I never think of a tourist guidebook as a Bible--but if I had, I certainly wouldn't do so after reading this NON-FICTION account of Mr Kohnstamm's sixty-two day stint writing/updating the LP guide for the Brazilian hinterland. A story of drinking, drugs and deceptions, it throws into doubt any single fact you may read in any guidebook ever (except perhaps Arthur Frommer's rather staid tomes). As to the title question, 'Do travel writers go to hell?', I think the answer is that they probably should, but they're so hung over they miss the bus.

Book Report

• Six Bad Things by Charlie Huston - I'm pretty sure this is the second part of the story that was told in a previous novel, but frankly there is enough action, psychology, blood and gore that it stands alone. Told in Huston's eccentric first-person narrative style, the reader is quickly sold on the basic humanity of the central character, even when the reader learns he has a slew of dead people in his back pocket. And about four million dollars, as well. Under an assumed name, he now lives on a Mexican beach, but is tumbled by a Russian backpacker and pursued by a psychopathic fan. He's got to shake these people off and then return the money before his parents pay the price he owes. Gripping, lively, different.
• The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith - I'm pretty sure it's impossible NOT to fall in love with the Botswana of Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, and with the people that populate it--Mma Precious Ramotswe, her long-time betrothed, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni of Ttlokweng Poad Speedy Motors, her assistant who scored 97% on the final exam at Btswana Secretarial College, Mma Makutsi. When Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is asked to sky-dive as a fundraiser for the Orphan Farm by Mma Potokwani, Mma Ramtoswe is spurred into action lest her marriage end before it has even begun. Do, oh, do read these books.
• True Fires by Susan Carol McCarthy - Based on a true story (quite possibly my hometown, but certainly its environs in central Florida), a typical southern town's bigotry is confronted by a transplanted Virginia clan, the Dares, who claim to be related to first generation settlers. Sheriff Kyle deLuth, who I visualized as Claude Akins (Sheriff Lobo) thinks the quiet little girl has the pug nose of a "nigger" and decides to kick them out of the white school system. This has the making of a good story, but the characters are all drawn in black-and-white, the best action is relayed second-hand, and the final tragic moment was so telegraphed I thought there would be a twist--but there wasn't. Skip it.
• Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre - Thoroughly-researched, well-documented story of how the Normandy assault of WWII would have failed were it not for the misinformation campaign of double agents who fed the German intelligence apparatus a pack of lies. Lies that they bought at retail, never aware that the Enigma code had been broken, and just as importantly, unaware that every single German agent in Britain had been "turned", and was working for the Allies. This is the fascinating story of how these double agents fed piecemeal misinformation to the Abwehr to cause the Nazis to misallocate forces to the wrong parts of the Channel defenses in advance of D-Day.

Vacation Reading

• A God in Ruins by Leon Uris - I remember at age twelve, when I first considered myself to have my own "library". Fifteen books or so, I had, and four of them--I remember this quite well--Leon Uris books, Exodus, The Angry Hills, Topaz, and Mila 18. The rest were sci-fi or fantasy: Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury; and a Vonnegut or two. And an atlas. (Soon I added Arthur Hailey and Harold Robbins to my oeuvre, but that's for another conversation.) I've picked up a couple of Urises since the mid seventies, but not so much as you might expect of someone whose personal collection was 25% Uris at the start. A God in Ruins has the epic generational sweep of Trinity, the political intrigue of Exodus and the righteous man's polemic of QB VII--this time the issue is gun control (curious since so many of his early books were so violent). I liked the story, I liked the characters he wanted me to like, I disliked the ones he wanted me to, the ending seemed appropriate... in a word, it was formula. If you only read one Leon Uris book, don't read this one. Read Exodus. And if you read a second, read QB VII.
• Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith - This is the third installment in the lovely "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series focusing on Mma Precious Ramotswe and her betrothed, Mr JLB Matekoni of the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. This episode features a feral child discovered in the Botswana bushveldt, a Government Man who suspects his sister-in-law is a poisoner, a crisis at the Miss Beauty and Integrity Contest and a bout of depression being suffered by Mr JLB Matekoni. In the midst of all this, the agency is under financial strain, and Mma Makutsi, graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College with a score of 97%, must step into the breech. These books are not really detective stories, but they are truly delightful reading!
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas - At a Saturday afternoon barbeque in suburban Australia, a spoiled four-year-old takes a swing at another child with a cricket bat, and gets slapped by the other kid's father. This event reverberates over several months and five hundred pages, as the event and its afetermath are related from the points of view of the main (adult) actors. The court case is done halfway through the book, and halfway through the characters--each gets one chapter, then it's on to the next POV. This format works well to expand the moral complications of what is in reality an everyday event.
• America Unchained by Dave Gorman - Is it possible to travel the USA coast-to-coast in a car without paying homage to The Man (TM)? Meaning, without relying on using at all corporate American retail outlets like Exxon, McDonalds, Best Western. Gas-Food-Lodging. While it seems like a political tome in the making, Gorman's reasons were simpler than that: on a comedy stand-up tour (he's a British comic i am familiar with via QI, for example) across the US, he was dispirited by the soul-less, samey-samey hotels and restaurants he was booked into. He came back, bought a 1970 Ford Torino station wagon in San Diego and made his way ultimately to Savannah, Georgia in six weeks, meeting lots of real Americans along the way. This is a unique travel book, humorous, thoughtful, appreciative Americana.
• The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith - I had about eighty or so pages yet to go in this book when I left Ayette's Bamboo House Restaurant, Port Barton, after breakfast one morning, sticking it securely, or so I thought, in my camera bag. When I arrived at my bungalow a twenty minute walk later, it was gone. I immediately retraced my steps, then again, asking at every little business and home along the way. Nada. I am so enamoured of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series that when I got back to Seoul, I had to make my way to What The Book to buy a new (well, used) copy and finish it up. Anyway, this is the fourth book in this charming, gentle and wise series of tales from an Africa I miss--where concrete and tarmac smell acrid and harsh, but thatch, earth and burned coals smell of home and happiness. As usual, there are no bloody, twisted bodies or missing millions in this edition, but a radio stolen twenty years earlier, a new detective setting up shop in Gabrone, and an idea by Mma Makutsi, Precious Ramotswe's assistant detective (and 97% score graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College), to earn money on the side by offering typing classes--for men.

Book Report: Escape from Camp 14

Blaine Harden, an American journalist with an impeccable pedigree from the Washington Post, New York Times and Time magazine, has written a powerful book about the amazing journey of Shin Dong-hyuk.  Shin was born and raised in a North Korean labor camp for political prisoners. As a child of the camp, he was malnourished, inadequately clothed, uneducated, always hungry, and taught from birth to ‘inform” on all others in the camp. As a teenager, he informed camp guards of a plan by his mother and older brother to escape, and was later forced to watch as they were executed, wondering if he was next. 

       Later, when he decided to escape, his co-escapee was killed by the electrified fence surrounding the camp, and he crawled over his friend’s dead body to get away.  It took a month, keeping a low profile, traveling with small bands of itinerant traders, stealing when necessary, to make his way to China; he was lucky to find work on an ethnic Korean's pig farm, where the comparative easy life, and some grilled meat, allowed his tortured body to heal.  Eventually, he managed to get to the South Korean Consulate in Shanghai, which kept him for six months before transferring him to South Korea.
       After two years, unable to adjust to life in South Korea, a common problem with NK defectors, he went to the United States to become a human rights activist, a still-ongoing process.  Harden met him in Seoul, and followed up with a series of interviews in California, during the course of which Shin finally broke down and told the truth about informing on his mother.
       In the selection I have copied below, Harden tells about seeing a speech of Shin's as part of an NGO concerned with NK human rights.  I used this selection in my public speaking class because it draws attention to several elements of successful public speaking, while summarizing many of the key elements of Shin's life story.

Without notes, without a hint of nerves, he spoke for a solid hour. He began by goading his audience of Korean immigrants and their American-raised adult children, asserting that Kim Jong Il was worse than Hitler. While Hitler attacked his enemies, Shin said Kim worked his own people to death in places like Camp 14.
       Having grabbed the congregation’s attention, Shin then introduced himself as a predator who had been bred in the camp to inform on family and friends—and to feel no remorse. “The only thing I thought was that I had to prey on others for my survival,” he said
       In the camp, when his teacher beat a six-year-old classmate to death for having five grains of corn in her pocket, Shin confessed to the congregation that he “didn’t think much about it.”
       “I did not know about sympathy or sadness,” he said. “They educated us from birth so that we were not capable of normal human emotions. Now that I am out, I am learning to be emotional. I have learned to cry. I feel like I am becoming human.”
       But Shin made it clear that he still had a long way to go. “I escaped physically,” he said. “I haven’t escaped psychologically.”
      Near the end of his speech, Shin described how he crawled over Park’s [his fellow escapee] smoldering body. His motives in fleeing Camp 14, he said, were not noble. He did not thirst for freedom or political rights. He was merely hungry for meat.
       Shin’s speech astonished me. Compared to the diffident, incoherent speaker I had seen six months earlier in Southern California, he was unrecognizable. He had harnessed his self-loathing and used it to indict the state that had poisoned his heart and killed his family.
       His confessional, I later learned, was the calculated result of hard work. Shin had noticed that his meandering question-and-answer sessions were putting people to sleep. So he decided to act on advice he had been resisting for years: he outlined his speech, tailored it to his audience, and [decided exactly] what he wanted to say. In a room by himself, he polished his delivery.
       Preparation paid off. That evening, his listeners squirmed in their pews, their faces showing discomfort, disgust, anger, and shock. Some faces were stained with tears. When Shin was finished, when he told the audience that one man, if he refuses to be silenced, could help free the tens of thousands who remain in North Korea’s labor camps, the church exploded in applause.

What I'm Reading

• The Dig by Michael Siemsen - A happy participant in the willing suspension of disbelief, this one was a bit too far for me. A mysterious artifact is found in an African dinosaur dig, and clairvoyant Matthew Turner is brought in to lay his hands on it, and thus "read" the thoughts and emotions of all who had touched it before. If this was the only unbelievable element of the story, I could have really liked it; (SPOILER ALERT:) alas, the object itself points to a pre-Mesozoic human culture so advanced that a few bits of woven metal armour are the least we should have found. He should have stuck with the human elements of love and greed in the Kenyan dig's encampment, and told a more gripping tale.
• Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin - In case you've not heard of it, this is Korea's runaway best-seller from 2011, and deservedly so. The elderly mother of three grown children disappears from a Seoul subway platform during a family visit. The book is narrated in four sections by different family members, painting "Mom's" adult life as a mother and caregiver. In their search to find her, the children find out about her--a more complex person than they imagined, yet touchingly devoted to her family, especially the eldest son, as is expected in a Confucian society. Well-written, thought-provoking, also interesting for the light it sheds on Korean culture for the outsider. Recommended.
• Cell by Stephen King - King's 2006 novel of the zombie apocalypse begins when incipient graphic novelist Clay Riddell has just gotten his first break. Suddenly, everyone talking on a cell phone begins acting oddly. Well, not just oddly, they're jumping out of windows, biting each other's necks, and generally rampaging. What follows is a gruesome but good read, populated by believable characters but a few unbelievable coincidences, in which those few untouched by the cellphone madness form small groups, while the zombies come together in a Borg-like collective consciousness, as if reprogrammed by the cellphone message. Upcoming movie to star John Cusack.
• Hot Type by Joseph Flynn - Chicago crime reporter and aspiring novelist Dan Cameron gets a typewriter for his birthday, supposedly the one used by Ben Hecht (Chicago reporter and novelist). After writing his first novel on it--a big success--he is nearly finished with his second when it is stolen during a burglary. The burglar is a recently escaped convict and bank robber who slowly realizes what he's got--and starts to use the novel's plot as the basis for his series of crimes. Meanwhile Dan and his wife team up with a retired FBI agent who had chased down the bank robber and ... Anyway, this book is full of great plot twists, double-crosses, and funky characters. A great read!
• Ape House by Sara Gruen - The jacket blurb points out that this is an "incisive piece of social commentary" but read it anyway. Isabel Duncan is a scientist at a primate research facility who gets along much better with apes than with her own species. An explosion at the center, blamed on animal rights activists who protest outside daily, nearly kills her, but the Bonobos escape. They are rounded up, sold off, and somehow become the stars of America's latest reality TV show, created by a well-known porn producer (Bonobos are highly sexed). She tries to get them back, by whatever means necessary. Thoroughly researched, well-written, an interesting and entertaining book!
• Shem Creek by Dorothea Benton Frank - Chick-lit about a divorced mother of two teenage girls, leaving behind life in New Jersey to return to her childhood home of the South Carolina Low Country. She wants a simpler, slower life, especially for younger daughter Gracie, who has been rather in the fast lane lately. Linda takes a job as manager of Jackson Hole, an upscale seafood restaurant with a downscale ambience, and slowly falls in love with Brad Jackson, the owner. I read it mainly for the atmosphere, and it did not disappoint.
• Nailed by Joseph Flynn - This is the fifth Joe Flynn book I've read, and they have all been distinctly different--locale, characters, themes, plots. They have in common that they are very good, and that they are crime stories; and in this one, the crime is that a well respected black preacher has been nailed to a burnt tree in the Sierra Nevada town of Goldstrike. Police Chief and "recovering bigot" Ron Ketchum finds that his investigation, instead of focusing the suspect list, tends to widen it. Meanwhile, a desperate mountain lion has begun trying to pick off lone joggers and small children, making many in the community of Goldstrike wonder if the curse on the town from the dead pastor's bereaved grandmother wasn't being fulfilled in some way. As usual with Flynn's books I've read so far, the climax and denouement are both unexpected and satisfying. Good stuff!

Ex Libris Tuttle

• The Prometheus Project: Trapped by Douglas E. Richards - This is part one of a juvenile three-parter in which two quite bright chldren of quite bright parents find themselves trapped in a multi-dimensional spaceship buried deep underground in rural Pennsylvania. Part 1 is on Kindle, parts 2 and 3 much less so ...
• The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich - From the guy who wrote the book about the MIT blackjack teams comes the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the basis for the recent movie, told entirely without his participation--or that of the Winklevoss twins. Interesting, well-told, but ultimately unsatisfying, as we really need to hear Zuckerberg's side.
• Memoirs of an English Governess by Anna Harriet Leonowens - This book speaks to the raptures of imagination that can bring us a well-told story. Not this one, alas, but the magical The King and I musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein that is "derived from" it. How they got their charming tale from this dreary tome is beyond me; though there is a bit of story (i.e., a sequence of events linked by narrative) in the beginning and again at the end, mostly this is an endless description of Thai funerary rituals, coronation procedures and belittling descriptions of ordinary life in the Siam of the 1860s. Unless you really like Thailand (or Broadway musicals), skip it.

• Wired and Amped by Douglas E. Richards - Thoroughly imaginative sci-fi thriller combining some of the best of both genres I have read in a long time. Brilliant genetic engineer Kate Miller has developed a treatment that temporarily rewires the brain to achieve almost god-like intellectual abilities; David Desh, ex-special forces operative, is hired to "bring her in" before she can sell off her secret to Islamic terrorists--or so he is led to believe. This series (for I hope there will be more) has a red herring in every chapter and enough double-crosses to keep your head spinning--and the pages turning. Highly recommended.
• Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane - Vignettes of enormous descriptive power bring the reader into the mid-twentieth century world of Northern Ireland and "The Troubles" as seen through the eyes of an Irish Catholic boy. There is a secret in his family, one that slowly emerges through the short scenes, until revelation of the truth--violent and devastating--leads to his adulthood and independence. Deservedly shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See - The second Lisa See book I've read, frankly, Shanghai Girls was better. Still, there is much of interest here for one who loves Asia--mention of numerous traditions, not least the laotong relationship, which pairs up girls for a lifetime, and is stronger than their husband-wife bond; foot binding, a brutal custom that hobbled and even killed Chinese girls into the twentieth century; nu shu, the long-secret "women's writing" which Mao tried to ban during the Cultural Revolution (the suffering of women in Confucian China is a major theme of the novel); and a host of festivals, particularly in the countryside, such as the "Expel the Birds" Festival, held just before planting time, in which poison seed was laid down so that the good seed could be planted without having it stolen. In the midst of all this is the story of Lily and her laotong Snow Flower, told over the course of their lifetimes in nineteenth century Hunan province. I have to say the cultural insights are more engrossing than the plot. Despite that, it's a good book, and I'll read more Lisa See.

What I'm Reading

• 11/22/63 by Stephen King - It's been quite a while since I read a Stephen King book, but I enjoyed this one so much, I soon picked up another one, reviewed below. Most Americans will recognise the date of the title as that of the assassination of JFK. Al Templeton, small-town Maine diner owner, looks back on that event as a turning point in our history--a turn for the worse. If only he could correct that mistake. Fate has given him a way to do it, he eventually realizes, in the form of some kind of time tunnel in the pantry of his cafe, a time tunnel back to September 9, 1958: hang around for five years, then stop Lee Harvey Oswald. Unfortunately, fate has also given Al lung cancer, so he has to convince a burnt-out local teacher named Jake Epping to make the trip in his stead. This is one of the best time-travel stories I've ever read, and one that asks (and answers) a lot of the Big Questions--be careful, you might not like the answers.
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson - Well-researched, eminently-readable account of perhaps our most significant Founding Father, from cradle to grave. Franklin was a complex man: most of his life an abstemious man of simple tastes, towards his fifties he became fond of fine food and drink; he had little education, but became one of the foremost scientists of the age, with key discoveries in physics and meteorology, from fluids to the Jet Stream to electricity; he eschewed the task of preparing the DOI on grounds he was no writer, yet his tracts and editorials galvanized the young republicans as much as Paine's works; fiercely defended and fondly beloved by many, he seems not to have been much of a family man; apron-wearing shopkeeper who dined with kings and queens. Not just for the history buff.
• Blood Canticle by Anne Rice - For many years, I read every Vampire novel as it came out, up through about Memnoch the Devil, in which Lestat attempts to turn to the Good--well, in this book, he's not good or bad, he's just so in love with everybody, from Mona, the petulant slut he's inexplicably turned, to her mother Rowan and Rowan's husband Michael, it makes me want to puke. And while Mona is over the scene, Lestat seems to think it's important that everybody keep sitting down all the time and talking about whta happened before and is largely explicated in the Mayfair Witches books anyway. This is reputed to be the last novel of both the Vampire and Witches series. Sadly, it's one book too late.
• Under the Dome by Stephen King - WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!
  
  
  I liked this novel okay for the 1000 or so of its 1072 pages; yes, there are some predictable plot elements, some drab characters, but as a reader I really like 'Barbie', Iraq vet turned drifter as the main good guy, and I really hated Big Jim Rennie as the main baddie. The story takes place in Chester's Mill, Maine--and I mean entirely within Chester's Mill, as a giant, invisible, impregnable, inexplicable dome has just come down that perfectly conforms to the town's borders. While the US government tries ineffectually to breach the dome, those on the inside become more and more panicy. Frankly, their panic is spurred by subtle actions of Rennie, who as Town Selectman, sees an opportunity to take over the town lock, stock and barrel. He has used the town's money to line his pockets rather than perform many needed infrastructure upgrades, which would help the town through this crisis. The story plays out as more or less a morality tale about the GW Bush administration, where Bush is dumb but likeable First Selectman Andy Sanders, Cheney is Rennie (even down to the bad ticker) and the Dome is 'turrists'. So, everyone that's good is flag-wavingly, heart-rendingly good, and everyone bad is gang-rapingly, meth-lab-runningly bad. No, the part of this book that pissed me off was (and here's why I have the SPOILER ALERT!) the eventual explanation for the Dome. You may remember a quiet, little sci-fi movie of 1985 titled Explorers, in which some kids are sent instructions (in their dreams) from aliens on how to build a spacecraft. They do it, go to the mothership--and find out the aliens are just kids. 'Nuff said.

What I'm Reading

• I Have the Right to Destroy Myself by Kim Young-ha - There is a lot of sex in this novel, nost of it unfulfilling--a literary device to represent the unfulfilling lives of the characters. The shadowy, unnamed narrator of the tale helps people commit suicide; no blood on his hands, just advice. He finds his clients through a simple want ad: "We listen to your problems." After a completed assignment, the narrator rewards himself with a trip abroad, and so he is in Vienna, then Venice as the story of two brothers, C. amd K. play out with their unfulfilled love interests, Mimi and the girl who looks like Judith in a Gustav Klimt painting.
• A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley - This is the third Flavia de Luce novel, and it was a fine read without reference to the previous two, narrated by the precocious Flavia, an 11-year-old girl living with her perpetually bereaved father and two older sisters on decaying manorial estate in the British countryside, post-World War II. Riding her trusty Dunlop named Gladys, Flavia has a knack for encountering crime, and within the first several pages, an aged Gypsy fortune-telling clings to life, and a local ne'er-do-well is found skewered on Poseidon's trident of a fountain in a rarely-visted garden of Buckshaw, the de Luce estate. Good mystery and great atmosphere.
• Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich - This true story of the MIT "card-counting" team, reads like a thriller. Gambling for profit, anyone knows, is for fools--but these super-bright Asian kids from one of America's top universities weren't fools. They weren't even gamblers, and they'll hasten to point out they weren't cheaters either: cheaters contrive somehow to alter the conditions or the outcome of the game, and frankly that's what the casinos do--the blackjack teams were only taking advantage of statistical probabilities inherent to the game of blackjack. Author Ben Mezrich details the involvment of Kevin Lewis in the high stakes world of Vegas players from his initiation into the team from Boston until things fall apart once facial recognition technology makes the game too dangerous in the late nineties. But in the meantime, the team earned hundreds of thousands or more per month on weekend forays into the '21' tables of America.
• Without Warning: After America by John Birmingham - Okay, so this is the second part of a trilogy (with part 3 hopefully being released as i speak), which may explain some of my initial confusion--but even reading the first book would not help too much, as the "energy wave" that obliterates about 1/3 of the earth's population remains unexplained at the end of the second one. The Wave happened in 2003, so you can see this is an alternate history, but it has intriguing aspects, and some of the plotlines it follows (there are about six) are engrossing. I hope "Angels of Vengeance" is an adequate follow-up!
• Gasoline, Texas by Joseph Flynn - Fast-moving, eccentric character-laden tale of LBJ's rumored love-child, Ladbrook "Laddy" Johnson, who grudgingly became a Hollywood stuntman before returning to his hometown of Gasoline, Texas to run for mayor against town big-wig Edwin (Win-Win) Winslow. Unfortunately, Win-Win dies of a heart attack before the votes could be counted, the rich oil fields that gave the town its name have been looted by Win-Win and half the power structure of the county, and mega-movie star Joanna Wells is having second thoughts about their nuptials, after seeing Laddy in a compromising situation with Win-win's long-lost daughter Hayley, who has been off assassinating people for the federal government, and only returned for her father's funeral. Sound like a fun read? Yep!
• The Concrete Inquisition by Joseph Flynn - Chicago cop "Doc" Kildare recently lost an eye during a shootout with Armando Guzman, local drug kingpin, and has put in a claim for 15 million dollars, his share of the ill-gotten gains confiscated in the Guzman roust, pursuant to Illinois code. The Chief of Police doesn't cotton to the idea and looking for a way to sideline Doc--permenantly. As is Guzman and his lawyer cousin Hector. As is an unknown serial killer, who seems to have "disappeared" a neighborhood mentally challenged boy. Meanwhile, Doc's ex-wife Harry (short for Harriet) wants back in the picture, possibly not because of the impending 15 mil pay-off. Another well-plotted pageturner from Flynn with some interesting characters.

Vacation Reading

• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher - Debut novel intended for teens about a high school girl who commits suicide, and records a series of tapes explaining why. Clay Jensen comes home from school two weeks after Hannah Baker's death to find a shoebox of cassette tapes, sides numbered 1 to 13. He listens with increasing discomfort, building to horror, as he understands the tapes are for those who played a role in Hannah's decision to kill herself--one side for each guilty party. He listens through one long night, as the story snowballs much like a thriller, her narration intertwined with Clay's reactions. Ingenious format and a very real story--the kind of book that stays with you for a while.
  
• Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell - After giving up in disgust on being a British policeman in Burma, Eric Blair came back to England in the late 1920s; finding no ready employment, he went to Paris as an English tutor--such work became harder and harder to come by, until he ended up as a plongeur or dishwasher in a fancier Parisian hotel, working 18+ hour days for little better than slave wages. He finally threw in the towel and returned to London, where he he shuffled round the home counties as a bum. This book describes this lifestyle, and the lives of people he met, in harrowing detail; he also explains how the laws intended to help the chronically unemployed only make their lot worse and keep them from becoming productive members of their society.
  

• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones - This unconventional tale by a popular New Zealand author centers around life on a small Pacific island which is engulfed in a revolution led by guerrillas. When the war breaks out, all the whites leave the island, including the teachers--all the whites except for Mr Watts, who is married to a local. The story is narrated by Matilda, who becomes enthralled by Charles Dickens's Great Expectations which Mr. Watts reads to the children chapter by chapter after he takes over at the school. Government soldiers and guerrillas who come down from the hills alternately threaten and burn the village, the violence escalating with each incident--all in a search for the non-existent Mister Pip, a character from Dickens. Fittingly sad ending and an interesting read. (Movie version starring Hugh laurie coming out this year.)
  
• Merrick by Anne Rice - Surely the greatest Gothic storyteller of our time, Rice here combines characters from her two best-selling brands, the Vampires and the Mayfair Witches. The narrator is David Talbot, former head of the Talamasca turned vampire, who had mentored Merrick as a young girl; he calls upon her now to bring Claudia back from the dead in order to make Louis happy (if you don't know who these people are, don't read this book--go and start with Interview with the Vampire). The main episode of the story is a return trip to the jungles of South America to retrieve powerful talismans that Merrick believes will be helpful in restoring Claudia--this is actually not true, as Merrick has other purposes in mind, purposes which may soon lead the Talamasca Elders to wage war on the vampires ...
  
• Bubbles Betrothed by Sarah Strohmeyer - This fifth novel in the Bubbles series is a stand-alone story about beautician-turned-reporter Bubbles Yablonsky who is trying to find out who killed Lehigh, PA's popular high school principal with a secret life. At first, everyone thinkks the killer was a deranged homeless woman called Popeye, but when she is murdered moments she is to testify, her innocence becomes apparent. Meanwhile, Bubbles suddenly finders herself engaged to world-class reposrter Steve Stiletto, while her ex-husband, ambulance-chaser Dan the Man claims someone is trying to kill him. The plot thickens when someone drops in her car a series of explicit photographs taken by a security camera showing the dead principal in flagrante in the local podiatrist's office with another man. Fast-paced, well-written and fun, Bubbles is a winner--and the Agatha Awards agree, giving her the Best First Novel prize in 2001.
  
• The Two Faces of Tomorrow by James P Hogan - Hogan was known for his "hard" science fiction, and this early novel certainly fits that characterization. Published in 1979, and read thirty-odd years later, it reveals one of the main difficulties with hard science fiction: the non-existent and/or emerging technologies of the time are described and explained in a way that is quite tedious to the modern reader. Still, the basic ideas that the story wrestles with--the role and power of technology to change, control or even destroy humanity--are with us today. Worried that the "Titan" system that runs a lot of things on earth could get out of hand, government powers design an experient aboard an orbiting space station in which a supercomputer will be given the desire for survival, and then human colonists will attempt to shut it down. Codenamed Janus (two faces, get it?) the head scientist and our protagonist is Ray Dyer, who meanwhile falls in love with Laura Fenning, an attractive but irritating journalist who is to document the experiment for later public consumption--if they survive to tell the tale ...
  

Book Report: Seollal 2012

• Operation Spider-Web by MH Sargent - Sargent has created an interesting team of CIA operatives who work, at least in this tale, third in the series, within Military Intelligence. Gonz, Heisman, McKay and Peterson seem to work together well, and I suspect their backstory is covered in a previous tome, but that doesn't matter so much compared to the current plot. And on that topic, I'm not sure I buy the initial story that gets the team involved in the operation that forms the focus of the book; but once they are in it, it is a gripping and realistic series of events. A fun, easy read for those who lkke battlefield action and intel subterfuge. It's an independent brought out on Amazon, Kindle-only.
  

• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami - Slow-moving but carefully drawn and totally genuine characters, I would believe this is exactly what happened to Murakami in his youth except he emphatically denies it. It is a sad pair (or maybe even trio) of love stories told from the boy's POV in the Tokyo and environs of the late sixties. The student upheavals of those times form a sort of background, though no one in the action is a revolutonary--if anything, the action and drama is a counterpoint to their inability to act and move. Nonetheless, Murakami is able to paint a dynamic still life of four real people with Beatles music in the background.
  
• Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart - This is without a doubt the strangest book I have read in quite some time. First off, it is set in an indeterminate near-future where people are largely known by their buying power (LNWI = scum = low net worth individuals), and their personal data is easily read on their apparati, personal information devices. The US as we know it no longer exists, it is the ARA or American Recovery Admininistration, and the Chinese National Bank is about to lower our credit rating. In this crazy world, Lenny Abramov falls in love with Eunhee (Eunice) Park, a slim, self-centered Korean girl whose father beats her and whose mother and sister tend to rely on Geejush to save them. Lenny is a flabby, thirty-nine year old of Ashkenazi stock who works for the megacorp that runs things, despite it being in a little-known branch whose job is indefinite life extension. If the author had replaced "True" in the title with "Weird" it would sell a million, at least in yuan-pegged dollars. Seriously, I would not miss this book if I were you!
  
• The Weekend by Bernhard Schlink - Like The Big Chill, except the subject of the weekend together for old friends is still alive--he didn't die (as played by Kevin Costner in his most life-like role), but got released from prison. Jorg is a German terrorist who was convicted of the murder of four people nearly thirty years earlier, spending his first weekend of freedom at his older sister's country estate ; it's very talky, and even at that doesn't manage to explore the key issues to my satisfaction. As with The Reader, I started to like it better as it went on, but I was still left wanting, though I must say the sparks between Henner and Margarete pleased me.
  
  

December Book Report

Well, I haven't been blogging, but I have been reading, my standard book or so per week. Here are my usual snapshot reviews.

• Worth Dying For by Lee Child - Jack Reacher is Child's franchise character, ex-military, massive, super-smart, with cat-quick reflexes, and an encyclopedic knowledge of anatomy that instantly informs his hand-to-hand combat moves. Moves he needs quite often, at least in the nondescript Nebraska town he finds himself in in this novel. While hitching his way east, Reacher gets entangled in a nefarious family and their stranglehold on the small farming community. He has to kick a fair amount of Cornhusker ass in order to untangle things, which he does with unbelievable alacrity. Still you know he's putting it to really bad guys so you don't mind too much. The problem with the book is that all Reacher's foes are so easily overcome by him it's hard to feel much menace in what should be menacing situations.
  
• Red Inferno: 1945 by Robert Conroy - This is an interesting alternate history novel based on the premise that Russians did not stop in Berlin as WWII concluded in Europe, but instead pressed on to attempt the capture of all Germany, thus reneging on the Yalta pacts. What ensues, in this version, is a massive land war once more consuming western Europe, this time with the US, Britain and France (and some of the vanquished Germans) fighting Russia. The book unfurls its events with good pacing through several POV, interesting characters on both sides of the battle lines.
  
• Blood Street Punx by Joseph Flynn - Not at all what you might expect of a book whose title suggests it's a novel of Chicago gangstas seen at street level. In fact, the Punx are a group of well-heeled boys from the near North Side who are talented artists. However, most of their parents want them to pursue family careers in law, real estate, etc, so they decide to make a big splash on the art scene--painting giant murals as the gang of the book's title. They seem oblivious to the fact that they are "tagging" territory owned by some of the city's most vicious gangs, and pissing of the mayor and police, as well. They wanted attention, just not the kind of attention they were getting. Interesting premise, well-drawn characters (mostly), a quick read with a satisfying ending. Surprisingly good.
  
• Skylar by Gregory McDonald - Teen-age beauty queen Mary Lou Simes has been brutally nurdered, her body found a quarter-mile from The Holler, an illegal dive in the forested area of rural Greendowns County. Sheriff "Pepp" Culpepper and his deputies have a built-in suspect in the person of Skylar Whitfield, the boy who always escorted Mary Lou in her pageants. Skylar is a smart but happy-go-lucky recent high school grad, with no college acceptances but lots of offers from the local females. Meanwhile, his cousin from Boston is spending the summer to recover from mono, and the two don't seem to be getting along. Sheriff Pepp and his wife aren't getting along either, and when another body turns up, the heat is turned up both on Skylar and the Sheriff who is pursuing him. Good story up to the end, but I'm just not sure I can believe the final solution to the murders.