In December, 2010, I was reading my usual half-dozen books.
The NIV Study Bible, read December 1-31, pages 1725-2172. (Finished)
The Poisonwood Bible, read December 3-5, pages ix-x and 1-66.
Crossroads of Twilight, read December 6-30, pages 267-700. (Finished)
The Koran for Dummies, read December 7-15, pages 24-78.
What Distant Deeps, read December 10-14, pages vii-x and 1-370. (Finished)
The Vampire Archives, read December 19-31, pages 635-809.
The Legions of Fire, read December 18-31, pages 7-76.
Two of these books, What Distant Deeps and The Legions of Fire were written by my friend, David A. Drake. What Distant Deeps is "space opera," another in a series of adventures with the Royal Cinnabar Navy. On the other hand, The Legions of Fire is a fantasy novel set in a close analog of ancient Rome called Carce.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label David Drake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Drake. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Friday, November 13, 2009
Audiobooks: The Technology of Reading
The accompanying article by David Frum comes from the May 2009 issue of Commentary. Mr. Frum used to be a Canadian, then he became a speechwriter for George W. Bush. He is the author of Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again and the proprietor of FrumForum.com. Here's a link to that site.
As you may know by now, I not only read books, I listen to them. This is in part Dave Drake's fault. Years ago, in an act of great kindness, he gave me copies of the audiobook versions of his books Lord of the Isles and Queen of Demons. Since then I've listened to many, many books, sometimes in the car while driving, sometimes while jogging or exercising, sometimes while sitting my study, and sometimes while lying in bed. Overall, it's been a good experience, but there have been technical glitches. For one thing, the players tend to work up over one's belt or waistband, resulting in the player, and the tape, crashing to the ground. This is hard on players, and it's hard on the nerves having one's headphones suddenly yanked to one side.
Mr. Frum asserts that the iPod provides a superior audiobook experience. Listening is still best reserved for lighter reading. Multivolume histories, books of closely-reasoned logic, and scientific treatises may not be so suitable. I listen to a lot of mysteries and thrillers, and so, apparently, does Mr. Frum. In fact, having read his essay, I'm going to look up Alan Furst. Whether I have an iPod with which to listen to his books is in the hands of the gods. Or Santa Claus.
All of you addicted readers should find David Frum's essay of interest, and some of you will find his suggestions about the iPod and the selection of material useful. Of foremost importance, perhaps, is his point about the quality of the narrator. There are some terrific narrators out there, like Richard Ferrone, who does John Sandford's Prey novels. For one thing, he pronounces "Porsche" correctly.
As you may know by now, I not only read books, I listen to them. This is in part Dave Drake's fault. Years ago, in an act of great kindness, he gave me copies of the audiobook versions of his books Lord of the Isles and Queen of Demons. Since then I've listened to many, many books, sometimes in the car while driving, sometimes while jogging or exercising, sometimes while sitting my study, and sometimes while lying in bed. Overall, it's been a good experience, but there have been technical glitches. For one thing, the players tend to work up over one's belt or waistband, resulting in the player, and the tape, crashing to the ground. This is hard on players, and it's hard on the nerves having one's headphones suddenly yanked to one side.
Mr. Frum asserts that the iPod provides a superior audiobook experience. Listening is still best reserved for lighter reading. Multivolume histories, books of closely-reasoned logic, and scientific treatises may not be so suitable. I listen to a lot of mysteries and thrillers, and so, apparently, does Mr. Frum. In fact, having read his essay, I'm going to look up Alan Furst. Whether I have an iPod with which to listen to his books is in the hands of the gods. Or Santa Claus.
All of you addicted readers should find David Frum's essay of interest, and some of you will find his suggestions about the iPod and the selection of material useful. Of foremost importance, perhaps, is his point about the quality of the narrator. There are some terrific narrators out there, like Richard Ferrone, who does John Sandford's Prey novels. For one thing, he pronounces "Porsche" correctly.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Knight's Reading List XVII: May 2008
Reading List:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium.
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881.
Drake, David. Balefires.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave.
Non-Fiction:
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881. 1970. xvi + 503 pages. Index.
Pierre Berton may have been Canada’s best popular historian. He wrote books on the war of 1812, the arctic, World War I, and much more. This is the first of a two-volume set on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Ah, there were men in Canada in those days! And Berton’s stock in trade is portraits and accounts of individual adventures, weaving them into the narrative of how Canada came to undertake the building a railroad that it didn’t need and couldn’t afford, but had to have if it were to be more than a semi-official province of the United States. In this volume, most of the efforts to build the railway are frustrated, but a lot of money and gravel are poured into the muskeg bogs west of Fort William and Port Arthur. Most Americans are far too ignorant of Canada, and they don’t even know how little they know. Pierre Berton can help to correct that deplorable situation.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2005. 380 pages. Glossary. Index.
There are four basic parts to this book: how to select a digital camera; how to set your camera for the best results; how to store and print or display your output; and how to improve your pictures once they’re in the computer. The author provides lots of examples, making this the most colorful Dummies book I have seen. Like many of the Dummies series, this is an excellent starting point for someone who want to get a little more out of a digital camera.
Fiction:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium. New York: Warner Books, 2002. 290 pages.
The Duke of Uranium is a YA book. That’s “young adult,” and you can always spot that genre by the use of a 16- or 17-year-old hero (or heroine) to undertake adventures most thrillers leave to men and women in their thirties. This one is fast-paced and well-developed. There isn’t a lot to the characters, but Jak Jinnaka, our hero, is quick and resourceful. This book reminded me of some of the Heinlein YA books I read in my youth. Barnes does a good job of world-building, too, with a well-realized corporatist state providing a good background for the teenage hijinks.
Drake, David. Balefires. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2007. 303 pages.
If you wanted a collection of two dozen short stories, any one of which could lay icy fingers along your spine or get you to look over your shoulder at every noise down the hall, this might well be that book. David Drake wrote these stories between 1967 and 2005, but the vast majority were first published in the 1970s. They were first published in a variety of magazines and collections, some slick and famous like Omni, some almost private ventures like Whispers.
I’ll tell you this, there are some stories in here I first read more than thirty years ago, and when I re-read them I still got that fine creepy feeling you get from a good horror story, like walking into a mass of cobwebs in a dark cave. “The Barrow Troll” is a lovely story set in medieval northern Europe, dark and portentous, which leave you wondering if it is a tale of madness or of the supernatural. “The Hunting Ground,” set in Durham, North Carolina, a town I, too, lived in during the early 1970s, is a story about particularly sinister invaders from outer space.
The variety of settings is an added element of these stories. Vettius and Dama find monsters in the distant provinces of the Roman Empire. “Something Had to Be Done,” “Firefight” and “The Dancer in the Flames” have their sources in wartime Vietnam. If you like the kind of stories that take you back to the days when you and your friends sat around a campfire trying to scare yourselves silly, you would really enjoy Balefires.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. New York William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1970. 495 pages. Author’s Note. Acknowedgements.
The Crystal Cave is the first book of a trilogy of novels set on the Arthurian legend, told from the viewpoint of Merlin, Arthur’s famous magician and counselor. The following books are The Hollow Hills (1973) and The Last Enchantment (1979). There is a fourth book using the same setting, but using Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister as focus and narrator, The Wicked Day (1996). So it up to The Crystal Cave to set the scene, introduce the characters, and put the plot into motion. This Mary Stewart, heretofore an author of romantic mysteries like The Moon-Spinners (1963), does very well indeed.
I suppose the most important thing to say about The Crystal Cave is that Mary Stewart provides us an adult take on the Arthurian legend. This isn’t a fantasy for children, but an exploration of the emotions and actions of two men, Arthur and Merlin, both illegitimate, who come to have powers for which neither has been very well prepared. It is, in many ways, their common illegitimacy that binds Merlin to Arthur, and which gives him his empathy for Arthur’s struggles. While Arthur doesn’t appear in person, as it were, until the later books, in The Crystal Cave Merlin’s relationship with Arthur begins with the arrangements for Arthur’s conception.
It is a very exciting scene, full of storm clouds and ancient stone walls battered by the violent sea, in which Merlin conducts Uther Pendragon to the side of Ugraine, a married woman whose husband is conveniently away, and watches over Arthur’s conception. In fact, Merlin’s motivation is not that of a mere pander, but based on his foreknowledge of Arthur’s ability to unite Britain against the Saxon invaders. This is a Bildungsroman, an historical novel, and a work of forceful and believable magic, all at once. Most of all, this is a fine novel of human emotions and feelings.
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium.
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881.
Drake, David. Balefires.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave.
Non-Fiction:
Berton, Pierre. The National Dream: The Great Railway 1871-1881. 1970. xvi + 503 pages. Index.
Pierre Berton may have been Canada’s best popular historian. He wrote books on the war of 1812, the arctic, World War I, and much more. This is the first of a two-volume set on the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Ah, there were men in Canada in those days! And Berton’s stock in trade is portraits and accounts of individual adventures, weaving them into the narrative of how Canada came to undertake the building a railroad that it didn’t need and couldn’t afford, but had to have if it were to be more than a semi-official province of the United States. In this volume, most of the efforts to build the railway are frustrated, but a lot of money and gravel are poured into the muskeg bogs west of Fort William and Port Arthur. Most Americans are far too ignorant of Canada, and they don’t even know how little they know. Pierre Berton can help to correct that deplorable situation.
King, Julie Adair. Digital Photography for Dummies, 5th edition. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 2005. 380 pages. Glossary. Index.
There are four basic parts to this book: how to select a digital camera; how to set your camera for the best results; how to store and print or display your output; and how to improve your pictures once they’re in the computer. The author provides lots of examples, making this the most colorful Dummies book I have seen. Like many of the Dummies series, this is an excellent starting point for someone who want to get a little more out of a digital camera.
Fiction:
Barnes, John. The Duke of Uranium. New York: Warner Books, 2002. 290 pages.
The Duke of Uranium is a YA book. That’s “young adult,” and you can always spot that genre by the use of a 16- or 17-year-old hero (or heroine) to undertake adventures most thrillers leave to men and women in their thirties. This one is fast-paced and well-developed. There isn’t a lot to the characters, but Jak Jinnaka, our hero, is quick and resourceful. This book reminded me of some of the Heinlein YA books I read in my youth. Barnes does a good job of world-building, too, with a well-realized corporatist state providing a good background for the teenage hijinks.
Drake, David. Balefires. San Francisco: Nightshade Books, 2007. 303 pages.
If you wanted a collection of two dozen short stories, any one of which could lay icy fingers along your spine or get you to look over your shoulder at every noise down the hall, this might well be that book. David Drake wrote these stories between 1967 and 2005, but the vast majority were first published in the 1970s. They were first published in a variety of magazines and collections, some slick and famous like Omni, some almost private ventures like Whispers.
I’ll tell you this, there are some stories in here I first read more than thirty years ago, and when I re-read them I still got that fine creepy feeling you get from a good horror story, like walking into a mass of cobwebs in a dark cave. “The Barrow Troll” is a lovely story set in medieval northern Europe, dark and portentous, which leave you wondering if it is a tale of madness or of the supernatural. “The Hunting Ground,” set in Durham, North Carolina, a town I, too, lived in during the early 1970s, is a story about particularly sinister invaders from outer space.
The variety of settings is an added element of these stories. Vettius and Dama find monsters in the distant provinces of the Roman Empire. “Something Had to Be Done,” “Firefight” and “The Dancer in the Flames” have their sources in wartime Vietnam. If you like the kind of stories that take you back to the days when you and your friends sat around a campfire trying to scare yourselves silly, you would really enjoy Balefires.
Stewart, Mary. The Crystal Cave. New York William Morrow and Company, Inc.,1970. 495 pages. Author’s Note. Acknowedgements.
The Crystal Cave is the first book of a trilogy of novels set on the Arthurian legend, told from the viewpoint of Merlin, Arthur’s famous magician and counselor. The following books are The Hollow Hills (1973) and The Last Enchantment (1979). There is a fourth book using the same setting, but using Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister as focus and narrator, The Wicked Day (1996). So it up to The Crystal Cave to set the scene, introduce the characters, and put the plot into motion. This Mary Stewart, heretofore an author of romantic mysteries like The Moon-Spinners (1963), does very well indeed.
I suppose the most important thing to say about The Crystal Cave is that Mary Stewart provides us an adult take on the Arthurian legend. This isn’t a fantasy for children, but an exploration of the emotions and actions of two men, Arthur and Merlin, both illegitimate, who come to have powers for which neither has been very well prepared. It is, in many ways, their common illegitimacy that binds Merlin to Arthur, and which gives him his empathy for Arthur’s struggles. While Arthur doesn’t appear in person, as it were, until the later books, in The Crystal Cave Merlin’s relationship with Arthur begins with the arrangements for Arthur’s conception.
It is a very exciting scene, full of storm clouds and ancient stone walls battered by the violent sea, in which Merlin conducts Uther Pendragon to the side of Ugraine, a married woman whose husband is conveniently away, and watches over Arthur’s conception. In fact, Merlin’s motivation is not that of a mere pander, but based on his foreknowledge of Arthur’s ability to unite Britain against the Saxon invaders. This is a Bildungsroman, an historical novel, and a work of forceful and believable magic, all at once. Most of all, this is a fine novel of human emotions and feelings.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Knight's Reading List X: October 2007
I finished a short list of books in October of last year. I also started six books in October, which I finished reading in November. Along with other records I have, that indicates that the following list represents only a fraction of what I was reading in October of 2007, but an important fraction, for all that. The first two books, two very different approaches to wars which have been imagined very differently, are both excellent. One is a work of literary criticism which reveals quite a bit about a war and its effects; the other is a work of history that explores the literary, as well as the political effects, of a brutal war.
Non-Fiction:
Paul Fussell. The Great War and Modern Memory. 2006. xvi + 462 pages, including Notes and Index. This past summer my wife and I watched Ken Burns’ documentary on World War II on PBS. One of the old veterans who provided commentary, with particular emphasis on the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, was Paul Fussell, who had been a brand-new lieutenant in 1944. When he isn’t fighting wars, Fussell is a literary sort, a professor and the author of a number of books. This is a very, very good work of literary criticism, exploring the literary traditions of World War I. Fussell examines such major writers as Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, looks at the break with earlier literary forms and expressions which marked the period after 1916, and notes the differences between the much franker, more open literature of World War II. He even spends a chapter or so on the homosexual imagery of World War I’s prose and poetry. This is a work about literature and thought, which is itself a thoughtful work of literature. Read 1-28 October 2007.
Alistair Horne. A Savage War of Peace. 2007. xxvii + 484 pages, including Index. Thirty years ago I spent eighteen months in Algiers. I was focussed on my immediate job at the American Embassy, and spent much of my tourist time exploring Roman ruins. (Legion III Augustae was stationed in the area for several hundred years; the Romans had a grasp of the long-term nature of military commitments.) I heard this and that about the war of the Algerian revolution, and I was there for the 25th anniversary celebrations in November 1979. But I didn’t really know much about the war – I was, after all, 11 when Charles de Gaulle returned to power, and the war entered its final phases.
Alistair Horne is a terrific author, specializing in French history, and with a taste for the violent side of politics. A Savage War of Peace, with its savagely ironic title, is a very good read. It is also a very good source for those wondering what’s been going on in Iraq these past five and one-half years. A while back President Bush asked Mr. Horne to the White House, looking for insights into insurgent warfare in Muslim countries. It might have been better if he had thought to do that before ordering the invasion of Iraq. Read 2-30 October 2007.
Paul H. Lange, M.D. Prostate Cancer for Dummies. 2003. xxii + 356 pages, including Index. October 10, 2007, I received a diagnosis of prostate cancer. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about the disease, undergone treatment, including radiation and hormone therapy, and am doing very well now, thank you. This was the first, and in some ways the best, of the books I read while informing myself about a disease which affects one male American in six. Read 16-30 October 2007.
Fiction:
Margaret Frazer. The Bastard’s Tale. 2003. 309 pages. One of a series of medieval mystery novels. Our detective is a prior century’s Miss Marple: a nun named Dame Frevisse. Read 1-10 October 2007.
David Drake. Lord of the Isles. 1997. 625 pages. This is the first of a nine-book fantasy series written by a friend of mine from North Carolina. I like them, and I’ve found them worth re-reading. In fact, I’m listening to the book-on-tape version as I prepare this little report. This was, perhaps, the third time I’d read the book. Read 5-22 October 2007.
Non-Fiction:
Paul Fussell. The Great War and Modern Memory. 2006. xvi + 462 pages, including Notes and Index. This past summer my wife and I watched Ken Burns’ documentary on World War II on PBS. One of the old veterans who provided commentary, with particular emphasis on the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, was Paul Fussell, who had been a brand-new lieutenant in 1944. When he isn’t fighting wars, Fussell is a literary sort, a professor and the author of a number of books. This is a very, very good work of literary criticism, exploring the literary traditions of World War I. Fussell examines such major writers as Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, looks at the break with earlier literary forms and expressions which marked the period after 1916, and notes the differences between the much franker, more open literature of World War II. He even spends a chapter or so on the homosexual imagery of World War I’s prose and poetry. This is a work about literature and thought, which is itself a thoughtful work of literature. Read 1-28 October 2007.
Alistair Horne. A Savage War of Peace. 2007. xxvii + 484 pages, including Index. Thirty years ago I spent eighteen months in Algiers. I was focussed on my immediate job at the American Embassy, and spent much of my tourist time exploring Roman ruins. (Legion III Augustae was stationed in the area for several hundred years; the Romans had a grasp of the long-term nature of military commitments.) I heard this and that about the war of the Algerian revolution, and I was there for the 25th anniversary celebrations in November 1979. But I didn’t really know much about the war – I was, after all, 11 when Charles de Gaulle returned to power, and the war entered its final phases.
Alistair Horne is a terrific author, specializing in French history, and with a taste for the violent side of politics. A Savage War of Peace, with its savagely ironic title, is a very good read. It is also a very good source for those wondering what’s been going on in Iraq these past five and one-half years. A while back President Bush asked Mr. Horne to the White House, looking for insights into insurgent warfare in Muslim countries. It might have been better if he had thought to do that before ordering the invasion of Iraq. Read 2-30 October 2007.
Paul H. Lange, M.D. Prostate Cancer for Dummies. 2003. xxii + 356 pages, including Index. October 10, 2007, I received a diagnosis of prostate cancer. Since then, I’ve learned a lot about the disease, undergone treatment, including radiation and hormone therapy, and am doing very well now, thank you. This was the first, and in some ways the best, of the books I read while informing myself about a disease which affects one male American in six. Read 16-30 October 2007.
Fiction:
Margaret Frazer. The Bastard’s Tale. 2003. 309 pages. One of a series of medieval mystery novels. Our detective is a prior century’s Miss Marple: a nun named Dame Frevisse. Read 1-10 October 2007.
David Drake. Lord of the Isles. 1997. 625 pages. This is the first of a nine-book fantasy series written by a friend of mine from North Carolina. I like them, and I’ve found them worth re-reading. In fact, I’m listening to the book-on-tape version as I prepare this little report. This was, perhaps, the third time I’d read the book. Read 5-22 October 2007.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Knight's Reading List III: March 2007
In March 2007 I finished reading the following books:
fx-9750G Plus User’s Guide. xxv + 455 pages.
A Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden. (1968, 1972), 453 + xiv pages, including Index.
Peter Wells, The Complete Semi-Slav. (1994) 304 pages.
The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O’Brian. (1977) 348 pages.
Eric Flint and David Drake, The Dance of Time. (2006) 468 pages.
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. (2005) 309 pages.
I also listened to the audiobook, The Majesty of the Law, by Sandra Day O’Connor.
I think we can skip lightly over the user's guide to a graphing calculator I bought myself, although it was part of my continuing effort to master some of the higher mathematics. There will be more on that later. I'm also going to ignore The Majesty of the Law, although it was both enjoyable and informative. The Supreme Court is a long-time interest of mine, and there were other books on that subject which came over my desk this year.
The Mauritius Command is another good, workmanlike novel by Patrick O'Brian, and is based upon an actual incident (or series of incidents) on and about the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is, in case you didn't know, in the Indian Ocean, and was the home of the late lamented flightless bird, the dodo. O'Brian has quite a knack for finding obscure theaters of war during the long struggle between England and France in the early 19th century, and placing his characters in them to display their virtues, as well as their faults, in the course of solving the puzzles set for them. The Mauritius Command, for those of you interested in combined-arms operations, illustrates both how difficult it could be to obtain effective cooperation between the naval and the military forces of the some country, and how helpless an enemy could be in the face of such cooperation. These seem to be lessons that need to be learned anew by every military command, in the circumstances of each new war.
One example of good cooperation is that between Grant's army and the Union's naval forces on the Mississippi, during the Vicksburg campaign. If one compares the imperfect state of cooperations during the operations around Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, earlier in the war, to the finely coordinated actions in 1863, one can see how much effort and intelligence is needed to obtain a result, the need for which seems self-evident.
David Drake wrote the outline for The Dance of Time, and Eric Flint then put flesh on that skeleton. This has been a good system for the two writers and their publisher, but, in my opinion, The Dance of Time shows the Belisarius series running out of steam. The trajectories of the actors are determined to a large degree by what occurred in earlier books in the series, rather than by what is between the covers of this book. These books, by the way, also illustrate the successful use of combined arms, but I rather think it comes off a little too effortlessly. I could, of course, be wrong, and I'd have to re-read some of the earlier works in the series to validate my thinking. I might, at least, mention the rather interesting scene early in Drake's solo novel (in his Lord of the Isles series) Servant of the Dragon, in which some of the difficulties of training up a military force are indicated when two oared ships attempt a passing maneuver, and some of the rowers don't get their oars out of harm's way quickly enough.
Which brings me to the great work of this month. I should mention that I have the habit, for good or ill, of simultaneous (or, more precisely, contemporaneous) reading of several books at once. I'll read a chapter in one, and then two chapters in another, and then a chunk of a third, so the timelines of my books all overlap. It is, therefore, indicative of the grip established by Cormac McCarthy on this reader, that I read No Country for Old Men in three days, beginning on March 19 and ending on March 21, 2007. Cliches such as "page-turner," "gripping," "couldn't put it down," come to mind, and are all inadequate to express McCarthy's accomplishment here. The story here is that of a man just a little too stupid to pass up good fortune, and the consequences - the terrible consequences - of his ill-considered action.
In brief, in West Texas in 1980, a drug deal has gone wrong, and the buyers and sellers have managed to kill one another to, it appears, the last man. A trailer-park cowboy comes upon this scene and finds bags of money without apparent owners. He takes some, and, I think, the real hook in this story is that so would you. At least, it is quite believable that, under these circumstances, any of us might say "What the Hell?" and make off with a stash of "found money." From that point on, this becomes a story of violent responses to violent stimuli, all the more compelling because it all follows so naturally from the original situation. Of course, Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden of Eden; they took the apple, didn't they?
I heard a review of the movie the Coen brothers have made from this book on NPR a few days ago. The reviewer asserted that the movie was "nine-tenths of a masterpiece." The book is closer than that.
By the way, in March of 2006 my friend Al Vogel and I went down through New Mexico to the Big Bend country of West Texas. This has been Cormac McCarthy's homeland since Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses. The stark, dry, deadly landscape is not only a fine setting for the grim story of No Country for Old Men, it goes a long way to explain the characters McCarthy discovers there.
fx-9750G Plus User’s Guide. xxv + 455 pages.
A Book of Middle Eastern Food, by Claudia Roden. (1968, 1972), 453 + xiv pages, including Index.
Peter Wells, The Complete Semi-Slav. (1994) 304 pages.
The Mauritius Command, by Patrick O’Brian. (1977) 348 pages.
Eric Flint and David Drake, The Dance of Time. (2006) 468 pages.
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. (2005) 309 pages.
I also listened to the audiobook, The Majesty of the Law, by Sandra Day O’Connor.
I think we can skip lightly over the user's guide to a graphing calculator I bought myself, although it was part of my continuing effort to master some of the higher mathematics. There will be more on that later. I'm also going to ignore The Majesty of the Law, although it was both enjoyable and informative. The Supreme Court is a long-time interest of mine, and there were other books on that subject which came over my desk this year.
The Mauritius Command is another good, workmanlike novel by Patrick O'Brian, and is based upon an actual incident (or series of incidents) on and about the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is, in case you didn't know, in the Indian Ocean, and was the home of the late lamented flightless bird, the dodo. O'Brian has quite a knack for finding obscure theaters of war during the long struggle between England and France in the early 19th century, and placing his characters in them to display their virtues, as well as their faults, in the course of solving the puzzles set for them. The Mauritius Command, for those of you interested in combined-arms operations, illustrates both how difficult it could be to obtain effective cooperation between the naval and the military forces of the some country, and how helpless an enemy could be in the face of such cooperation. These seem to be lessons that need to be learned anew by every military command, in the circumstances of each new war.
One example of good cooperation is that between Grant's army and the Union's naval forces on the Mississippi, during the Vicksburg campaign. If one compares the imperfect state of cooperations during the operations around Fort Donelson and Fort Henry, earlier in the war, to the finely coordinated actions in 1863, one can see how much effort and intelligence is needed to obtain a result, the need for which seems self-evident.
David Drake wrote the outline for The Dance of Time, and Eric Flint then put flesh on that skeleton. This has been a good system for the two writers and their publisher, but, in my opinion, The Dance of Time shows the Belisarius series running out of steam. The trajectories of the actors are determined to a large degree by what occurred in earlier books in the series, rather than by what is between the covers of this book. These books, by the way, also illustrate the successful use of combined arms, but I rather think it comes off a little too effortlessly. I could, of course, be wrong, and I'd have to re-read some of the earlier works in the series to validate my thinking. I might, at least, mention the rather interesting scene early in Drake's solo novel (in his Lord of the Isles series) Servant of the Dragon, in which some of the difficulties of training up a military force are indicated when two oared ships attempt a passing maneuver, and some of the rowers don't get their oars out of harm's way quickly enough.
Which brings me to the great work of this month. I should mention that I have the habit, for good or ill, of simultaneous (or, more precisely, contemporaneous) reading of several books at once. I'll read a chapter in one, and then two chapters in another, and then a chunk of a third, so the timelines of my books all overlap. It is, therefore, indicative of the grip established by Cormac McCarthy on this reader, that I read No Country for Old Men in three days, beginning on March 19 and ending on March 21, 2007. Cliches such as "page-turner," "gripping," "couldn't put it down," come to mind, and are all inadequate to express McCarthy's accomplishment here. The story here is that of a man just a little too stupid to pass up good fortune, and the consequences - the terrible consequences - of his ill-considered action.
In brief, in West Texas in 1980, a drug deal has gone wrong, and the buyers and sellers have managed to kill one another to, it appears, the last man. A trailer-park cowboy comes upon this scene and finds bags of money without apparent owners. He takes some, and, I think, the real hook in this story is that so would you. At least, it is quite believable that, under these circumstances, any of us might say "What the Hell?" and make off with a stash of "found money." From that point on, this becomes a story of violent responses to violent stimuli, all the more compelling because it all follows so naturally from the original situation. Of course, Adam and Eve are driven from the Garden of Eden; they took the apple, didn't they?
I heard a review of the movie the Coen brothers have made from this book on NPR a few days ago. The reviewer asserted that the movie was "nine-tenths of a masterpiece." The book is closer than that.
By the way, in March of 2006 my friend Al Vogel and I went down through New Mexico to the Big Bend country of West Texas. This has been Cormac McCarthy's homeland since Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses. The stark, dry, deadly landscape is not only a fine setting for the grim story of No Country for Old Men, it goes a long way to explain the characters McCarthy discovers there.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Knight's Reading List II: February 2007
In February 2007 I finished reading the following books:
Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate. 2002. xxiv + 1167 pages. Includes Selected Bibliography, Notes, Index. Volume 3 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
Drake, David A. Other Times than Peace. 2006. 331 pages.
O’Brian, Patrick. H. M. S. Surprise. 1971. 379 pages.
Other Times than Peace is a collection of Drake’s stories in various warlike settings, going back nearly 30 years. For those who don’t know, David Drake is a lawyer and Vietnam veteran who has written a very large amount of fantasy and science fiction. His sensibilities are stark. His imagery is informed by his personal experience of war. I am pleased to be able to count Dave as a friend. Those of you who read the eleven stories in this volume may discern some of the reasons I value Dave as a friend, and as an author of solid, engaging prose.
I spoke of Patrick O’Brian in the context of one of the books in my January 2007 list, Post Captain. Although H. M. S. Surprise follows in the series – O’Brian did no flashbacks: the publication order of the books and the ostensible chronological order of the events described in them are the same, it certainly stands on its own as a novel. O’Brian doesn’t waste a lot of time recounting what has occurred in previous works.
Someone commented that O’Brian was better than C. S. Forester at putting himself into the mind of an eighteenth-century man. Indeed, having read both the Hornblower and the Aubrey-Maturin novels complete, I can attest that Hornblower is a 20th century man – someone Forester might have known, placed in scenes of the early 19th century. Jack Aubrey, the commander of H. M. S. Surprise, has much more of an 18th century mind. This is probably due to O’Brian’s reliance on the journals and letters of contemporary sea officers as a source for language and incident.
Looking at these two books as fictional presentations of men at war, the main difference between Drake and O’Brian, in my opinion, is that Drake’s characters tend to be haunted by the expedients to which they are forced. O’Brian’s have a greater ability to sit down with some wine, music, and toasted cheese, and let bygones be bygones.
Master of the Senate is the third volume in Robert Caro’s amazing biography of Lyndon Johnson. The project has already taken a few decades of Mr. Caro’s time, and I don’t know if he will outlive its completion. I had read the first two volumes – The Path to Power* and Means of Ascent** – years ago, when they were published, but I re-read them both before starting Master of the Senate. I was reading Robert Caro for a year, from February 2006 until February 2007. By the end, I felt as if I knew Lyndon Johnson as well as it is possible for one human being to know another. Caro is both critical of Johnson’s weaknesses, and some of his strengths, but in Master of the Senate he is portraying Johnson as a man in the perfect milieu. Had Johnson not been driven to become President, his mastery of the people and the institutions that are the United States Senate would have been the hallmark of his career.
This is, by the way, more than a biography of Lyndon Johnson. Caro brings together a number of strands to form this story. He gives a brief, but very informative, history of the Senate itself, and the manner in which it had become a very powerful obstacle to social change. He provides a summary biography of Richard Russell of Georgia, a complex and powerful man. And, by using the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as the focus of the work, he reveals much about American society and its institutions at a time when it was under great pressure to change. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, for all its faults, showed Lyndon Johnson's ability to understand the forces at work in the Senate, and beyond, and to bring about a surprising result, and one with implications beyond the apparent.
* The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume I: The Path to Power. 1981, 1982. 882 pages.
** The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume II: Means of Ascent. 1990. 522 pages.
Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate. 2002. xxiv + 1167 pages. Includes Selected Bibliography, Notes, Index. Volume 3 of The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
Drake, David A. Other Times than Peace. 2006. 331 pages.
O’Brian, Patrick. H. M. S. Surprise. 1971. 379 pages.
Other Times than Peace is a collection of Drake’s stories in various warlike settings, going back nearly 30 years. For those who don’t know, David Drake is a lawyer and Vietnam veteran who has written a very large amount of fantasy and science fiction. His sensibilities are stark. His imagery is informed by his personal experience of war. I am pleased to be able to count Dave as a friend. Those of you who read the eleven stories in this volume may discern some of the reasons I value Dave as a friend, and as an author of solid, engaging prose.
I spoke of Patrick O’Brian in the context of one of the books in my January 2007 list, Post Captain. Although H. M. S. Surprise follows in the series – O’Brian did no flashbacks: the publication order of the books and the ostensible chronological order of the events described in them are the same, it certainly stands on its own as a novel. O’Brian doesn’t waste a lot of time recounting what has occurred in previous works.
Someone commented that O’Brian was better than C. S. Forester at putting himself into the mind of an eighteenth-century man. Indeed, having read both the Hornblower and the Aubrey-Maturin novels complete, I can attest that Hornblower is a 20th century man – someone Forester might have known, placed in scenes of the early 19th century. Jack Aubrey, the commander of H. M. S. Surprise, has much more of an 18th century mind. This is probably due to O’Brian’s reliance on the journals and letters of contemporary sea officers as a source for language and incident.
Looking at these two books as fictional presentations of men at war, the main difference between Drake and O’Brian, in my opinion, is that Drake’s characters tend to be haunted by the expedients to which they are forced. O’Brian’s have a greater ability to sit down with some wine, music, and toasted cheese, and let bygones be bygones.
Master of the Senate is the third volume in Robert Caro’s amazing biography of Lyndon Johnson. The project has already taken a few decades of Mr. Caro’s time, and I don’t know if he will outlive its completion. I had read the first two volumes – The Path to Power* and Means of Ascent** – years ago, when they were published, but I re-read them both before starting Master of the Senate. I was reading Robert Caro for a year, from February 2006 until February 2007. By the end, I felt as if I knew Lyndon Johnson as well as it is possible for one human being to know another. Caro is both critical of Johnson’s weaknesses, and some of his strengths, but in Master of the Senate he is portraying Johnson as a man in the perfect milieu. Had Johnson not been driven to become President, his mastery of the people and the institutions that are the United States Senate would have been the hallmark of his career.
This is, by the way, more than a biography of Lyndon Johnson. Caro brings together a number of strands to form this story. He gives a brief, but very informative, history of the Senate itself, and the manner in which it had become a very powerful obstacle to social change. He provides a summary biography of Richard Russell of Georgia, a complex and powerful man. And, by using the Civil Rights Act of 1957 as the focus of the work, he reveals much about American society and its institutions at a time when it was under great pressure to change. The Civil Rights Act of 1957, for all its faults, showed Lyndon Johnson's ability to understand the forces at work in the Senate, and beyond, and to bring about a surprising result, and one with implications beyond the apparent.
* The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume I: The Path to Power. 1981, 1982. 882 pages.
** The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume II: Means of Ascent. 1990. 522 pages.
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