Sharpe’s Enemy

Posted on December 30, 2011 by smellincoffee

Sharpe’s Enemy: Richard Sharpe and the Defense of Portugal, Christmas 1812
© 1984 Bernard Cornwell
351 pages

It’s Christmastime, but winter quarters don’t exist for Richard Sharpe,  our tall, scar-faced soldier-turned-officer with flint in his eyes. Deserters from the Spanish, Portuguese, British, and French armies have banded together and are terrorizing the countryside, causing considerable friction between the British army and the Spanish themselves. To make matters worse, the renegades have taken a number of royal ladies prisoner and are holding them hostage…and among the leaders of the renegades is Obadiah Hakeswill, a truly despicable creature whose main activities are rape, theft, and escape. Sharpe sets forth with his Rifles to rescue the hostages with a bit of derring-do, but bumps into the French army along the way — and while they also intend to rescue their own hostages from Hakeswille, the Imperial troops also have other things in mind this Christmas season…

Sharpe’s Enemy has all the elements that make for an excellent Sharpe novel —  the action is small in scale, but intense, with Sharpe and his rifles engaged in action first against a castle of blackguards and then an entire French army.  The enemy is an old, familiar, and thoroughly hatable one. The only fictional character whose grisly death I’ve longed to read more than Hakeswill would be Dolores Umbridge from the Harry Potter novels. The stakes are high — the lives of innocents and the potential progress of the allied army in 1813 —  and Sharpe has to contend with idiot aristocrats to boot. It is indeed a rollicking good read…but the ending spoiled things for me. What should have been a gloriously satisfying moment for Sharpe is ruined by late-game action, and that same action threw me off, as well. On the bright side, Cornwell introduced a French intelligence officer with a lot of potential — and he’s supposed to make an appearance in my next Sharpe read, Sharpe’s Honour.

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The Litigators

Posted on December 29, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Litigators
© 2011 John Grisham
385 pages

The Litigators may be unique among John Grisham’s work in that from the start, it’s written as a comedy. The lead character (David Zinc) intoduces himself to the story by having a nervous breakdown on his way to work and taking refuge in a local bar, where he happily drinks the day away before stumbling into a seedy two-man firm of ambulance chasers and declaring that he’d like to be their new associate.  His two new employers, Figg and Finley, border on the pathetic themselves: one is an on-again off-again drunk who can’t stay out of rehab, and the other is on his fourth marriage and a fan of get-rich-quick schemes that always result in catastrophe.  While they’re not keen on taking on a new hire, one is about to engage the firm in a mass tort action. It seems there’s a bad drug on the market, and every lawyer with an eye for the future is trying to get a piece of the pie by piling on. They could use a hand in getting their ’boutique firm’ involved, and so Zinc becomes the third man in their unintentional comedy troupe.

Think of The Litigators as The King of Torts meets The Street Lawyer, delivered as a comedy of errors and peopled by two of the Three Stooges. Everything that can go wrong does: by mid-novel they’re facing a perfect storm that promises disaster.The lead character is so fundamentally decent, though, that the reader is left wincing at the fact that the poor guy is facing a fate that is the legal equivalent of falling into a woodchipper. But the Litigators isn’t simply the story of a horrifically-executed trial:   Zinc finds perverse value in his new life, enjoying the fact that instead of slaving away in a corporate tower working in international finance, he’s actually helping people…and so bizaarely, in a novel where the usual fate of Grisham’s trials and heroes are reversed,  the ending is unambiguous and (for me) satisfying.  Look for it if you’re in a mood for a quick and comedic read with some mild legal-thriller action thrown in.

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11/22/63

Posted on December 29, 2011 by smellincoffee

11/22/63
© 2011 Stephen King
849 pages

What would you do if you could walk through a door and into another world — the land of ago, where it’s always September 1958, where gas is cheap, root beer is creamy, and cars sport tailfins? Such was the opportunity English teacher Jake Epping accepted when his friend Al invited him into the pantry of his diner. For years, Al has known that there exists a curious fissure in spacetime there, one which allows people to pass from the present to 1958 as easily as descending a few steps. He’s never revealed it before now, but he has something he wants to accomplish in the past — something he can’t do himself.

The mission, of course, is saving President Kennedy’s life on 11/22/63 — five years from the date that the fissure opens into. If Epping takes on the mission — and he will, for personal reasons as well as to help his friend Al — he will have to live at least five years of his life in the past, in a time without modern medicine and conveniences. But the past has its attractions, as well.

11/22/63 is a multistage novel; at first, Epping is drawn in by the extraordinary premise and the novelty of exploring the past. Before setting forth on his mission proper, he takes several jaunts into the past to explore how he might survival in this familiar-yet-alien world, and realizes that simple changes can have broad effects — and the greater the effect of a potential change, the harder it will be to accomplish. The past is not a static canvas giving Epping free room to move: it is obdurate. It resists change, and the whole of the novel is haunted by the past’s resiliency. Even when things seem to be going well, there’s still anticipation that something is bound to go horrifically wrong.  As Jake’s mission begins in earnest, the novel becomes more a story about a man finding his place in a community. I haven’t read much of King (The Stand, Christine, and Firestarter), but I wouldn’t expect such emotional meat from an author who is known for horror and fantasy. King’s characters seem real, to the point that I started googling at various intervals to see if they were historic personalities. As the fifties give way to the sixties, Jake’s mission takes priority — leading to the action which we’ve been building up to for hundreds of pages. I had no idea what to expect from the ending, but King delivers a stellar conclusion.

11/22/63 has, I think, displaced The Stand as my favorite King novel. It’s as compelling a character drama as I’ve ever read, filled with little historical details that delighted a person fascinated with the period like myself — and of course,  driven by the tantalizing lure of being able to change the past.  Definite recommendation. Had I participated in the Broke and the Bookish’s most recent list (top ten books read in 2011), this would have have been on there.

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The City in Mind

Posted on December 29, 2011 by smellincoffee

The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition
© 2001 James Howard Kunstler
272 pages

The study of civilization is nothing less than the study of the culture of cities. Humanity has survived on the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years, but not until we began to aggregate in cities did we truly come into our own. Cities have been the cultural centers of our race and the driving force of our history which unlocked our potential in the last ten thousand years or so, and in The City in Mind, James Howard Kunstler reflects on their role in our history and their contribution to the quality of our everyday lives, focusing on a panel of select cities that may allow us to see what makes a city work and what drives it towards failure.

In The Geography of Nowhere,  Kunstler railed against the disintegration of the American city and the rise of what he sees as an imminently inferior form of urban living — suburban sprawl. Although a couple of chapters here reflect that theme,  the book is not as intensely focused. It reads something like a collection of essays, each giving the history of a given city’s development and emphasizing one particular period or element. The opening chapter on Paris is devoted to Napoleon III and Hausmann’s thoughtful redesign of Paris in the 19th century, for instance, and how it led to a fairly ugly medieval city’s transformation into a jewel of urban design.  Kunstler visits the classic spirit with Rome, and with Boston shows the reader how a city can recover from decades of thoughtless planning and sprawl.  I bought this book in part because I delight in reading Kunstler when he’s on a  critical rampage, destroying atrocious buildings and miles of commercial strips and box stories with biting with — and two chapters on Las Vegas and Atlanta give him just the excuse. Atlanta is used as a case-study for the failure of edge cities, while Vegas — which Kunstler surely deems the worst city in America — showcases a wide variety of failures, from the practical to the spiritual.  Kunstler is not a religious man, but he sees proper urban design as something which enhances the value of life; when done properly, it honors us and creates a place worth living in.

The chapters mentioned are the book’s strong points. There were other sections, like that on Mexico City, that I didn’t quite understand the point of. Kunstler is informative there — I’d known nothing about the history of the modern city following the Spanish conquest — but to what urban design-related end. I had the same reaction to another chapter, possibly because I expected more sections along the lines of Paris and Las Vegas, chapters which clearly point out good and dismal approach at design, whereas Kunstler had a more general focus in mind. Some sections are available on Kunstler’s website for your reading pleasure.

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Top Ten Books I’d Like to See Under the Tree

Posted on December 20, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week the Broke and the Bookish want to know what books we’d most like to receive for Christmas.

There’s virtually no chance of my getting books for Christmas, because despite being from a family of readers,  everyone claims they don’t know what kind of books I’m liable to like. I consider this a silly claim given that I read almost everything (I even have a list of books I’d like!), but even my attempts at getting books indirectly — by requesting bookstore giftcards — have rendered nothing. I did have some success last year when, on my birthday, I asked that someone please give me cash so I could buy some used books online. I managed to buy three Star Trek novels with my birthday money.

But, if I lived in an alternate universe where people gave me books for Christmas, the ten I’d be most delighted to see under the tree would be…

1. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human, V.S. Ramachandran. I almost bought this for myself last January, but went with three Trek books instead.

2. The Architecture of Community, Leon Krier OR The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs.

3. On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, William Braxton Irvine. Ho, ho, I’m desiring a book on desire.

4. Star Trek Vanguard: What Judgments Come, Dayton Ward

5. In Praise of Idleness and other Essays, Bertrand Russell

6. Life Ascending: the Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, Nick Lane

7. The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization, Brian M. Fagan.


8. The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century, James Howard Kunstler.  Primarily about the consequences of peak oil.

9.  The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P.  Feynman. I’ve never read Feynman before, but the Symphony of Science series stirred my interest in both him and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

10. On Disobedience: Why Freedom Means Saying “No” To Power, Erich Fromm. I don’t know what this   one will be about, properly, but Fromm is a provocative author.

I would have included a book by Phil Plait (Death from the Skies or Bad Astronomy), but I think I’m going to buy one of those for my birthday this year. I’m trying to break myself of the habit of spending my leisure-book money on Trek instead of science and sociology books, which I think I should prioritize since my home library doesn’t carry a lot of those.

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Teaser Tuesday (20 December)

Posted on December 20, 2011 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday! Happy teasing and Merrie Yuletide/Solstice/Christmas!

“It sounds as though you’ve been trying to sew your skin back together,” said Mrs. Weasley with a snort of mirthless laughter, “but even you, Arthur, wouldn’t be that stupid –“

 “I fancy a cup of tea, too,” said Harry, jumping to his feet. Hermione, Ron, and Ginny almost sprinted to the door with him. As it swung closed behind them, they heard Mrs. Weasley shriek, “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THAT’S THE GENERAL IDEA?”

p. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, p. 507. I’m doing a Christmastime re-read of the Harry Potter series.

For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago — silently, without warning — that tide reversed, and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century.

p. 27: Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, Robert D. Putnam

And thank you to my nephew, who pointed out that I’d written today’s date as 20 September for some reason.

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Bicycle Diaries

Posted on December 19, 2011 by smellincoffee

Bicycle Diaries
© 2009 David Byrne
297 pages

Though I’ve never heard of the musician and visual artist David Bryne before, his recollections of time spent in some of the world’s greatest cities had my attention from the start — for he experienced them on the saddle of a bike, bringing a fold-up bicycle with him as part of his luggage. The bicycle allows him to explore cities more intimately than from a car, but more quickly than on foot — and while he cycles through Berlin, Istanbul, London, Buenos Aires, he ponders on subjects which they inspire.

Every city inspires musing on different matters. He begins with a fantastic critique of American cities that is right out of The Geography of Nowhere: I posted a selection here. In Buenos Aires, he writes about the local music scene: in Berlin, a visit to the Stasi museum prompts an essay about justification and human nature. Thoughts on biking bookend the text; his final section on New York focuses mainly on its attempts to become a more bike-friendly city, and the epilogue addresses the bicycle’s potentially expanding role in the future as energy crises force us to make more intelligent decisions about where we live and how we get around. These and the opening section on American cities made the book for me.

Cities featured are Berlin, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Manila, Sydney, London, San Francisco, and New York.

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Incognito

Posted on December 19, 2011 by smellincoffee

Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain
© 2011 David Eagleman
304 pages

Carl Sagan once described astronomy as a ‘profoundly humbling experience’, for it allows us to appreciate how infinitesimally small Earth — and ourselves –are in relation to the size of the Cosmos. David Eagleman sees neurology in very much the same way, and even uses Copernicus and Galileo as his models in introducing the study of the brain to lay readers. While those two astronomers unseated the heavens by helping people to realize Earth is not the center of the universe, neurology makes us realize we are not the center of ourselves. The conscience self is a very small part of an incredibly intricate and surprisingly autonomous brain.

The brain has always fascinated me. While those of us raised in the west are typically taught to take for granted that there is a separate, inviolable “I”– a true Self, a soul — residing in us, aspects of that “self”, like our personality, have been proven to be tied to the ordinary grey matter of the brain and its millions of firing synapses. And from another angle — that of philosophy or religion — we seem to have not one Self, but multiple selves, each with its own ideas. Our brains produce thoughts completely without our input: are “we” really in control?  I’m reminded of a line from the Christian writer Paul: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”  But while Paul decided that he was a man possessed by sin, neurology can shed more light on the subject. Eagleman describes our brains as a ‘team of rivals’, an organ which has preserved several different evolutionary approaches to solving the same problem — and while this allows us to be fundamentally creative creatures, it leads to self-conflict, self-conflict that requires that which we call consciousness. That small, minute portion of our brain can make important decisions, but it is rather like the CEO at the head of an international company — a crucial, but overwhelmingly minor part. The vast majority of our body’s and our brain’s activity is completely concealed from us, and Eagleman’s examples — written for a lay audience – -should astonish those completely new to the subject.  I have a hearty appreciation for the subject matter (having read V.S. Ramachandran’s Phantoms in the Brain), but found Incognito a fun reminder.

Incognito is open to all readers, though those who are more versed in the subject matter (readers of Ramachandran, Daniel Dennett, and Stephen Pinker, say) may find it a bit  light in content.

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Redwall

Posted on December 15, 2011 by smellincoffee

Redwall
© 1986 Brian Jacques
351 pages

At the edge of a great wood there stands a tall, red-brick abbey that offers peace, medicine, food, and sanctuary to call creatures in need. Its name is Redwall…and it is run by a quasi-religious order of mice.

Many years ago my home librarian brought this book to me and reccommended that I read it. I found it utterly captivating. I’d never read fantasy before, never developing a taste for magic and strange creatures — but this was a different kind of fantasy, one in which real creatures simply took the place of human characters in a story that seemed positively epic to a younger reader such as myself. I’d only ever read books with simple plots before, but Redwall sported multiple stories: while the central conflict is one of good versus evil, with a great army of vermin (literal vermin — rats, stoats, and weasels) arriving in hopes of conquering Mossflower,  the lead character Matthias is sent on a hero’s quest, to find the lost sword of a legendary figure from Redwall’s past so that he might destroy Cluny the Scourge.  His quest involves many dangers and distractions, comprising a series of perilous adventures, and Jacques tells that story while at the same time reporting on the siege of the abbey — a siege fought with quasi-medieval weaponry, which should seem silly but works surprisingly well. It’s as though this is set in the medieval-fantasy world of the Lord of the Rings, but using animal characters like moles who can dig tunnels in addition to wielding spears. Redwall inspired an entire series of novels set in this world and has a highly loyal fanbase who have taken to Jacques’ characters with such gusto that they can have entire conversations in the dialects of his characters. I err, know from personal experience.

Redwall is an interesting literary experience, a mix of the mundane and fantastic, with lots of fun characters  and an easy-to-loathe villain. Although some of the magic has worn off since my childhood, I enjoyed my little return to Redwall Abby this Christmas season.

Related:  XKCD did a comic entitled “Notes on Rereading Redwall Books for the First Time Since Childhood” I rather like.

Related:
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NiMH, Robert C. O’Brien

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Five Bookish Questions

Posted on December 14, 2011 by smellincoffee

Kelly of the Broke and the Bookish shared a quick book survey tonight, and I figured, why not?

1. The book I’m currently reading is Incognito: the Secret Lives of the Brain, by David Eagleman, which covers neurology and the subsconscious. It’s probably one of the most fascinating books I’ve read this year, which is not surprising given my interest in the subject. The author and I definitely like reading the same guys: he’s already quoted V.S. Ramachandran, whose “Phantoms in the Brain” absolutely astonished me, and Michael Shermer, who some may recognize as the author of Why People Believe Weird Things.

2.The last book I finished was…The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, by James Howard Kunstler, although perhaps I should mention Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne since I think I skipped a page or two of the Kunstler book. I was reading while being forced to listen to someone talk on the phone, and my attention wasn’t quote focused.

3.The next book I want to read would be Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert Putnam. Before I lived in a university town, I’d never experienced how enriching living in an actual, healthy, human-sized community could be; I grew up living outside of town, and viewed it as a place we ‘went to’, not a place we lived in. After having graduated and moved back to my hometown for the time being, I found I missed the constant interaction with neighbors and fellow townspeople, so I’ve been actively  engaging myself in the local community and reflecting on how we’ve become isolated from one another in the last decades of the 20th century, despite the rise of connective technology like iphones and interstates.

4.The last book I bought would be Bowling Alone, though I purchased it and The City in Mind within a day of one another.

5.The last book I was given was 2000 Years of Prayer, edited by Michael Counsell, which contains a huge variety of Christian prayers, beginning with those mentioned in the Christian New Testament and including prayers from most every branch of Christianity. It’s a fascinating resource for seeing the diversity and growth of Christianity through the centuries. The gift has strong sentimental value for me because the giver — a new friend of mine who happens to be the associate rector at a local church — was given a copy of this book by her parents when she attended seminary, so I know she’s sharing something profoundly meaningful to her. She thought I would appreciate it given my interests in history, philosophy, and comparative religion, and she was right.

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