This Week at the Library (28 October – 3 November)

Posted on November 3, 2010 by smellincoffee

This past week has been quiet, as far as books go. I read an older, but never-finished Deep Space Nine relaunch novel (Warpath, David Mack) which was well done but continues in story arcs I don’t particularly like. I finally got around to reading Greg Iles’ The Devil’s Punchbowl, which is more graphic than Iles’ usual work but as usual, a riveting thriller. I also read a short collection of tales of early American history, which was enjoyable enough. I also made progress in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and am finding it enjoyable for entirely different reasons this time reading as an adult than I did while reading it in childhood.

Potentials for next week:

  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
  • A History of Britain, Simon Schama
  • The Mother Tongue: English & How it Got That Way, Bill Bryson
  • Heretic, Bernard Cornwell. The story of an archer during the Hundred Years’ War with some religious fun thrown in.
  • What Went Wrong? Western Impact and  Middle Eastern Response, Bernard Lewis.  I’m interested in the idea that Islamic fundamentalism is in part stemmed from the same sources that gave birth to populism, labor activism, industrial regulation, and socialism in Europe and the United States. (Regulation and socialism to a much lesser extent in the United States, as voters prefer corporate tyranny to humanistic democracy.)
  • I have a few other books from last week I’ve not finished,  because they haven’t hooked me yet.

Earlier this year I thought it would be interesting to do reading around a specific culture during the week of its national holiday — reading from its history, its literature, and so on. I had three countries in mind for this: France, England, and Germany. So far it hasn’t gone as planned: I couldn’t read a lot of French-related stuff around Bastille day because of the size of Citizens, and I forgot Germany entirely. I thought Reunification Day occurred in mid-October, but it doesn’t. (The actual date is 3 October.) I could read from German history this week, given that 9 November is somewhat important in German history (Revolution of 1848, formation of Weimar Republic in 1918, fall of the wall in 1989), but the date also stinks of Hitler, given that he used it for his first failed attempt to seize power and also set his SA thugs on Jewish synagogues and stores during the ‘Night of Broken Glass’.

Well, to England — I read a layman’s introduction to British history a few years back in which Sean Lang wrote that 5 November is the closest thing England has to a national holiday, it being the anniversary of Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt to blow up Parliament and restore the One True Religion. So, this week was to be England’s week. I had planned to read more by Alison Weir, some Dickens, and a guide to the world of Shakespeare, but…well, I’ve got too much to read already!

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Top Ten Books That ‘Got To Me’

Posted on November 2, 2010 by smellincoffee

This week’s top ten topic is “Top Ten Books that Made You Cry“, but in the interests of preserving my dignity I am changing it to “Top Ten Books That Got To You”.

These aren’t the ten most emotion-inducing books I’ve ever read, just the most notable examples that came to mind. I’m sure there are many more which have stirred me. Tears aren’t always borne of sadness, also.

1. The Pigman, Paul Zindel.

Pigman ranks as the first provocative book I ever read. It’s the story of John and Lorraine, two bored teenagers who befriended a lonely old man named Mr. Pignatti.  The teenagers and Mr. Pignatti find new life in pursuing a friendship with one another, and together they visit the zoo, roller-skate around his house,  and eat chocolate-covered ants and are all happy. Then Mr. Pignatti goes to visit his sister, John and Lorraine throw a party for some high school acquaintances, and Mr. Pignatti comes home to find the house — his only connection to his beloved and departed wife — wrecked. He has a heart attack, and..

…well, things don’t end well.

2. Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Charlie Gorden is a mentally impaired man working in a bakery. He’s decent and kind, and attends adult education classes in hopes of bettering himself.  When he’s selected for an experiment to increase his I.Q. level, Charlie learns to read and gains the ability to really think about things; he sees life in a new way, falls in love, and then…

…and then the effect diminishes and reverses itself, and Charlie is left staring at his old journals, not even able to read what he once wrote.

3. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank

I read a play based on this in eighth grade, and the ending — Gestapo soldiers pounding on the door, then dragging poor Anne away as she screams for her mother — terrified me. I bought a copy of the diary later on, and keep it with the rest of my meaningful books. I remember being so sad, and so angry at Anne’s mistreatment that I got made at God for the first time and accused him of all manner of things, from negligence to sadism. I was in eighth grade.

4. Sunny, diary three. 

Some time in seventh grade, I picked up the fictional journal of a guy named Ducky, a 10th grader at Vista High in Palo City, California. (It’s fictional. I bought a map of California and tried to find Palo City on the map, because I wanted to leave Alabama and go there.) Ducky was struggling with problems of growing away from his two best friends, and he was likable. Ducky’s story was part of a series of fictional journals and diaries called California Diaries, though most of the journal-keepers were girls. Ducky was two years older than them, but the five grew to be fast friends. Everyone had their own issues, and Sunny’s….Sunny’s was a mom dying slowly and painfully of cancer. Throughout the series she grew isolated from her friends, trying to escape her mom’s decline by running away or by losing herself by partying with the cool crowd.

Her mom…doesn’t make it. But Sunny does rally, and reunites with her best friend Dawn even though Sunny’s behavior has driven them apart.

5. To the Last Man, Jeff Shaara

One of Shaara’s viewpoint  characters for the Great War is an airman who’s not afraid of being shot, or falling to his death, but dreads the idea of his cockpit catching fire and him with it.

Guess how he dies.

6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire/Half-Blood Prince/Deathly Hallows. 

Dumbledore’s speech to the school following the death of Cedric always makes me teary.  It’s mostly a carry-over from the movie.  The funeral of Dumbledore in Half-Blood Prince is just as bad, but that line in the final book — “I’m not worried, Harry. I’m with you.”  — gets me every time.

7. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

I am a big softie when it comes to human redemption.  I love this story of Scrooge being forced to see the consequences of his actions and cold-heartedness, and his desperate hope to be able to change his life.  (“Why show me this, Spirit, if I be past all hope?”)

8.  Destiny: Lost Souls, David Mack

The Destiny trilogy is unlike any other Star Trek series I’ve read, pushing the Federation into an apocalyptic final war with the Borg. Borg fleets literally smashed through thousands of Starfleet, Romulan, and Klingon vessels before beginning to exact genocide — methodically destroying planets one at a time. The third book unfolds over a half-day, and as the Borg slowly make their way to Earth, there’s this feeling that the end is near…and people take it with the quiet dignity befitting human beings. Rather than descend into chaos, the people of Earth gather in public places, enjoying the time they have left together — drinking to life, drinking to joy despite the nearness of death.

That’s tear-invoking enough,  but the end of the book is positively cathartic. I enjoyed it too much to spoil it, even though I doubt most people reading this read Trek literature, but…horror turns to ectasy. And it’s not just, “Oh, yay, the end is averted” ectasy, either. It’s…jubilation. Redemption.

9. Warpath: David Mack

…hm. David Mack is on here again.  Well. The Mission: Gamma four-part series established the estranged father-daughter relationship of Commander Elias Vaughn and Ensign Prynn Tenmei. Tenmei hates her father, for reasons revealed throughout the series, and just as they approach something resembling an understanding,  it falls apart. In Warpath,  they’re still wounded people,  too prideful to communicate…but there’s this glorious, wonderful moment in the book’s endgame where Vaughn realizes while he can’t have his daughter’s forgiveness, he can at least save her life.

And it gets better.

10. Captain Hornblower & Lord Hornblower,  C.S. Forester
Where are you, Mr. Bush?

The first, when Hornblower received a letter from Lady Barbara telling him that his wife and children were dead of smallpox, but that his newborn Richard was alive and she was taking care of him; the second, when Mr. Bush didn’t make it back. I did so like Mr. Bush. Even now, when someone says ‘Bush’, I don’t think of Dubya but poor Mr. Bush.

I don’t think I cried, but I got teary-eyed. In case that’s not enough for you, here’s a bonus.

11. The Call of the Wild, Jack London.

I first read this as the story of a poor dog who was stolen from his master, and who master died before he could return home, so he had to live in the woods. I missed the whole ‘civilization as a thin veneer’ angle, but I was eight.

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Teaser Tuesday (2 November)

Posted on November 1, 2010 by smellincoffee

Here for you, a trio of teasers!

“Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for dictatorship as ours! We’re ready to start on a Children’s Crusade — only of adults — right now, and the Right Reverend Abbots Windrip and Prang are all ready to lead it!”

“Well, what if they are?” protested R.C. Crowley. “It might not be so bad.”

p. 29, It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis.

Yet this cemetery breathes an older history. Some people buried here were born in the mid-1700s, and if they were resurrected tomorrow, parts of the town would not look much different to them. Infants who died of yellow fever lie beside Spanish dons and forgotten generals, all moldering beneath crying angels and marble saints, while the gnarled oak branches spread ever wide above them, draped with cinematic beards of Spanish moss. Natchez is the oldest city on the Mississippi River, older even than New Orleans, and when you see the dark, tilted gravestones disappearing into the edges of the forest, you know it.

p. 3, The Devil’s Punchbowl. Greg Iles.

“At last we can see!” cried Ned Land, who stood on the alert, knife in hand.

“Yes,” I replied, venturing a play on worlds, “but the situation is nonetheless obscure.”

(p. 68, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Jules Verne.)

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America’s Hidden History

Posted on October 31, 2010 by smellincoffee

America’s Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation
© 2008 Kenneth C. Davis
272 pages

“The stories that unfold in these six chapters, which span a period from the Spanish arrival in America to George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, were selected because each plays a central part in shaping the nation’s destiny and character and each, in some way, belies the American myth. For the most part, these are tales that the textbooks left out.”

Kenneth C. Davis is best known for the Don’t Know Much About series, but has recently broken away from that to pursue interests in general American history. This book is one of his first projects in that field, and consists of six sections on early north American history, starting from Spanish colonization efforts and finishing up with the establishment of the Constitution following Shay’s Rebellion. Davis begins with “Isabella’s Pigs”, the story of Spain’s discovery of the Americas, the plague that follows, and the establishment of North America’s first colony (St. Augustine) which predates the English landings by a century and which was founded on the rubble of a French colony which the Spanish conquistadors savagely razed in a fit of Inquisitorial pique.  “Hannah’s Escape” follows, tackling the theocratic Puritans and the first Indian wars in which we’re introduced to lady scalpers. “Washington’s Confession” jumps us into the Seven Years’ War, following young George Washington’s early career (which seemed to consist of bumping into French people wandering around the woods,). “Warren’s Toga” and “Benedict’s Boot” are set in the revolutionary period, one detailing the attempts of the revolutionaries to ground their desire for a Republic in the legacy of Rome, while the other follows the career of Benedict Arnold — the prideful, aggressive, and ambitious man who was hailed as a hero and traitor both to the American cause, who is honored by a statue of a boot. The last section, “Lafayette’s Sword”, covers Shay’s Rebellion and its unintended consequence on the  formation of the American union.

America’s Hidden History is a breezy read: Davis’ publishing history as a writer for lay audiences serves him well here. There’s a great deal of interesting trivia to be picked up here, and the general tone is daring, flirting with iconoclasm. The Puritans and founding fathers are depicted as idealists who generally ignored their ideals: the Puritans, wanting to set a good example as Good Christians (as opposed to those naughty Spanish), establish vaguely theocratic governments which are cruel to their people and wage war  against the surrounding natives, while the founding fathers beat their chests, urge for war,  and channel Cicero in protest against British aristocrats daring to rule them, but put furiously put down rebellions of the disenfranchised (like Shay’s) without missing a beat. Overall the book is good light history, best fit for those with a casual interest in early American history who want something fun and interesting to read. Davis gives ample background for his stories and is generous with first-hand sources, but the book isn’t a sweeping or detailed history. It’s kin to the  Great Tales from English History series.

Related:

  • 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. As soon as I read of Isabella ordering the Spanish to bring pigs with them to the new world, I winced, knowing the devastation they caused from reading Charles C. Mann’s excellent work.
  • People’s History of the American Revolution, Ray Raphael. Davis is far more cautious than Raphael,  but People’s History examines the disconnect between the founding fathers’  motives for independence and the common laborers and artisans’ motives. 
  • Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey
  • Great Tales from English History (Volume II), Robert Lacey
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The Chamber of Secrets (Audio)

Posted on October 31, 2010 by smellincoffee

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Audio)
Read by Jim Dale; Written by J.K. Rowling
© 1999, Listening Library
Eight discs, approximately nine hours.
Preview the author reading:

A few weeks ago while perusing an issue of National Geographic, I heard a rather loud exchange between a friendly library patron and an even friendlier librarian, discussing audio books. I’ve passed by the audio books section many times, but have never listened to one. I have heard dramatizations based on books — I listened to a BBC production of Caves of Steel before I hunted down a copy of the book, and my only experience with The Rise of Khan Noonien Singh is a well-done dramatization on cassette tape — but never heard one read.  I thought I might see what the experience was like, and decided to go with a shorter book I’m familiar with for starts.

Chamber of Secrets is the second book in the series and isn’t quite as serious as those that followed it. While throwing plenty of danger at Harry, the series doesn’t get dark until after the end of Goblet of Fire.  Harry’s second year at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry begins problematically, when Harry is denied entrance to the Hogwarts Express and must rely on Ron and a ‘borrowed’ flying car to make it to the school on time. A warning from a strange creature goes unheeded, and soon the children of Hogwarts are falling victim to a sinister threat, a threat thought passed over fifty year ago. Harry’s own friends are not immune to the danger, and to solve the mystery and defeat the foe, Harry must descend into the bowels of the castle, into a forbidden chamber that promises death.

But it’s fun. I’d forgotten Rowlings’ humor and enjoyed hearing passages that once made me cackle, like when Harry is accused of setting a monster loose on the castle and Ron’s twin brothers take you to escorting him around the castle: “Fred and George, however, found all this very funny. They went out of their way to march ahead of Harry down the corridors, shouting, “Make way for the Heir of Slytherin, seriously evil wizard coming through…” Narrator Jim Dale was not, as I’d imagined, Stephen Fry, but despite this initial disappointment he grew on me. The author hails  from Northamptonshire, England, lending an air of authenticity to a book that would have been written in an English voice. He’s versatile, giving good service to the Scottish McGonagall and the Irish Seamus Finnegan alongside  the many English character. Some voices are dead on, others less so: Harry in particular doesn’t seem to have a distinct voice, his tending to blur with Hermione. Dale is only one man, of course, and the difficulties in giving such a broad cast completely unique voices is respectable. He reads smoothly, with no obvious pauses to catch his breath except where the book would intend them, and generally lends the sentence an appropriate emotional urgency.  Most importantly, I enjoyed listening to him. The CDs are divided into 20 to 21 tracks each, making individual sections easy to find.

I enjoyed having been read to sleep by a fun story and a soothing voice, though for my money I’d prefer investing $50 in a complete set of Potter paperbacks than into one eight-disc recording. Doubtless this would be good for passing time while driving a lengthy distance, though.

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The Devil’s Punchbowl

Posted on October 30, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Devil’s Punchbowl
© 2009 Greg Iles
592 pages

“This town is under siege, and the biggest threat always comes from within.”

Recently I read an interview with David Mack, in which he stated that good drama comes from putting mature characters through hell — repeatedly. In fact, Mack said, you can tell his favorite characters by those who his plots abuse the most.  If Iles takes the same attitude, he must adore Penn Gage. Gage, once a big-city district attorney and now a successful author, returned to his family home  in Natchez, Mississippi following the death of his wife (The Quiet Game) and has in succeeding novels (Turning Angel) fought corruption and crime in his beloved hometown. Deciding to take a more active approach in reversing Natchez’s decline, Penn runs for mayor and wins: people regard him as a good man, a hero in self-serving times. Heroes aren’t immune to disappointment and frustration, though: after two years in office Cage realizes Natchez’s problems are too big for one man to handle and he wants to step down.  A friend approaching him on the eve of a busy weekend about casino riverboat fraud is the last thing he needs  — but when his friend is savagely tortured and killed a day later,  a once-simple case of fraud becomes a life and death struggle with Penn’s family, friends, and town hanging in the balance.

Sinister goings-on aboard the riverboat casino Magnolia Queen were never limited to tax fraud, for when Cage and his friend first met in a quiet cemetery the first night of the novel, Cage saw pictures to make a man’s blood run cold:  photos which documented both underage prostitution and  a vicious dog-fighting circuit run by the dark character of Johnathan Sands, the Queen’s general manager who switches between a posh English accent and a working-class Irish brogue at the drop of a hat and who will kill a man’s family just as easily. Sands and his lackey Quinn feed on the pain of others, and they target Penn after realizing he knows more about them than they’d like. Cage assumed nailing Sands for fraud would be the most effective way of taking him down, but now that Gage is a target he’ll need to work in the dark. Surviving their plans for him will require the assistance of friends — a grizzled Texas Ranger, a retired Army commando, and a combat pilot for starters; the later two have made appearances in The Quiet Game and Third Degree.

Devil’s Punchbowl is easily the most violent of Iles’ books that I’ve read: the villains’ chief interests are training killer dogs, torture, and rape. Dominant themes include the familiar (heroism & sacrifice) and the struggle between brutality and idealism. Iles uses the fascination with violence and gore to depict humans as instinctively savage creature, with Sands and Quinn being complete monsters. Penn and his allies struggle with their own conflicting desires: idealists like Penn and his old girlfriend, the journalist Caitlin Masters, want to bring Sands to justice.  Others in their party think it necessary to deal with Sands on his own terms: “I think Johnathan Sands has become a one-bullet problem.” Penn must defeat the monster without becoming the monster.

As usual, Iles’ work is rich in background: the old-south mystique haunts the reader even as Penn is soaring through the air in a helicopter or using his ‘Star Trek’ satellite phone to coordinate actions with his allies. There are also plot turns, although they’re not quite as gut-wrenching as in prior novels, and Penn is as ever a sympathetic character. He struggles with his desire to do the right thing, knowing it endangers his young daughter. Is Natchez worth his daughter? His father?

Punchbowl is a gripping read, with plenty of action for those who want it. The themes are provocative, and the main protagonists compelling. Readers will be out for Sands’ blood by book’s end, and the scenes of his pleasures are not for the faint of heart.

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Warpath

Posted on October 29, 2010 by smellincoffee

Warpath
© 2006 David Mack
339 pages
On the cover: unknown model as Taran’atar, looking “dangerous, yet vulnerable, awash in the amber of Jem’Hadar blood“.

I am dead. I go into battle to reclaim my life. I do this because I am Jem’Hadar. Victory is life.

The opening Deep Space Nine Relaunch novels introduced Taran’atar, an elder soldier of the Dominion who was assigned to Deep Space Nine to serve its commanding officer, Captain Kira Nerys. Such an assignment is unusual, for Taran’atar is a Jem’Hadar: a genetically-engineered soldier bred for fighting and obedience to the Founders, the shape-shifting race of creatures who created and controlled the Dominion which attempted to conquer the Federation and the Klingon and Romulan empires through Deep Space Nine’s final two seasons. Taran’atar proves to be a prickly, but valuable asset to Kira and her command crew,  rendering to her the obediance he once gave to his masters in the Dominion.

That makes the opening of this novel, in which he stabs her in the heart and breaks Security Chief Ro Laren’s back a bit unexpected.  While Kira and Ro lay dying, Taran’tar sneaks aboard a station craft about to test its newly improved warp engines and takes the vessel’s lone pilot hostage before speeding away toward an unknown destination.  Dr. Julian Bashir works desperately to save the lives of his captain, his coworkers, and his old friends while the station’s XO, Elias Vaughn, pursues the craft in the USS Defiant. Meanwhile, Ensign Prynn Tenmei,  Vaughn’s daughter, flies the craft at Taran’atar’s knifepoint and wonders how she is going to overcome a super-soldier fully expecting her to stop him from from fulfilling his plan — which, he’s not entirely sure of himself. He only knows that he must make a rendezvous with a face he knows to be familar, but who is yet a stranger — an ambitious, hateful stranger who we witness overcoming skilled bounty hunters.

This is the opening chapter, but not the origin, of a larger story arc which Deep Space Nine pursues in later books,  in which Illiana Ghemor — a Cardassian intelligence operative genetically altered to appear to be Kira Nerys and implanted with false memories that make her think she really is Kira  — goes insane and decides to kill every Kira Nerys she can get her hands on, which means knocking off the Mirror Universe’s Intendant Kira as well. This story arc concerns me; I think of it as convoluted, and the other story arc being developed — in which Bajor will be expected to defend its dominant religion and the Wormhole against the Ascendants, a Gamma-Quadrant power who also worship the wormhole aliens (“The Prophets”), but are imperial and fanatical, like Islamic extremists and Christian dominionists today  — is likewise problematic. The last time I read of Ascendants and Bajor’s religion, the universe was destroyed.

The arcs are just getting started in Mack’s book, though, so they’re not terribly…developed yet. Warpath is good. It’s not Destiny, but nothing is Destiny.  Vaughn and Tenmei are the most compelling characters for me: they are an estranged father and daughter, and the moment in which they find forgiveness and a new start was for me the best moment of the book. The fight scenes were curiously compelling, keeping my attention — and the humor was excellent, particularly one inside joke Mack included for Bashir fans.* The only part of the book that through me was Kira’s experience laying in surgery: while Doctor Bashir operates, she dreams that she is attempting to lead a medieval army against a medieval fortress, only to find it’s held by another medieval army and a third medieval army is on its way to take the fortress for themselves. At first I thought the General Kira of the dream was another universe’s Kira, but I realized the dream was a metaphor for Bajor’s future story arc.

Good read, though…I’m not really enthusiastic about these arcs. I’m fine with Ghemor on Kira, but the inclusion of a lot of alternate-reality Nerys makes potential confusion a safe bet. I’m still going to continue in the DS9 relaunch, but…well, it’s lower priority than the TNG relaunch at the moment.

Related:

*As soon as Bashir returned his attention to the monitor, Tarses resumed his presentation. “Now,” he said, “as you see here, the postganglionic nerve–“

“That’s a preganglionic fiber,” Bashir interrupted.

Tarses did a double take toward the screen. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Bashir made a sweeping, it-doesn’t-matter- gesture with his hand. “Please, continue.” (p. 148)

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This Week at the Library (20- 28 October)

Posted on October 28, 2010 by smellincoffee

Enjoyable week at the library, although I didn’t make progress in The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World as I’d intended. I wound up playing three games of Civilization III instead. I continued in my efforts to catch up on Trek relaunch books, starting the excellent The Good that Men Do, which repaired the various faults of Enterprise’s finale and set the now not-dead Trip Tucker on a promising story arc.  I also picked up one of DS9’s numbered books, Fallen Heroes, which is the darkest Trek book I’d ever read aside from the Millennium Trilogy. (The Millennium Trilogy destroyed the universe. Can’t get darker than that.)

I followed up on a recommendation from one of my first instructors and read True Grit, a western from the 1960s about a young girl who hired a US Marshal to help her chase down her father’s killer. Enjoyable story, but I enjoy the movie over the book, which is…flat.

I also returned to a classic in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds  in which Martians invade Victorian England.  I enjoy Wells’ style: War of the Worlds was my personal favorite this week.

Selected Quotations:
“By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”  (The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells)

“What is your intention, Rooster? You think one on four is a dogfall?”
“I aim to kill you in one minute, Ned, or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker’s convenience. Which will you have?”
“I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!”
“…fill your hand, you son of a bitch!” (True Grit)

“How many men have you shot in your career as a Marshall, Rooster?”
“Well…shot, or killed?”
“Ohh, let us restrict it to KILLED so that we may have a more manageable figure!” (True Grit)

Next Week:

  • Warpath, David Mack.
  • The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World
  • The Devil’s Punchbowl, Greg Iles
  • It Can’t Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis. (Seemed appropriate given the likely election incomes next Tuesday.)
  • 20,000 Leauges Under the Sea,  Jules Verne.
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Booking through Thursday: Skeletons

Posted on October 28, 2010 by smellincoffee

Booking through Thursday asks: What reading skeletons do you have in your closet? Books you’d be ashamed to let people know you love? Addiction to the worst kind of (fill in cheesy genre here)? Your old collection of Bobbsey Twin Mysteries lovingly stored behind your “grown-up” books?

I don’t believe I have any current skeletons in my closet. I do, however, have a box of books containing detritus from my old life: a score of Tom Clancy books, books by Oliver North defending his role in the Iran-Contras affair and historical fiction by the same, which were about a group of Real True Christians embedded inside the US government and military that kept the world safe from Muslim Arabs;  fawning biographies about Ronald Reagan and his divine influence;  hyperreligious books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye (touching is bad) and Every Man’s Battle (Avert your eyes from looking at women lest you sin!); and Civil War histories which exalt the Confederacy.  These were the books I read during my high school years, when I was a fundamentalist Pentecostal, a die-hard Republican who used “liberal” and “democrat” as jeers, and who earnestly believed the Civil War was about States’ rights.  I probably would have been a Teabagger in those days. *shudder*

They now sit in a box in my hallway, as I am unsure what to do with them and I know I haven’t gotten them all out. Somewhere there are books on UPCI history and books that defame science as the tool of the devil.  I don’t know what I’ll do with them once they’ve all been found and removed: destroying them is out, given my contempt for molesting books; and I don’t want to sell them and become an promoting agent of all that which I left.  I could bury them, I suppose, and allow nature to convert them into fertilizer. They’ll go that way eventually, and isn’t that what Christians used to do? Throw  accused witches into lakes and claim that if they were innocent,  God would save them?  Well, if the books don’t rot, obviously God likes `em.

The funny thing is, I’ve never read most of those Tom Clancy novels or the Reagan biographies. I’d pick them up from the library bookstore, but the only Reagan bio I ever read made me dislike him. It was his autobiography, and when he wrote of his valiant role in saving Hollywood from the Communists, I regarded him with disgust: the man admitted to being a McCarthyist witch-hunter who made his  bones through political persecution.

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Lost Children

Posted on October 27, 2010 by smellincoffee

I started reading regularly in Star Trek literature following the DS9 relaunch, and I stayed up to speed with it until sometime in 2005, when I lost interest. That was a rough year for me: I’d graduated from junior college and had no idea what to do next, so I started working in factories while at the same time struggling with anger and depression that would only depart when I told religion to go hang itself. Anyway, I eventually got on the track to finish my university education, but when I moved off, my parents put most of my books into storage. This year I returned to Trek literature and wanted to find my old books — in part because a few of them were unread — and dove into a storage area tonight. I had to take just about everything out, but I finally found my books inside a small storage bin I’d never seen before.



This means I have a few “new” books to read: 
  • Warpath, David Mack
  • Worlds of DS9 #1: Andor and Cardassia
  • The Left Hand of Destiny, J. G. Hertzler and Jeffrey Lang
  • Titan, book 1: Taking Wing; Mangels and Martin

I can’t remember if I purchased The Red King — Taking Wing‘s sequel — or not, but I’m hoping to find it, too.  Boy, am I going to be conflicted when the weekend rolls around and I obtain access to a few more new Trek reads. 
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