Book review: Lord Hornblower by C. S. Forester

The seventy-sixth book I read in 2017 is the penultimate entry (chronologically) in C. S. Forester's Hornblower series, Lord Hornblower. 
Commodore Hornblower, having recovered from the typhus which sent him back to England to convalesce at the end of the last book, is charged with the tricky task of recovering a ship that has mutinied off the coast of France.  Having accomplished his goal, he is presented with the opportunity to foment a rebellion against Napoleon in northern France, which leads to an extended sequence off the water in which Hornblower takes up politics.  As telegraphed by the title, Hornblower is elevated to the peerage for his efforts, but this leads to a rift in his relationship with Lady Barbara.

This book, more than any other, focuses on the women in Hornblower's life, from poor dead Maria to Marie to Lady Barbara, none of whom he does right by.  I give Forester points for hinting at Hornblower's basic selfishness in his relationships with them, but one can't help but feel that all three are important only to the extent they further Hornblower's story: They are ripe for the fridging.  Worse, ...

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... Forester kills off Bush in this installment.  Granted, it's off-screen, and there's no body found; Forester had some experience as a Hollywood screenwriter, and if there's one thing you can count on in a movie, it's that if you don't see a body, they're not really dead.  I hold out some hope for poor loyal Bush, but it seems more likely that his is yet another corpse stuffed in the fridge for Hornblower's inner monologue to pontificate over.

Still, despite my distaste for parts of the book, the overall story line is compelling, and Hornblower is left at the end of the narrative in an unresolved Lady-or-the-Tiger situation.  It is an open and explicit question what will ensue when he meets Lady Barbara again, made the more intriguing by the fact that, when it was actually published, it would be twelve years before the author returned to answer the question, as he went back and filled in his character's backstory before writing forward in the chronology again.

Book review: Dear Pen Pal by Heather Vogel Frederick

The seventy-fourth book I read in 2017 was the third installment in Heather Vogel Frederick's The Mother-Daughter Book Club series, Dear Pen Pal.  This year, the girls and moms are reading Daddy-Long-Legs, so Emma's mom contacts her college roommate in Wyoming who is naturally enough running a five-member mother-daughter book club of her own and pairs each girl up with a pen pal for the year. 

Another parallel with the classic is that Jess is contacted out of the blue by a private girls' boarding school she never applied to and told she has been awarded a scholarship for eighth grade.  Jess and her family are notified of this award on Labor Day weekend.  Despite that fact that the school is in her home town, she moves into the dormitory and has to live with a stuck-up roommate who is the daughter of a U.S. senator.  Sweet Valley, I'm telling you. 

Megan's grandmother from China moves to America to live with her family; Cassidy's mother has a baby with her new husband; Jess's mysterious benefactor is finally revealed; and the whole troup flies out to Wyoming to meet their pen pals at the end of the year. 

Megan's grandmother Gigi is an interesting new character, but the best thing about this book was that it motivated me to read Daddy-Long-Legs.

Gingerbread house party

Gingerbread house train building party

Book review: Knight's Fee by Rosemary Sutcliff

The sixty-third book I read in 2017 was Knight's Fee by Rosemary Sutcliff.  Another historical novel set in Britain, it is not explicitly part of the Eagle of the Ninth series, as the green dolphin ring makes no appearance.  Set around the turn of the twelfth century, it deals with an orphaned dog-boy whose life changes dramatically when a new lord arrives to take over the manor.  Having drawn the ire of the new lord, Randal is saved by the intervention of a minstrel, who plays a game of chess for his life. 

Raised alongside the grandson of another lord, Randal serves as varlet and then squire, attaining a life far beyond any he could have hoped for as a child-drudge, but he believes that knighthood will remain forever beyond his reach, as he has no wealth or possessions that will enable him to pay his knight's fee to any lord.  Think of Arthur and Kay in T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone, if Kay were an actual likeable character and not an unbearable snob.  The bromance between Randal and Bevis is perhaps the most affecting since Marcus and Esca's in Sutcliff's most famous work, albeit experienced from the lower-status side this time around.

This book would make a good companion to a module on feudalism and knighthood in the Middle Ages, but it is also an enjoyable read on its own.

Book review: Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins by James Runcie

The sixtieth book I read in 2017 was the fourth book in The Grantchester Mysteries by James Runcie, Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins.  My reviews of the previous books in the series have not been stellar, but I am nothing if not a completist; and perhaps I'm getting soft, but I found this installment less objectionable than some of its predecessors.  This is undoubtedly in part due to the demise of the low-chemistry love triangle that dominated the first books before Sidney's marriage to Hildegard.

As with the previous installments in the series, the book is made up of separate stories.  The first one, which provides the title of the book as a whole, begins with a sort of locked-room mystery which seems far too cool and intriguing for this series and, sadly, is.  The denouement represents the least interesting solution possible to the situation as presented.

The second story, "Nothing to Worry About," is more typical of the series, in that a situation which is being gossiped about turns out boringly to be exactly what everyone already assumed it was.  "Fugue" is probably the most interesting story in the book, as well as being the bloodiest and most opaque.  As of "A Following," these are no longer technically Grantchester mysteries, as Sidney has left his position as vicar of that church and accepted a position as archdeacon at Ely.  (I have no idea where these places are, other than somewhere around Cambridge, nor how far apart they may be.  Inspector Keating mentions they will need to find a new pub at which to meet.)  Sidney's annoying pseudo-ex Amanda receives threatening letters and phone calls from her latest fiance's actual ex.  "Prize Day" delves into the cliche of homosexuality and abuse in England's school system, and in "Florence," Sidney travels to Italy and is accused of art theft.

As always, the biggest problem with these books is that Runcie is not a novelist but a television writer, and it shows desperately.  Page after page of dialogue with nary a "he said" nor a "she shifted uneasily in her chair as she replied."  Runcie is used to actors supplying the tones of voice and body language which reveals character; in their absence, it's like listening to a bored blind table-read.  This paragraph introduces a new character:

"Sir Mark Kirby-Grey had the air of a preoccupied man who was doing his best and was not prepared to take criticism.  Prematurely bald, and smaller than he wanted to be, he wore a bespoke navy suit with one cuff button undone, and he spoke to everyone as if they were employees who fell short.  Unused to relaxation or sitting still, he preferred to 'get on with things', and his quick attentive movements were either a sign of shyness and social discomfort or  a deliberate attempt to remind people of his influence and importance."

That's not a paragraph in a novel; it's an actor's brief on how to play a character.  A competent novelist will show you these traits through a character's speech and actions over the course of a scene, not drop them all in an explanatory paragraph when the character enters stage-left.  Show; don't tell.

Other complaints: Runcie seems determined that his readers view Amanda as Sidney's ultimate soulmate and 'the one that got away,' despite the fact that the character is thoroughly unlikable and the pairing has never emitted more sparks than a pile of wet newspaper.

Sidney's new curate, a thoroughly two-dimensional character whose actor's brief seems to consist solely of the phrase "likes cake," preaches a sermon which explicitly contradicts the words of Christ and condemns Jesus as "overgenerous," with neither fictional congregation nor living author seems to realize as a heretical statement from the pulpit.  (In the meantime, Sidney rebukes another character for taking the Lord's name in vain, because priorities, I guess.)

In questions of fact and verisimilitude, Sidney, in 1964, considers a sermon in which he would "quote from one of the last lines of that great Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life."  It's a Wonderful Life would hardly be considered a Christmas classic in 1964, as it bombed at the box office on release and didn't gain an audience until its copyright lapsed in 1974 and it began to be shown in abundance on American TV at Christmastime in the 1980s because it was a cheap way to fill holiday airwaves.  I knew a British girl in college in the early '90s who had never heard of the film.

And for the sake of all that's holy, if you're going to do a mad-wife-hidden-in-the-attic story, don't draw attention to the hoary old chestnut by having a character ostentatiously read Jane Eyre earlier in the book.

Book review: Napoleon's Pyramids by William Dietrich

The 52nd book I read in 2017 was Napoleon's Pyramids, the first book in the Ethan Gage Adventure series by William Dietrich.  I saw a later book in the historical fiction series on sale at Half Price Books but waited until I found the first one, for continuity's sake.

The fictional Ethan Gage is an adventurer with a touch of scoundrel about him, but blurbs comparing him to George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman are greatly exaggerated.  The story opens with Gage, a sometime Freemason once in the employ of Benjamin Franklin, now halfheartedly kicking around revolutionary Paris, ostensibly in search of trade opportunities but mostly gambling and whoring.  After winning an unusual and supposedly cursed medallion in a game of cards, the prostitute with whom he spent the night turns up gutted, and, framed for her murder, Gage quickly joins Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt until the heat is off on the continent.

Comparisons to Indiana Jones are far more on point.  Napoleon is looking to "liberate" Egypt but is also bringing along a team of "savants" to unlock the secrets of the pyramids, a team of which Gage, by merit of his Freemasonry and experience with the new science of electricity, makes a part.  Arriving in the newly-conquered city of Cairo, Gage meets a beautiful priestess, a hearty Mameluke, and a scholar of antiquities, all of whom help Gage decipher the meaning of his mysterious medallion.

Gage plays a bit too much the "dumb Westerner" for my taste, so that his local allies have to overexplain everything they say for the reader's benefit.  Add to that the fact that Dietrich wants to have his cake and eat it, too: Astiza gives a rationalistic explanation of Egyptian religion -- the 'priests' were originally just the people scientific enough to figure out and record the pattern of the Nile's ebb and flow and made up the gods and rituals to cement their own power -- yet also claims to believe in the power and existence of Horus. 

My dislike of the book was cemented by the author's treatment of female characters.  From the initial prostitute whose tortured death impels Gage in the direction of the plot, to Astiza who, despite being Gage's actual property still 'falls in love with him' (based on what character qualities, I'm not sure) and then conveniently drops literally out of the plot at the end to allow him to move on to other adventures (and lovers), they exist entirely as plot devices to motivate the main character, a fellow who, if he never descends to Flashmanlike levels of depravity, similarly fails to impress the reader with his positive qualities.  He's a white American male!  Isn't that enough for him to be the hero?

Book review: Dictator by Robert Harris

The forty-ninth book I read in 2017 was the final volume of Robert Harris's Cicero trilogy, Dictator.  The book begins where Conspirata left off, with Cicero fleeing into exile after Clodius's rise to tribune.  The politics of the Republic during this time, however, were in very rapid flux, and after only a year, Cicero is welcomed back to Rome -- and sucked back into the political jockeying that would eventually lead not only to his own death but to the end of the Republic and rise of the Empire.

This book covers the last fifteen years of Cicero's life, and decline is never as fun to read as rise.  The shifting allegiances which Cicero rode to power in Imperium, like Mario jumping from platform to platform in a video game, this time around lead to Cicero's ultimate downfall, and yet it is hard to see what he might have done differently to ensure a different outcome. 

Book review: A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear

The forty-eighth book I read in 2017 was the eighth Maisie Dobbs novel, A Lesson in Secrets by Jacqueline Winspear.  Maisie has inherited not only her mentor Maurice Blanche's money and property but also his value to His Majesty's Secret Service.  Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane calls Maisie in to go undercover at a private college in Cambridge.  Its founder rose to fame by publishing a pacifist book during World War I, and the British government doesn't trust his motives in shaping the minds and morals of the next generation.

Maisie being Maisie, she has hardly gotten unpacked in Cambridge before a murder with political implications occurs.  She turns out to be not the only spy at the college.  Sandra, a former domestic in Lady Rowan's employ, asks Maisie for help when her husband dies under mysterious circumstances.  On the domestic front, Billy and Doreen have their baby, James Compton renovates 15 Ebury Place with the hopes of Maisie being its mistress, and Priscilla is throwing Maisie so hard at James's head I could scream.  In other news, James and Maisie are sleeping together regularly, seemingly without any worry about Maisie finding herself pregnant.  Winspear is eager to provide history lessons about all kinds of other things going on in the 1930s; one wonders why she is reticent on the subject of the period's methods of birth control.

Book review: The Christie Caper by Carolyn G. Hart

The forty-seventh book I read in 2017 was the seventh installment of Carolyn G. Hart's Death on Demand series, The Christie Caper.  In this volume, a double-length "special" in Sweet Valley High terminology, Annie and her tagalong husband are planning a Christie convention in honor of Dame Agatha's hundredth birthday.  Of course, as always happens when Annie plans an event, someone ends up murdered.

A visiting British Christie expert, Lady Gwendolyn Tompkins, rounds out the eccentric-older-woman-as-force-of-nature troika with Laurel and Henny this time around.  The cozy, estrogen-steeped weekend is rudely invaded by Neil Bledsoe, a nasty caricature of toxic masculinity with a hatred for ... well, just about everything good and true and feminine, it seems.  Naturally, Bledsoe ends up dead (I won't even count that as a spoiler, though the murder feels a long time coming; Hart has to vamp longer than she's accustomed to to account for the greater length of the book), and the list of suspects encompasses virtually the entire guest list of Christie enthusiasts.

This book is a tribute to Christie in more than just the constant references to her books and life which pepper the text.  Christie was an expert at presenting a murder in a way that the reader felt no sympathy for the victim, only academic interest in unraveling the mystery.  Hart likewise presents Bledsoe as so wholly vicious that the reader explicitly is meant to applaud the agent of his death.  Unlike other books in the series, not only does the killer go unpunished, but Annie and her gang conspire to pervert justice -- which, again, is okay because justice is personified in Brice Posey.

I found the reader's assumed complicity in the murder off-putting, and I hadn't realized before how very female the point of view in this series is.  Men are evil, or weak, or, like Max and Chief Saulter, happily submissive to the women in charge.  It is certainly true that in the past the opposite was true in most literature: male characters had all the narrative power, and women were damsels, temptresses, or sidekicks; turnabout, however, doesn't make fair play.  I find myself choking on the implied sisterhood.

Book review: The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear

The forty-sixth book I read in 2017 was the seventh Maisie Dobbs novel, The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear.  In this installment, Maisie is retained by an American couple to investigate the final days of their son, who died in World War I but whose remains had just been discovered in France.

Winspear finally kills off Maurice Blanche in this novel, eliminating the Obi-Wan to Maisie's Luke and making Maisie a rich woman as she inherits his considerable fortune.  Billy and Doreen are expecting again, and Billy is still hoping to fulfill his dream of emigrating to Canada.  And Maisie is being courted by James Compton, raising the possibility that she may end up not only a rich woman but an aristocratic one.

Book review: The Girl Before by JP Delaney

The forty-fifth book I read in 2017 was The Girl Before by JP Delaney.  It was marketed as similar to The Girl on the Train, which was, eh, okay.  It was a page-turner, at least.

This book deals with two successive tenants of One Folgate Street, a minimalist house with a beyond-strict lease agreement.  Both Emma and Jane agree to a long list of rules, like changing nothing in the house or garden, never leaving clothes on the floor or objects out in the open, no smoking, no pets, no potted plants.  Jane has one further detriment to deal with: the previous tenant died in the house.

Both Emma and Jane are unreliable narrators, which can be done well but most of the time just comes off as the author yanking your chain.  This is one of those times and one of those books in which everything the book lets you know about pretty much every character turns out to be a lie.  It's just too much; you start wondering why you even bother reading the book if it's just going to jerk you around like that, and you stop caring, particularly when every character you try to empathize with turns out to be vile. 

In addition, I read this book after reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about a new trend in literature: authors using their initials to conceal their gender.  That's right; "JP" is a man, though he's trying very hard to come off as chick-lit.  I won't say that men can never write a novel with a female protagonist; but Delaney has not one but two, and his attempts to depict them in situations involving rape and pregnancy comes off as mansplaining, particularly given the deception he freely admits to using in his pen name. 

Road trip 2017: Day six

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Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR

Road trip 2017: Day five

Toured a working salt mine in Hutchinson, KS

Road trip 2017: Day four

Total solar eclipse, seen from Scottsbluff, NE!

Road trip 2017: Day three

The world's largest Czech egg ...

... and the world's largest Van Gogh painting

Road trip 2017: Day two

Day two, it was on to Hutchinson, KS and the Cosmosphere.

This is the command module from Apollo 13...

... and a real LEM.

Road trip 2017: Day one

It's not a Texas road trip without a stop at Buc-ee's.

Then it was on to Science Museum Oklahoma.

Book review: How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

The forty-fourth book I read in 2017 was How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form by Thomas C. Foster.  Having read his approach to literature in general, I decided to look into a more specialized work.

Ultimately, however, I felt that the previous work was more helpful.  Foster seemed somewhat hamstrung by the necessity not simply to repeat himself so the subject matter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor is not broached, no matter how much of it may be applicable to the novel. 

Foster lists eighteen things about a novel which can be gleaned from the first page or two (style, tone, mood, narrative attitude, time frame, time management, place, motif, theme, irony, rhythm, pace, expectations, character and instructions on how to read the novel -- and if you think some of those overlap with each other, you're not alone).  He lists points of view (third person omniscient, third person limited, third person objective, stream of consciousness, second person, first person central, and first person secondary). 

And then he just kind of ... meanders.  Many of the chapters, to me, seem more like meditations on particular novels he likes than tools applicable to many novels.  As such, I found this book less valuable than his previous work.

Book review: Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James

The forty-third book I read in 2017 was Death Comes to Pemberley, a Pride and Prejudice sequel-cum-mystery by P. D. James.  James has an impressive reputation as a mystery author, and I was hopeful that this book would rise above the usual low standard set by Austen sequels.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed.  Darcy and Elizabeth witness, at various times, clues that might throw light on the murder that pollutes the shades of Pemberley and are always wishing to themselves that they had the time to converse with their spouse.  James, however, perversely keeps them apart, perhaps knowing that she hasn't the talent to write dialogue between two of the most beloved characters in the canon.  What she passes over, however, is the inevitable truth that, between the scenes which she chooses to depict in her novel, Darcy and Elizabeth would absolutely have time to talk to one another "off-stage," as it were, but they apparently fail to do that either so that they can both be flabbergasted by the facts which they failed ever to uncover to one another, as they apparently ceased to exist when the author wasn't using them.

The second disappointment is like unto the first: Darcy and Elizabeth are reduced to passive ciphers in their own home.  The Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries are far from great, but at least Darcy and Lizzy are active agents in the plot.  Here, they merely stand by, wringing their hands and apparently never speaking to one another, as they leave the detecting to the local authorities.

The deficiencies do not stop there.  Darcy's sister is interchangeably referred to as "Miss Darcy" and "Miss Georgiana," the author seemingly unaware that an eldest (or only) unmarried sister would never be addressed by her first name without intimacy first being established.  Colonel Fitzwilliam is vilely slandered by his depiction here.  And James "fixes" Austen by devoting the entire last chapter to a long and detailed apology by Darcy for everything he did "wrong" in Pride and Prejudice.  Between this and the two First Impressionss, it's been a very bad run of Austeniana.

Book review: How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

The forty-second book I read in 2017 was How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster.  It's always dangerous to review your own book in the subtitle ("lively and entertaining"), but Foster largely succeeds in writing a helpful and accessible book. 

Foster addresses common images and structures found in literature and explains what they usually mean and why the author employs them.  He covers quests, scenes in which characters eat, monsters, weather, acts of violence, Christ figures, flight, geography, seasons, characters with physical flaws, disabilities, and diseases, and many other symbols.  Along the way, he also discusses literary allusions, politics, irony, and secondary characters. 

A reader should complete this book ready to write a Freshman Comp paper.  (Seriously, no matter what book you're assigned to read, it's got to have at least one of the tropes mentioned in it.)  Foster even provides a sample assignment, reprinting Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Garden Party" as one of the chapters and then challenging the reader to explain the story's significance. 

Foster actually is the professor of the title (at University of Michigan-Flint) so sometimes his prose gets a little trying-too-hard forced-jocular; most of the time, however, he just comes across as friendly and enthusiastic about his subject matter.  My main complaint about the book is that I am familiar with so few of the books he uses as examples.  Part of this is simply non-overlapping areas of interest; his area of expertise is twentieth-century literature, whereas I rarely read anything written after World War II.  I think, however, that he might do better to use more "classic" literature as his examples, given that his audience appears to be high school and college students. 

Book review: Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

The forty-first book I read in 2017 was Idaho by Emily Ruskovich.  This debut novel, set in the titular state, deals with Wade Mitchell's second wife Ann and her obsessive drive to understand the unthinkable family tragedy in his past.

Ruskovich's writing is beautiful, her characters deep, and the story is compelling ... at least until you realize that the author is going to offer no resolution.  Ann's precarious home life and her covert inquiries seem to be building tension toward a "The calls are coming from inside the house!" reveal which, if it existed, would have had the film rights to this book optioned six ways from Sunday, but instead all the loosely-gathered threads just unravel again.  That's fair -- the book wasn't marketed as a thriller -- but it leaves the reader unsatisfied. 

There's also a tertiary (quaternary?) character who is so tangentially related to the main plot that you feel certain he's going to end up being important, but, again, his storyline just peters out without ever reconnecting with the main narrative.  I have the feeling that perhaps an earlier draft of this book exists which did offer resolution and the author just couldn't bear to excise the character despite his failure to contribute anything but misdirection from the story.

Book review: Through the Gate in the Sea by Howard Andrew Jones

The fortieth book I read in 2017 was Through the Gate in the Sea, the sequel to Beyond the Pool of Stars by Howard Andrew Jones.  I enjoyed the previous book and went into this one with high hopes.

While recovering a family heirloom magic ring which was lost in the previous book, Mirian Raas and her crew discover the wreck of an ancient lizardfolk ship.  They also discover that Mirian has a bounty on her head, when they are attacked by pirate Meric Ensara and his crew.  Ivrian and Jeneta return from the previous book, and Mirian reconnects with her estranged half-sister Charlyn in a quest for a legendary island of lizardfolk.  Unfortunately, that island is also rumored to be the site of a legendary treasure, which attracts the attention of unsavory rivals.

I didn't enjoy this book as much as the previous one, though Meric and Charlyn are interesting additions to the cast of characters.  The end calls out for a sequel, and I'll be sure to read it if one is forthcoming.

Book review: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

The thirty-ninth book I read in 2017 was Agatha Christie's classic Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery.  Poirot, the famous detective, is on the train when one of the passengers is found murdered in his berth.  The train is delayed in the middle of nowhere by a snow drift, so Poirot has nothing to do but determine which of his fellow passengers is the murderer.

For what must be a bloody crime scene, Christie's novel is entirely bloodless.  The victim has no redeeming qualities and the motivation for killing him is judged not only by the reader but by Poirot himself as just and undeserving of punishment. The planning that went into the crime has more moving pieces than a Rube Goldberg machine, and it beggars belief that the execution went off (almost) without a flaw.

Book review: The September Society by Charles Finch

The thirty-eighth book I read in 2017 was The September Society, the second book in Charles Finch's Charles Lenox series.  In this sequel to A Beautiful Blue Death, Lenox is hired by the mother of an Oxford student who has disappeared and travels to the university, alma mater of both the detective and the author, to investigate.

The beginning of this book was unpromising: a virtual fawning travelogue to Oxford by a devoted alumnus.  As the plot unfolds, however, it proves to be more intricate than it first appeared.  The story is helped along by the introduction of a new character in Lord John Dallington, a Bright Young Thing prototype who wishes to shake off his aristocratic vices and become Lenox's assistant. 

I found this book to be a definite improvement over the first installment and will keep my eye out for the rest of the series.

Book review: Among the Mad by Jacqueline Winspear

The thirty-seventh book I read in 2017 was Among the Mad, the sixth book in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear.  The book opens with a suicide bomber, which I instinctively dismissed as an anachronistic attempt at cultural relevancy before I remembered that these were the times of the anarchist movement.  It becomes quickly clear, however, that the mastermind behind the incident really is a terrorist in the modern sense of the word, threatening (and carrying out) acts of revenge against the government and British public he holds responsible for the Great War.  (I don't even consider that a spoiler.  This is a Maisie Dobbs book: of course everything revolves around World War I.)

Maisie is recruited by Special Branch, an elite division of Scotland Yard, to help find the perpetrator and stop the attacks.  (And we all know that by "help" we mean that Maisie is going to do it all on her own.)  The long-suffering Billy Beale's wife Doreen is institutionalized after sinking into a deep depression over the death of her daughter, largely so the author can contrast the sad state of mental health at the turn of the century with the modern techniques coming into vogue as mid-century approaches.  The new approach is personified by a woman doctor, but any feminism that might imply is more than undone by Winspear's treatment of Doreen as mentally weak and irrational.  (But, see, Doreen's a lower-class woman, unlike the well-educated Dr. Master, so that's okay then.  Just like child-rearing is beneath the dignity of a career woman, but it's totally okay for poor women to spend their lives providing child care for richer women's children.)

Book review: First Impressions by Charlie Lovett

The thirty-sixth book I read in 2017 was First Impressions: A Novel by Charlie Lovett.  Lovett is the son of my Brit Lit professor back in college, so I'm disheartened to report not only that I hated this book but that it betrays, in my opinion, a thoroughly misguided approach to Jane Austen.

The main character, Sophie Collingwood, inherits first a love of books and then a valuable book collection from her uncle.  When, through a legal loophole, the collection is sold without her knowledge, she sets out to recover as many of the volumes as she can.  In the course of doing so, she meets two men and discovers what appears to be an early version of Pride and Prejudice in an old book -- one printed before Jane Austen wrote the book.

Flashbacks depict Jane Austen, not yet an authoress, and a fictional cleric, Richard Mansfield, becoming acquainted in Kent.  Lovett makes his Mr. Mansfield an elderly gentleman, to avoid any creepy hints at romance with the novelist, but I am horrified by the implication that Jane would need someone of any age to mansplain writing to her, particularly when her actual first reader and giver of feedback was her sister Cassandra, a historical woman who is entirely passed over in favor of the author's made-up man who inspires, guides, and becomes a kindred spirit of Jane Austen.

Over the course of some tedious present-day machinations and fisticuffs, Sophie attempts to prove that Jane Austen and not the previously-unknown Richard Mansfield is the true author of Pride and Prejudice, but one wonders why she bothers, given that Lovett's imaginary backstory makes Mansfield as good as a collaborator and the one person most responsible for Jane's career.  Sophie herself is an unlikable heroine, at one point stealing one of her uncle's books back from a man who paid good money for it and feeling herself justified and later stealing a book from a library, an act truly beyond the pale for any bibliophile.  There's also a pointless, charmless, chemistryless Darcy-Lizzy-Wickham-style love triangle which ascribes no glory to anyone involved.

Book review: An Incomplete Revenge by Jacqueline Winspear

The 35th book I read in 2017 is the fifth book in Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series, An Incomplete Revenge.  In it, the ever-war-haunted investigator looks into recurring acts of arson in a small town that was bombed by a Zeppelin during World War I.

Winspear still subscribes to what I term the Victoria's Secret Catalog school of writing, in which the clothing of main female characters is painstakingly described at a level of detail which completely pulls me out of the story and makes me want to skip to the end of the paragraph to see the price and where I can order each piece of the outfit.  And Maisie's constant interior monologue about her relative social standing vis-à-vis the other characters is still tedious, to the point that I finally realized which other literary character she reminds me of: Drizzt Do'Urden, with his obsessive introspection and hobby of amateur philosophizing between chapters.  Add to that a villain who could not be more obvious and two-dimensional if he literally twirled his moustache and a rather hard-to-swallow nod to Martin Guerre, in which  a broad-brimmed hat plays the role of Clark Kent's beleaguered glasses, and the prospect is unpromising.

I must admit, however, that this was my favorite of the Maisie Dobbs books to date.  Maisie is, actually, less self-involved than usual, in that the facts of the case don't allow her quite as long a leash to draw parallels to her own experiences.  And the absence of any attempts at romance with the departure of the other two corners of the ham-handed triangle set up in the first book is refreshing.

Winspear, in fact, appears to be attempting to jettison quite a bit of the baggage she saddled Maisie with in the beginning.  Apart from the explicit break with Dr. Dene and the complete failure even to mention the existence of the London policeman that was her other possible suitor, the author kills off Simon, the war-wounded first love that was an anchor around Maisie's neck, and seems to be setting up the departure from the series of Billy Beale, Maisie's assistant.  (As Billy is one of the few characters I actually like, I'm not sure how to feel about that one.)  Lady Rowan, Maisie's ex-patroness, doesn't even make an appearance, and her mentor, Maurice Blanche, is shown to be aging.  In addition, Winspear tamps down most of the annoying occultism of the earlier books, in which Maisie's insight is depicted as explicitly supernatural; in An Incomplete Revenge, Maisie's success is dependent mostly on good, old-fashioned shoe-leather and intelligence.

A few notes: the plot turns heavily on a band of Roma, to whom Winspear applies a more common term which I am assured is now considered an ethnic slur, and whose relationship to the protagonist is almost certainly an act of cultural appropriation.  Also, as I have become sensitive to the term since reading John Swinton's book, the brain-damaged Simon is repeatedly referred to as an "empty shell."

Book review: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

The thirty-fourth book I read in 2017 was The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston.  Preston (with his frequent collaborator Lincoln Child) writes fictional thrillers; unfortunately, this book is, as the subtitle proclaims, a true story, which means that most of the author's talent at building excitement and suspense ultimately falls flat. 

Preston was invited along as a journalist on a team of scientists searching for the legendary White City in Honduras, a rumored lost city of treasures in the Honduran jungle.  Like all the best lost cities, this one has a curse: that anyone who finds it will never return, or, depending on which version of the legend you hear, that anyone who enters impiously will fall ill and die.  Various explorers had searched for it over the years since the Spanish conquistadors arrived in central America; one American even claimed to have found it, to great publicity and acclaim, although it turned out to be a hoax.

Despite the long failure to uncover the city, Preston's group hoped to use new technology to locate the ruin.  The dangers they faced in doing so were straight out of one of Preston's books: deadly snakes, wild animals, and inhospitable terrain.  Yet, unlike any good thriller, the team doesn't die one by one.  And, unlike Howard Carter's expedition, the curse can't even be said to claim any of them.  Many of them do come down with an infectious disease from insect bites, but modern medicine is a match for it.

The book suffers from false advertising.  The marketing is full of danger and curses, but this is, in the end, not a thriller.  It is, perhaps, a demythologization of a thriller: explaining signs and symptoms that, in the past, would have been interpreted as a terrible curse but which modern science merely shrugs at.  If Preston had approached the story in a less hyperbolic manner, it could have been an interesting read about the discovery of a long-lost pre-Columbian city, but set up so breathlessly as a thriller, it necessarily falls flat.

Book review: The Inheritance by Niki Kapsambelis

The thirty-third book I read in 2017 was The Inheritance: A Family on the Front Lines of the Battle Against Alzheimer's Disease by Niki Kapsambelis.  The family in question is the DeMoe family of North Dakota, and the inheritance is the genetic mutation that causes early-onset Alzheimer's disease.  Alzheimer's in cruel enough in old age, but the type the DeMoe family carries the gene for strikes in the early forties, stealing away what ought to be the prime years of an individual's life.

Even worse, the DeMoes and their children and grandchildren are faced with the choice to be tested and know with certainty if they carry the gene or to live in ignorance of what could be a ticking time bomb.  The scenes in which those who choose to be tested discover their results to either sobs of relief or freezing dread are almost as moving as Kampsabelis's methodical depiction of the decline of those stricken with the disease. 

What you will remember from this book is the DeMoes' story, but interspersed with it is the story of the doctors, scientists, and researchers with whom the DeMoes work, donating their blood, cells, and precious time in the hope that a breakthrough will be made to counter the disease, if not in time for them, then for their descendants.  What is heartbreaking is that, even by the time I read this book, a few of the drugs and therapies the DeMoes contributed to had already been announced to have failed.

Book review: My Own Two Feet by Beverly Cleary

The thirty-first book I read in 2017 was My Own Two Feet: A Memoir by Beverly Cleary.  This is the second installment of her autobiography, which picks up where the first, A Girl from Yamhill, leaves off.

I enjoyed this volume of Cleary's memoirs more than the first, which I read years ago.  For one thing, her relationship with her mother was extremely difficult, and it was hard to read about a child like Beezus meeting such rejection and judgment from her own family.  Cleary's character Ramona always had a special relationship with her father, as Beezus did with Aunt Beatrice, but Beezus and Ramona's mother was far more warm and loving than Cleary's own mother, in her telling.  In this book, Cleary is off to college and away from home, delivered from the daily indignities of dealing with her mother, whose main unpleasant intrusion in this installment is to object strenuously to Cleary's eventual husband, due to his Catholicism. 

The book was also enjoyable as many of the incidents that would turn up in Cleary's YA novels found their inspiration in this period of her life, in particular, the events of The Luckiest Girl, in which a teenager from Oregon spends a school year living with her mother's college roommate in Orange County.  The orange juice stands, the transom window ... I recognized them all in Cleary's experience as a college student living with her mother's cousin in Southern California.

It's also a fascinating look into college life in the 1930s.  Cleary's experiences were vastly different than my own, sixty years later.  The book follows her through college, library school, a first position as a children's librarian, World War II, marriage, and, finally, the publication of her first book, Henry Huggins.  None of her educational or professional experiences could be taken for granted, as a woman looking to take what might be seen as a man's job during the Depression, and over it all looms the unbearable thought of her having to return to her parents' home and live under their protection with her mother's disapproval.

Book review: Dementia by John Swinton

The twenty-seventh book I read in 2017 was Dementia: Living in the Memories of God by John Swinton.  Swinton approaches the experience of dementia from a Christian theological point of view.  So much of our practical theology focuses on the autonomous choices of the self: what does it mean when the self forgets itself? 

Swinton's answer to the problem is explicated in the book's subtitle: even if an individual has forgotten himself, he is still remembered by God.  We don't worry about the eternal destination of a Christian who dies in his sleep or after being in a coma, both states of self-forgetfulness; most Christian tradition similarly doesn't worry about the death of an infant; yet the changes associated with dementia for some reason leave us worried about what happens when a saint seems to have "forgotten" God.  "If we are faithless, he remains faithful -- for he cannot deny himself" (2 Timothy 2:13).

Reading this book I was struck by how much our society fears dementia.  Those who are affected by it today suffer a fate not much worse than lepers did in past societies: put out of sight and out of society, denied contact with family and friends because "he wouldn't remember we were there anyway."  We celebrate cancer patients as heroes whether they fight to the end or choose "death with dignity," but Alzheimer's patients don't have any visible place in our culture. 

Even worse is the language we use to describe them, the most common of which is "empty shells."  Just imagine if we so casually referred to terminal cancer patients as "walking dead" or "disease-ridden corpses-to-be."  If nothing else, this book has challenged me to treat the mentally-disabled with greater respect.

Several years ago, I read a letter to Dear Abby from a woman who had a friend with Alzheimer's.  After her diagnosis but before her decline, she had asked her friend to promise her that she would not let anyone they knew see her "that way."  The friend gave the promise, but as the woman declined, she continued to find great joy in attending church services, particularly the music.  Her friend, despite her promise, kept taking the patient to church, as it was the only time she showed enthusiasm.  I was shocked and horrified that Dear Abby chastised the friend for breaking her promise: when her friend was "in her right mind," she had not wanted to be seen in a vulnerable state; now that she was impervious to the opinion of others, she ought to be locked away from the world in accordance with her earlier wishes.

I recall an interview with Christopher Reeve several years after the accident which left him a quadriplegic. He was asked if he had had a living will, would he have directed the doctors to "pull the plug."  He responded that, if he had been asked when he was able-bodied if he would want to live out his life as a quadriplegic, he would have insisted that he would rather be dead; during the time since his accident, however, he had discovered that he still valued his life, despite the significant difficulties and indignities he suffered on a daily basis.  What if we allowed able-bodied Christopher Reeve to make decisions on behalf of quadriplegic Christopher Reeve, over his objections?  What if we took The Who at their word ("I hope I die before I get old") and approached them with a lethal injection a decade or so ago?  Why do we privilege one season of life over another, with the idea that one of them represents "the real me" which gets to make decisions for all of them and the rest of them mere shadows?

Book review: First Impressions by Sarah Price

The twenty-fifth book I read in 2017 was First Impressions: An Amish Tale of Pride and Prejudice by Sarah Price, and it's exactly as awful as you'd expect the unholy union of Austen fan-fic and Amish romances to be.  I have nothing to blame but my own morbid curiosity.

Spelling vanquished!

About six years ago, Faith started her spelling book.  There were three words to learn and one sentence to write: "See the moon."

Looking ahead to the end of the book from such humble beginnings, I quailed.  How would we two ever get to the point where she could write the last dictation in the book, including punctuation?

Well, as of today, she has finished her spelling book, including that meandering, clause-ridden, eight-line question from The Spectator, archaic "ere" and all.  It is a 1908 speller, handed down from a schoolteaching great-aunt, and from it the kids have written excerpts from Dickens and T. H. Huxley, letters to their children by Victor Hugo and William Makepeace Thackeray, poetry by Wordsworth and Longfellow, lists of "Largest Cities in United States" that are now mostly Rust Belt ghost towns and of American authors who are largely forgotten today, and many words that are uncommon now but if they run across them in old books, they'll know them.  (Did you know what a quire is?  We do now. Win at Scrabble!)

Book review: "When You Were Gentiles" by Cavan W. Concannon

The twenty-fourth book I read in 2017 was "When You Were Gentiles": Specters of Ethnicity in Roman Corinth and Paul's Corinthian Correspondence by Cavan W. Concannon.  This book began as a dissertation, and it reads like it. The academic prose is heavy and repetitive, with extra padding: first Concannon tells you what he's going to tell you, then he tells you, then he tells you what he just told you.

The jargon might be worth hacking one's way through if there were anything interesting on offer beneath the verbiage, but all this sound and fury, at base, comes down to speculation.  The recipients of the epistles may have been this or that; they may have practiced some or another occupation; they may have had picnics in graveyards.  There's no facts at bottom, no documentation, only some snapshots from the author's vacation in Greece.  The one thing Concannon seems to be sure of, based on his repeated pledges of allegiance to feminist and postcolonial scholarship, is that the Corinthians definitely disagreed with Paul and that the apostle's white (oops) male interference in their community was unwelcome and officious.

Hammock!

Best delayed-gratification Christmas gift ever.

Story connoisseurs

So I was reading this interview with a children's author.  I have read nothing he has written and can't give an opinion on the quality of his work, but his response to a question interested me.

Is good storytelling a lost art today?

I would say the opposite. We in America today are some of the most sophisticated story consumers history has ever seen. Most adults are so exposed to narrative that they’re almost a little inoculated to it. It’s very hard to impress them.

Haven't you ever had the experience of watching a movie or reading a book you loved as a child and finding it wasn't as good as you remembered it being?   Or watching an old black-and-white movie that won multiple awards and being underwhelmed, finding it treacly and obvious?  I know that The Pickwick Papers was considered so uproariously hilarious that it launched Charles Dickens' writing career, but I have tried to read that book and found it completely leaden.

Now, granted, what cultures find funny changes over time and the studio politics and the power of personality have rendered Oscar choices inexplicable on occasion.  But perhaps it's simply a measure of our culture, or we individually, simply becoming more sophisticated evaluators of story over time.  Perhaps it's not just that Hollywood is turning out more dreck than usual these days; perhaps Hollywood has always churned out bucketsful of dreck, but we're now more choosy though exposure to decades of films.  Excellent story, whether in book or movie form, is always going to be in the minority compared to the mediocre or worse.

Book review: Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

The twenty-third book I read in 2017 was Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall.  This book was on my wishlist for quite a while before I read it, and I ended up being disappointed by it.

Obviously the subtitle is an overstatement, but that's not the source of my disappointment; rather, I was expecting a historical view of how different cultures were shaped by their geography, whereas Marshall's book is much more focused on current events.  It's not his fault that he didn't write the book I wanted to read, but it will definitely date the book. For instance, the chapter on Western Europe discusses the stresses that the Greek economy has put on the European Union and the possibility that it may lead some Southern European countries to break with the EU -- but there's nary a word about Brexit, which clearly took Marshall by surprise as much as it did the rest of the world.  (Of course, Britain's geography could help explain why it feels separate from the Continent, but Marshall doesn't address the possibility.)

Also, Marshall bemoans the artificial boundaries imposed in Africa and the Middle East by colonial powers as a major cause of civil war.  Isn't the alternative -- if tribes had been allowed to define for themselves who was in and who was out and where the demarcations were between their territories and their neighbors -- simply ordinary war?  Is crossing national boundaries to seize resources by force somehow less morally reprehensible than taking them from your fellow countrymen?  I'll concede that not having to cooperate with people you judge to be outsiders might eliminate some conflict, but a neighboring tribe having diamonds or minerals or oil or access to an ocean port in their territory will still tempt invasion; witness the first Gulf War.

I did learn some things: for instance, that Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan and that its economic development is hampered by the fact that most of its country lies in a flood plain and suffers from seasonal inundations.  That DAESH is an insulting way to refer to the terrorists of the Islamic State, as it rhymes with several unsavory Arabic words.  That trade and peaceful coexistence of people groups thrived in Europe because of its easily navigable rivers, while the dangerous rivers of Africa and South America kept peoples isolated from each other and retarded the growth of civilization.

Marshall concludes the book, in an optimistic tone that would have fit the 1960s better than the 2010s, by looking forward to what he considers the inevitable expansion of humanity to other planets.  He wonders if the nations of Earth will continue their competitive and acquisitive ways, rushing to plant their individual flags on other planets like Columbus on San Salvador, or whether moving past a global perspective will encourage humanity to band together as a species, as Virginians and Pennsylvanians became Americans in the latter 18th century.  I am cynical enough both to doubt that science (and our current panic to make sure everything is "safe") will overcome the technological hazards of interplanetary travel and colonization of planets nonconducive to human life and to wager that the only way we will overcome our differences will be if we encounter a larger enemy.  But that's a sci-fi film.

Book review: Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster

The Mother-Daughter Book Club series induced me to seek out Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs, as it is the featured title in book three of the series, Dear Pen Pal.  Thus, it and its sequel, Dear Enemy, became the twenty-second book I read in 2017.  (Even though they are separate works, the edition I read was a two-in-one.)

Daddy-Long-Legs is an epistolary novel made up of letters written by seventeen-year-old orphan Jerusha Abbott to the anonymous benefactor who finances her college education.  She knows only that he is a trustee of the orphan asylum where she has spend her childhood and caught but a glimpse of a tall man walking out the door.  Based on that impression and the condition that she send him monthly letters reporting on her progress, she begins writing to him as Daddy-Long-Legs.

For much of the book, I was wholly delighted, wondering how on earth I had managed to miss this book while reading extensively in the plucky-orphaned-girl genre (i.e., Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Pollyanna, etc.).  Eventually, however, I understood how this book had been excluded from my childhood: its extolment of Darwinian evolution and fervent socialism in particular. 

In addition -- spoiler alert --
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In addition, there's something creepy and off-putting today about a grown man anonymously grooming a teenage girl to be his bride, and the later triangle of Judy, Jervie, and Jimmie McBride is unfair in many ways.

Dear Enemy is Daddy-Long-Legs's sequel.  The letters in this instance are written from Judy's friend Sallie McBride to Judy (and others) after Judy has persuaded her to take over the orphan asylum where Judy was brought up, the John Grier Home, and run it in a more humane and progressive manner than Judy enjoyed.  It is not as successful as Daddy-Long-Legs but still a good read. 

Book review: The Other Worldview by Peter Jones

The twentieth book I read in 2017 is The Other Worldview: Exposing Christianity's Greatest Threat by Peter Jones.  Jones's proposition is that all worldviews boil down to what he terms either Oneism or Twoism; that is, that either the universe is all there is and if there is a God or creator He is somehow a part of it, or that God exists apart from His creation.

This is a clever delineation, in one sense, in that it allows Jones to sweep scientific materialism, classic polytheism, pantheism, atheism, and the New Age movement into a single category.  Twoism as a term, however, suffers from confusion with dualism, a concept that it has nothing to do with, and Jones is, indeed, forced to address the issue and clarify his meaning early on. In addition, Jones must classify Islam and Judaism as Oneist, though they are non-Trinitarian and thus, in his mind, insufficiently Oneist.  In the end, I'm not sure the conceit was worth the hoops he has to jump through to support it.

The early chapters on the rise (really, the renaissance) of Twoism are very interesting, as the author draws a line from classical paganism through the Spiritualist movement, Jungian psychology, and the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, revealing some rather surprising connections.  (Jung was certifiable, yo, attributing his psychological theories to an occultic spirit-guide with wings and horns named Philemon, who arranged a personal introduction to Gnostic deity Abraxas and entrusted Jung with the responsibility to become prophet of a new religion and save the world.  I couldn't help but recall Niles Crane's discomfort with Daphne Moon's claims to have psychic power over and against his scientific worldview and wonder what he would have thought if Frasier hadn't ended a year before the publication of The Red Book, which contained Jung's private diary of his spiritual experiences.)

As is often the case with "what's wrong with the world" books, however, I found the later chapters rather meandering and inconclusive.  Once the author has identified the disease, one rather expects him to point to the cure.  Given that Jones is an orthodox Christian, however, he can provide no cure but the one prescribed in the Bible: the necessity for human beings to place their faith in Jesus Christ and wait for God to put things right.  There is no public policy solution or twelve steps to a better, more vibrant you, which is anticlimactic.

In the nitpicking category, I'm not at all sure which side of the circle on the cover of the book is supposed to be the "good" or Twoist side: the black stripes or the red web.  In addition, the cover blurb from the foreword by R. C. Sproul announces that the book is "for every concerned American -- and especially for every Christian who weeps at the graveside of his culture," which a) is the purplest of overly dramatic prose, and b) suggests that a Christian worldview is coterminous with 20th-century American culture, which would certainly be news to 99% of Christians who have lived in the world anywhere else ever, including the apostles and church fathers.

Book review: Comfort Detox by Erin M. Straza

The twentieth book I read in 2017 was Comfort Detox: Finding Freedom from Habits that Bind You by Erin M. Straza.  Straza's purpose in writing the book is to encourage readers to break out of our habits of inertia and seeking the path of least resistance to free ourselves to accomplish something with our time. 

Straza's story begins with a trip to India where the poverty and misery she witnessed put her through a process she calls the Shredding: a shock to the system that opened her eyes to the Question (she's big on capitalizing) of what she is doing with her life.  Unfortunately, she discovered that a truthful answer to the Question was mostly seeking her own comfort, to maximize her pleasure and minimize her pain, or even her effort, a response that she finds antithetical to the biblical instructions of Jesus to his disciples. 

Straza's response is to go through a comfort detoxification process, consciously rejecting convenience, emotional and professional safety, perfectionism, avoidance, entitlement, and indulgence.  Only when that is done does she advocate pursuing the positive goals of compassion, trust, humility, engagement, and contentment.

There are two reasons I don't like this book.  One is that it is written almost as a sort of study guide for a group.  Step 1 of the detox is to gather a group of like-minded friends to go through this process with you.  It seems that self-improvement, like going to a public bathroom, is something that girls ought to do in a herd.  More importantly, though, at the end of the process, Straza suggests dedicating onself to a Cause (that's my capitalization, not hers) to get uncomfortable in the pursuit of and suggests charities focused on providing education for girls around the world.  Perhaps I shouldn't find that surprising, given the setting of her Shredding, but for a book which approaches life from a strictly Christian viewpoint, it's disappointing that the end goal is a very mainstream, socially-acceptable cause.  If our lives are radically different because Jesus went outside his comfort zone, shouldn't out goals be different as well? 

The PG-13 Martian

An update to my review of The Martian: There is now a Classroom Edition which tones down the language to less paint-peeling levels!  This is great news since, as I pointed out, this is a great book to hand to to a twelve-year-old to get them interested in science (and reading!) if it weren't for the F-bombs.  Buying a copy for my kids now.