"I have been but little in," said Ninian hastily...

51/50: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. I quite enjoyed Chabon's short novel "Gentlemen of the Road", so I decided to give this novel a try. I am glad that I did; it's a detective story set in an alternative history, a rather noir-ish read with quite entertaining and engaging characters. Ach, I seem to always end up with the same descriptors, and I feel as if my reviews end up being bland and recapitulative. But there's nothing bland about this tale of a man trying to pursue the truth in a murder case that no one seems to care about in a city that's rapidly approaching something very like its own death. The various layers of cultural, religious, and historical reference (including those to a timeline the reader glimpses mostly through allusion) delighted me; I was able to savour forgotten bits of Yiddish, half-remembered bits of mysticism or ritual, and the author's elegant blending of our reality with the creation of his mind.

52/50: Amateurs, To Arms! A Military History Of The War Of 1812 by John Elting. Colonel Elting was a truly gifted military historian, and his history of this early war shows both his exhaustive scholarship and his talent for colourful and accessible prose. That's what I appreciate so much about him--although he did his homework very carefully and had a thoroughgoing grasp of the historiography of any subject he engaged, his writing still gives the effect of a conversation with a seasoned old soldier. Not dumbed down, not simplified, but informed by a familiarity with army life and custom that someone who approaches military subjects without personal experience will not be able to convey. True to it's subtitle, the book gives good descriptions of all the war's military campaigns and the affairs of government that connected them without going far into the politics or diplomacy of the conflict. I've a number of other books on the war that I picked up this autumn, but I know I'll be coming back to this one for help in understanding the operations and battles and for the sheer pleasure of reading the good colonel's writing.

Lots to say, but let's start with books. ( Read more... )

Despite doing a fair bit of reading (not of books) for my class, I've been keeping up the reading/listening. ( Read more... )

More books. ( Read more... )

I should do a separate entry for some of these, but I wanted to mark them down before I forgot.( Read more... )

14/50: Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East ( Read more... )

11/50: Dark Voyage by Alan Furst. I've commented before on Furst's spy novels. Whenever I'm in Borders and looking for a good read but not sure where to turn, I look for Alan Furst. He's an excellent novelist, capable of writing what seems like effortless prose with briefly introduced but very evocative characters. It's not just the subject matter (the world of espionage, covert operations, and diplomacy just before or during World War Two) that gives his stories their film noir flavour; he has the knack that noir directors do of conveying atmospherics sparely and movingly. While his stories don't generally feature whodunits or complex, revolving plots, they do tell the story of one or two ordinary people finding themselves in the most difficult and dangerous places--life right in the midst of war--and somehow coming to terms with what they find they must do. Furst studies his period and its details exactingly and conveys a whole world in a few brief pages. I'd say I love his writing, but that seems to overblown, too expansive for his understated, quietly dramatic tales.

If you like period pieces, if you enjoy a good adventure story told without unbelieveable heroics or improbable luck, where regular people (a alittle good, a little bad) have to make tough decisions about principles and survival, try Alan Furst.

7/50: Beyond the Burning Lands by John Christopher (real name, apparently, Samuel Youd, who knew?)

This was a reread of a childhood favourite. John Christopher's books were regulars on my bookshelf as a kid. His protagonists were sort of heroes, but they had plenty of flaws, so you never felt they were too far removed from one as to be unreal. This is one in a series set in a semi-medieval society of a post-apocalypse England. Luke is the son of a self-made Prince of Winchester who is tapped by the Seers, a sort of spiritualist priesthood, to follow his father to the throne. In this story, he returns to Winchester from exile to a place at the court of his half-brother, who has seized the throne. Luke leads an expedition across the fiery wastelands that separate his land from the Wilsh, and finds the civilization there very different from his own. Adventures of all sorts take place, and eventually he returns to Winchester.

Christopher's stories are well told, IMO, and are a little more relevant, I feel, than books like Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series, which was another favourite of mine at the time. Cooper's books weave more traditional myth and legend into the telling than Christopher's, but they feel as if they have somehow less substance to them. Christopher's stories are somewhat abbreviated (they often feel as if he could have provided more background, developed scenes and characters further, spun the story out a bit more), but the characters feel more as if they are enmeshed int he events, where Cooper's seem, like the reader, just to be onlookers.

Well, I missed out on my 50 by a bit, even not accounting for my failure to list "Gentlemen of the Road" (a wonderful picaresque adventure novel set in ancient Khazaria) and re-readings of two of PG Wodehouse's 'Blandings' novels ("Something Fresh" and "summer Lightning"). Still less than 40! I'm putting it down to not having recorded some of my earlier conquests when I started up late in the year.( Read more... )