12. The Small World of Murder by Elizabeth Ferrars

Turns out there is a neat little english used bookstore in Quito, Ecuador, called Confederate Books. I was quite excited to go there as you can often find a gold mine of old British mysteries and thrillers in some of these post-colonial countries. Unfortunately, Confederate books was very much like a North American used bookstore. A very nice store, actually, but not the gold mine I had been hoping for. Ecuador was never under British control, and it is in the Americas, so you probably don't get the same stream of publishing houses coming through there via travelers and expats. The owner was very friendly and we discussed John Wyndham (he recommended the original movie version of The Day of the Triffids, arguing for the effectiveness of its lack of special effects, an argument that convinced me to seek it out). He goes to the States on buying trips, purchases used books from travelers and occasionally finds treasures from peoples basements in town. He also gave us some helpful streetwise advice for the mean streets of Quito. So if you should ever be travelling in Ecuador, do stop at Confederate Books and pick yourself up some good used reading material. I got the book I shall review today and a nice hardback of Donald Westlake's High Adventure.

I had never heard of Elizabath Ferrars, but the concept and the cover looked appealing. It's the story of a young woman who is invited to go on a luxury trip around the world with a couple friend of hers whose baby was recently kidnapped and never recovered. They are at the point where they really need to decide to get on with their lives, but the mother (who is the closer friend of the protagonist, though she originally dated the father, who is now a successful author and can thus afford the trip) is still barely coping psychologically. At first, there is a lot of awkwardness and general tension, as the marriage is under considerable strain. The wife believes that the husband blames her for the kidnapping (she had left her child in the pram outside a supermarket). The husband thinks the wife won't allow him to forgive her. It's an unpleasant mess and the burden of her role as mediator starts to wear on the heroine. But things get really weird, when the wife starts to tell her that she thinks the husband is trying to kill her. There are a couple of incidents while traveling that could be interpreted either way. It's bizarre, because he appears to have no real motive and nor does she appear to have any real motive to lie.

It's juicy stuff and starts to get more complicated as they conclude their trip at a friend's winery in Australia where the husband had visited years ago. More and more backstory starts to bubble to the surface. I was able to guess most of the mystery about two-thirds of the way in and the denouement lacked a bit of punch (there turns out to be some fairly unlikable characters and while they get their comeuppance, as the reader you wanted it to be with a bit more satisfying vengeful vigour). All in all, a very enjoyable read, a tricky little story of selfish people and the complicated trouble they can get themselves and the innocent people around them in. I left it on the boat where I was travelling and hope someone else can find it and enjoy it.

Addendum: after doing a bit of research, I discovered that Elizabeth Ferrars was quite a succesful and prolific author for her time and one of the founding members of the British Crime Writers Association. You can read about her more in this obituary in the Independent. I'll keep an eye out for her stuff.

11. The Mourner by Richard Stark

The Mourner is the fourth in Richard Stark's Parker series and where the books really start to take their classical structure. There is one small link that connects The Mourner with previous books: a thrill-seeking woman that Parker bedded managed to steal a gun he used in a job and he needs to get it back. He becomes involved in a scheme to steal a rare statue ("the Mourner") from an eastern european diplomat but things get very complicated when it turns out that said diplomat has been double-dipping from his employers when making espionage payments. They've sent a spy out to punish him for this error of judgment (with the ultimate punishment) who has then naively engaged the mob to help him also recover the stolen money. So clearly, things are quite complicated and as usual Stark drops us right into the middle of this mess, with Parker waking up in his DC hotel room to two guys loudly climbing up the fire escape to his window.

First line of the book (from memory): "When the guy with asthma came in through the window, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away."

So good. How can you not want to continue reading.

I remember The Mourner as being one of my favorites and it definitely lived up to my memory on this my third or fourth reading. However, I did go through an interesting development of my opinion as I was reading it. The Mourner is a slight departure from the books so far (and many of the other series), in that it features a non-American character. August Menlo is the fat and wily interior intelligence officer, who, due to his history of loyalty to the regime, is sent to America for the first time. He's a great character and his story arguably the central narrative to the book. His story is also the structural element that is an integral part of the Parker series. A side character makes an appearance in the first part, as the heist is being established, then when things go wrong in the second part, we stop and backtrack into the story of this secondary character. These stories are usually much more colourful than those of Parker and his crew and add significant depth to the book. The ending of their story often coincides with the resolution of the heist's disaster.

And here is where my slight dissatisfaction arose and then was dispelled. Every now and then in the series Richard Stark's firm grasp on the pen falter and Donald Westlake takes over. I am a huge Westlake fan as well (go check out his Dortmunder books for instance), but I do not welcome these brief intrusions. I call them "fruity" and they tend to be something slightly comic or goofy or just too colourful. The one that really stands out for me is the naive Africans in the Black Ice Score who are constantly grinning. They bring me out of the world of work and men and tools that is so integral to the series (and it strikes me, considering that they take place in the height of the '60s that the books are aesthetically quite conservative). The Menlo character at first just struck me as being just a bit too fruity. His character, combined with the rich history of the Mourner itself, set off some alarm bells and I was worried that The Mourner may lack the true heart of granite that is necessary for a good Parker novel.

Fortunately, once I delved deeper into Menlo's story and as it plays itself out, things get pretty rough pretty quickly and I realized that the fruitiness was just a small part of what is a really rich and layered narrative, with several great storylines going on (the heist, Menlo's plans and Parker trying to wrap up loose ends) and it all comes together in an extremely satsifying conclusion. Actually, this book is so good that I'd even recommend it for people who aren't necessarily interested in the genre.

Westlake is a master of metaphors and the Mourner contains two absolute gems that I feel I must share with you:

"and Handy, sprawled over there like a dummy dumped off a cliff, was an even worse mess."

Enough said. It works even better in the context of the paragraph, but it's too much of a spoiler to include it all.

"The somebody came up the fire escape about as quiet as the Second World War but trying to be quieter and stopped at Parker's floor."

I really wonder if Westlake just banged that sentence out, or spent time crafting it. The base metaphor is hilariously brilliant in its exaggeration and wry criticism. But the qualifying clause "but trying to be quieter" subtly encapsulates the utter incompetence of the act and the person doing it. You can just see Parker sitting up in his bed hearing this noisy amateur trying to sneak up on him. [Reading sentences like this turn me into a total gushing fan boy.] Fuck, you're a genius, Westlake! A master craftsman! Wherever you are in heaven, please take some small satisfaction with your life for that sentence alone. I thank you for bringing it into the world. [Okay, I'm closing the fanboy tap now. My apologies. I get excited at times.]

Finally, there is a paragraph that I believe really captures the overall theme of the Parker series. Menlo is following Parker and Handy while they prepare to steal the statue, trying to learn from them:

Menlo smiled with a touch of sadness. "I must say you remove the romance most utterly from all this. I had been seeing myself in quite dramatic terms. The defecting policeman, meting out poetic justice to the embezzler by depriving him of his ill-gotten gains, then disappearing again, quite forever, an enigma to all who seek him. But now I find I am merely a participant in a dreary and pedestrian series of quite normal activities--opening doors, driving automobiles, sitting in motel rooms." He shrugged and spread his hands.

He's exactly right and that's what make the Parker series so great. Go get this book and read it right now.

10. The Law at Randado by Elmore Leonard

(Note: I just came back from a 10-day vacation with lots of reading time during which I completed 9 novels, so expect a rush of reviews over the next couple of days. I'm going to be backdating them to the day that I read them, so they may not show up at the top of your blog reader.)

Another gripping, intense and satisfying western from Elmore Leonard's earlier days. I really got into this one. It's the classic young deputy going up against the more powerful, but morally weaker, men of the town. Leonard takes the theme and draws it out, playing around with it for a bit. It makes for a rich read, where you are really wanting the satisfying ass-kicking, but get drawn into a cool back story on the young deputy and where he gets his skills and mettle from (partly from hanging out with other young Indians, a recurring theme with Leonard).

The story here is that instead of waiting for the visiting judge from the larger city to the north, the wealthier citizens of Randado decide to form their own justice committee and hang two Mexican cattle thievers while the deputy sherrif is out of town. They are pressured by a young and out-of-control cattle baron (inherited from his better, but dying, father, of course). When the deputy comes back, he decides to arrest the members of the committee and the confrontation builds. It's not just a contest of strength, but also one of politics, as he must win the confidence of the townspeople as well.

A great read. Pick it up if you find and it and need to be reminded what it means to be a man.

(Unfortunately, the image above is not the one from the actual version of the book I read. I purposely left my copy in the common bookshelf in a hotel in Quito and was quite pleased to see that someone had taken it a couple days later. Except I had forgotten to take a picture of it! It was one of those classic photographed late '70s covers with a picture of a gun and a badge. Not as cool as the vintage illustration pictured here.)

9. Freaked Out Strangler by Patrick Morgan (Operation Hang Ten #10)

This is the third in the demographically precise and highly collectible Operation Hang Ten series that I've read. They star surfing freelance agent Bill Cartwright, with his sweet ride and trailer set-up (he has a "computer" in the trailer that mixes the perfect drink for him). It's number ten in the series and I was getting a bit weary of his schtick through the first through chapters. I guess it went over well for its audience in the day, but the main protagonist is really full of himself and spends a lot of time telling the reader how good he is at everything and how great his life is, thanks to being so good at everything. But he does it in that weird '60s way, using arbitrarily big vocab words and talking around things in a kind of faux beat poetry style. I called it "watered down John D. MacDonald" in a previous review. This time, it seemed almost condensed, thickened, as if it had been left on the stove too long.

This time, Cartwright is following up on a lead from a woman who wants to meet him at a pier because she has info on someone trading secrets from a sattelite manufacturing plant. When he gets to the Santa Monica pier, she is being strangled by a guy in a scuba outfit (the titular Freaked Out Strangler). Another convoluted plot ensues, but my enjoyment of it increased significantly as Morgan brings in some really depraved individuals and a few serious instances of brutality. You've got a low-rent Hugh Hefner type who lives in a penthouse, grows tulips and sleeps with a different paid high class prostitute each day of the week. There is a bitter loser with a terrible birthmark on his face, obsessed by the sexual teasings of his older sister (awesome talc on back rubbing scene) and the fruity manipulator who provides the loser with drugs and women (and his own sexual favours once he gets him high). Some good seedy stuff that makes for a quick and enjoyable read, marred a bit by the excessive masculine fairytale built up around the protagonist and a poor plot structure. Still, he's a surfing detective, for crissake's, what do you want?

Another interesting element that I am starting to glean in these later novels is that he is actually a pretty conservative character. I am getting the sense that Bill Cartwright is not meant to be a counter-culture figure for young male readers of the period at all, but rather an establishment proxy for older figures who don't really like the values of the 60s, but have grudgingly accepted them. He allows them to participate in this new topsy-turvy world, get all the fruits that men deserve in any age: the sweet car and mobile bachelor home, the adventure and above all the willing, subservient chicks who always end up making him breakfast or bringing him food (in return they get the best sex ever; Cartwright makes the hero of the Wolf's Hour seem positively flaccid in comparison). He mocks the idealistic ecological notions of an ex-flame he meets at the trailer park (with a smug, passing reference to the superior emissions standards of his custom-made german engine). He really doesn't take any political stance and almost all the bad guys are pulled from some deviant milieu (homosexuals, hippies). They are rarely the typical enemies of the left, big businessmen, politicans and so on. I'll keep an eye on how this trend continues as I get future episodes in this series.

Note to self: use the term "jive" more.

8. Tropic Moon by Georges Simenon

I've had this, one of Simenon's first Romans durs, sitting on my shelf for over a year. Buzby (whose book reviewing has been subsumed by two new little ones), who is a huge fan, lent it to me and I finally cracked it open. Buzby's review gives an excellent and much more detailed synopsis, so hop over there if you really want to know what happens. It's about a young upper middle-class french man who goes to colonial Gabon in the interwar period in the hopes of running a logging concession. Though he doesn't tell anybody this, the real reason he goes is because he has no real financial prospects back in France and like so many of the Europeans who went out to the colonies, he had the chance to maintain the aristocratic fantasy that was no longer possible at home. However, in this case, things go really bad for him.

This is an excellent book. An amazing portrayal of the utter degradation that was colonial Africa (focused particularly on the colonialists themselves, but with enough side glances at the natives and their treatment to evoke horror in the reader) as well as a spot-on portrayal of the ignorance, inexperience and emotional maturity of the male in his twenties. The character is so out of his league, so inexperienced and so utterly unable to control his emotions, that you almost feel pity for him. Usually, with a character like this, I'm tearing my hair out with frustration. But while I was certainly not very sympathetic with him, Simenon does such a good job of making it seem very real and understandable, that it's a fascinating and compelling read and you want to see how far it is going to go. Young males in their early twenties, for the most part, are perhaps at the least competent, most inept period of their lives. It makes sense that we try to keep them sequestered in university or send them off as soldiers. Simenon wrote this when he was 30, which is an astounding testimony to his writing. I'd say it is arguable that Tropic Moon addresses the themes of colonialism as well as Conrad in Heart of Darkness, but does it in a way more efficient and perhaps devastating way. Great book.

7. The Book Stops Here by Ian Ransom

I got this from my parents the xmas before last and finally cracked it open. [Why am I reading so much in January, you may well be asking. It's a combo of my usual January surge combined with our friggin' wireless router being on the fritz. You want to read 50 books in a year? Lose your internet connection and it's a cinch.] It's the story of a young man from London who has ended up in Northern Ireland working in a mobile library who gets involved in adventures. A neat premise (and this is the third in a series) but at least judging by this book, it seems to be more about the his own inner turmoil and the wacky people around him than any real misadventures.

In The Book Stops Here, he and his gruff, Irish partner Ted head back down to England to go to a mobile librarian's convention to look at getting a new van. Ted who has cared for the funky old van does not want to give it up and has never left Northern Ireland. Israel, the protagonist has an opportunity to visit his family and his girlfriend, whom it's quite clear to the reader is no longer really his girlfriend.

This sort of un-formed, loser male in his mid to late 20's seems to be the rage in England these days. The protagonist of this book seemed like the Simon Pegg character in Spaced (a series you should check out) or Shaun of the Dead, except way worse. At least the Simon Pegg characters are more or less happy with their lot except they can't get the girl. Israel just complains and seems bummed out and incapable of really doing anything. After a while, it gets a bit tiring. The only real development he made was to finally realize that his girlfriend had broken up with him. It was kind of depressing.

There is also a lot of quick back and forth dialogue with various colourful characters that most of the time (the new age hippy caravaners being one exception) didn't come off as funny to me. Maybe if you understand the regional distinctions better, but even then it was all very broad (like the seedy bar owner cousin who turns out to be gay) and not in aid of anything so you are kind of reading these long back and forths with lots of interruptions wondering what the point of it all is.

Not a terrible read and I did learn a little bit about the Northern Ireland character(at least that they consider themselves very distinct from Ireland proper) and the world of mobile libraries in Britain. I admit to being vaguely curious about the first two in the series, but I'll need to be convinced that the protagonist is at least somewhat effective before I'll pick them up. Too much competition out there.

6. Les mardis de Béatrice de Francine Tougas

This year I am making an effort to improve my french. I get by, but have been stuck on a plateau. One of the challenges with reading here in Quebec is that a lot of the classes you take will recommend books by french authors, which can be great, but are often written in a much more complex form and use a wide range of vocabulary. The dialogue is also nothing like the way people speak in the world around you here in Quebec. So I have been looking around for books by Quebec authors which reflect the actual language of Quebec. One friend, recommended Les mardis de Béatrice, written by her mother! Francine Tougas is an actress and writer in the Quebec television and movie scene.

Les mardis de Béatrice is the story of a professional woman who is seeing a therapist. Each chapter is a session, basically dialogue between the two. She is feisty, resistant but suffering enough from inner anguish that she is driven to keep coming back. I'm of two minds on the subject of psychology. My mother is a professional psychologist and she has spent most of her career working with sexually abused children and disadvantaged adults. She believes strongly that there is an unhappy state and that people can through therapy find ways to get to a happy state. My father on the other hand is completely against most forms of self-improvement and thinks the world is what it is and you just handle it as it comes to you. I go back and forth, having seen the good of both approaches.

The first half of this book definitely made me fall to my father's side of the equation. All of this woman's problems seemed to be the result of living in a free and wealthy society where people suddenly have enough leisure time to start worrying about their problems. It was actually kind of maddening and I didn't know if I could make it through the book. Fortunately, in terms of the language, it was very much what I was looking for, with lots of dialogue written the way people speak here. So it was easier for me to get through, enjoyable to read (it sounded very much like what I hear around me so that is a compliment to the writer) and educational as I finally got to see in written form many of the phrases and modes of speaking that they never teach you in a french class.

(For instance, the word pantoute which means not at all and I believe is a mutation of pas-de-tout is used all the time here. Good luck finding it in a dictionary.)

So I kept plodding through and the book does become more interesting as Béatrice reveals some darker facts about her background that give substance to her lonely, defensive condition. The narrative never really takes off nor arrives at a revelatory climax. Rather the story arc is more concerned with whether or not she'll continue her therapy and her relationship with the therapist. There was some slightly weird father-daughter dialogue and a tiny bit of behaviour by the therapist at the end that seemed to cross the line that creeped me out just a tad.

I suspect that Les mardis de Béatrice is a fairly accurate reenactment of a real series of sessions between a modern woman and her therapist and if that is interesting to you, you'll probably enjoy the book and find lots to think about. But don't look for a stronger story beyond that.

5. The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

The Body Snatchers is the original novel, written in 1955, that the better-known movies "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" were based on. I was mildly surprised to see that it was written by the same author of Time and Again. I guess he has had a fairly long and varied writing career (and as I see in Wikipedia was considered a genre author).

The Body Snatchers is written from the perspective of the town doctor. He's a younger man, getting over a divorce, with deep roots in the small Norther California town. The first sign that something untoward is happening is when an old high school girlfriend comes to his office to tell him how worried she is about her best friend. The best friend is convinced that her uncle is not himself, even though he looks and acts exactly the same. After briefly investigating this, the doctor starts to get patients making similar claims about other friends or family members. They can't put their finger on it, but there is just something off about them.

This is an enjoyable and quickly paced book and the adventure takes off when a farmer living out of town tells him about a strange body he found in his basement. It's like a not-quite formed human. Skepticism is replaced with real fear as the doctor (now teamed up with his old flame and another couple) realizes that there is a real conspiracy going on.

I know the common interpretation of the movies is that the body-snatchers were a metaphor for the Red Scare of the period. I really didn't get that same sense from the book. The aliens are portrayed as so passionless, empty of any real ideology or values other than sheer survival. Finney puts a lot of emphasis on the small town and how it is decaying and I wonder if general modernity is more of the bugbear in the book than anything political. He really does a great job of describing the small town, all the good things about it coming out in relief in their absence as the protagonist sees the town of his upbringing being completely dangerous and fearful to him. There is a really freaky scene where he watches the entire town gather in the main square for some nefarious purpose, at first behaving normally (going shopping, doing their business) until the last bus drives out of town and then slowly starting to switch over to their real purpose.

Finney is a calm, almost mesmerizing writer. He likes to take his time to describe things, letting the reader's own eye wander over the landscape. Because of that tone, the book is not super stressful as one might expect. You do get a sense of the hopelessness the protagonists must feel as their town is taken over, but not the oppressive fear that such a situation would create (at least in me). He's also very peaceful and there is none of the revengeful violence that we see in today's species propaganda (or anti-propaganda as we see in Avatar).

I also appreciated that the strategy and operation of the aliens was well thought-out. Sure some of the science is pretty questionable, but it all fits together in its own internal logic and the reader isn't left with a lot of annoying questions about how things worked.

However, I did find the ending highly questionable. I appreciated the theme of it, but didn't find it believable at all. (scroll down for some spoilers where I explain myself better).

Still, a great read and deserves an important place in the history of alien invasion literature. I think I need to check out the film adaptations, as I've only seen the Donald Sutherland one and that was a long time ago.


[added after seeing the 1955 Don Siegel movie] Check this out from the wikipedia page on the original film adaptation of the movie:

Despite the general agreement among film critics regarding these political connotations of the film, lead actor Kevin McCarthy said in an interview included on the 1998 DVD release that he felt no political allegory was intended. The interviewer stated that he had spoken with the author of the original novel, Jack Finney, who also professed to have intended no specific political allegory in the work.[13]
In his autobiography, "I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History," Walter Mirisch writes: "People began to read meanings into pictures that were never intended. The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an example of that. I remember reading a magazine article arguing that the picture was intended as an allegory about the communist infiltration of America. From personal knowledge, neither Walter Wanger nor Don Siegel, who directed it, nor Dan Mainwaring, who wrote the script nor the original author Jack Finney, nor myself saw it as anything other than a thriller, pure and simple."[14]

And here are my thoughts on the movie itself, for posterity:

Inspired by having just read the book (which was originally published as a serial in Collier's), I downloaded the first Invasion of the Body Snatchers, directed by Don Siegel (they had a VSH copy at my local video store, but it was colorized!). Except for some minor changes and the ending, this is surprisingly faithful to the book and quite entertaining. It was shot on location in some real California small town in 1955 so it was quite pleasant to see all that brought to life. I still didn't see the strong Red Scare metaphor that gets attributed to this movie, except for two subtle cinematic touches (where the hero refers to the pod invasion as a "malignant disease spreading across America" text not found in the book and where he is running out in traffic trying to get someone to stop and he stares at the camera and screams "They're here already! You're next!"). It was a cool little movie and I'm looking forward to watching the '70s version next (with Donald Sutherland and a small role by Leonard Nimoy).

Here's a trailer for you, you can check out the screaming in traffic scene at the very end.

SPOILERS








Just when all seems lost, the aliens give up and send themselves out into space again. Their reasoning is that they realize that humans will fight them to the death and will not accept them taking over even though they (the humans) won't actually go away, they'll just have a parisitic host as part of their being. I kind of like the idea that we are the ultimate fighters who will never give up (and this isn't portrayed as entirely a good thing in the book), but I don't see why we wouldn't attribute that same quality to all life. And these aliens had behaved in such a way it seemed as if they expected resistance. They carried out their plan so well that they took over almost the entire town and were ready to spread throughout the rest of the world and then because there are a few resisters who don't allow themselves to be taken over, they give up the fight and head back into space? No, seems way too easy and I think the dark ending of the '70s version is probably a better interpretation.

4. Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

Hard Rain Falling is Don Carpenter's first novel, which has been brought out of relative obscurity in a New York Review of Books reprint with a forward by George Pellecanos. I got it for xmas. I'd never heard of the author before, but after completing his first novel, I think an argument could be made that he is an important American writer. He wrote steadily in his life until shooting himself at the age of 65 in the '90s. He had several debilitating illnesses, though I have yet to see confirmed that that was the reason for the suicide. His books were published but not super successful and he made most of his living writing for Hollywood.

Hard Rain Falling is the story of a man's life, starting with a brief recounting of how he was born and orphaned in the '30s. The rest of the book follows his wildlife from the streets of Portland, Oregon to his time in reform schools and prisons and to a sort of rehabilitation and attempt at comprehending a normal life in San Francisco. At several points, you think it is going to be a certain type of narrative (a crime story, a prison story and so on), but after a while you realize that it really is just about this one guy's life.

I'd like to provide a thematic summary here, but it is kind of difficult as there isn't really one. It's what made me enjoy the book. A lot goes on and the main character is intriguing, intelligent and very challenged by his own background. There are many different themes that come up along the way: maturity, isolation, love, the changing times (the book ends in the early '60s). None of them dominate. Each section of the book is a look at this man as he is in that stage of his life. I guess you could say there is a consistent theme of Jack Levitt trying to figure out who he is and how he should respond to life.

And it is quite a life. Jack's philosophical musings and his struggles are compelling, but the real pleasure for me were Carpenter's descriptions of the petty criminals of Portland's pool halls, of the prisons and their tenants, of San Francisco's night life in the '50s. I can see why George Pellecanos loves this book so much (though did he have to give away over half the narrative in the intro, which I wisely did not read until the end?). I've read a lot of crime fiction, but you don't often get to see it at the quotidian level with such richness and subtlety. He really gets into the world of gambling in pool halls in particular and it's pretty cool stuff.

Great book. I'm glad I read it. It moved me at the end.

3. The Wolf's Hour by Robert McCammon

Doc favourably reviewed this book and kindly lent it to me when I expressed interest in it. It was disturbingly fat considering my poor reading progress last year, but I decided to jump in, recognizing that if done well, it should be a page-turner. I was a bit dismayed at the very beginning, because the prose was written in that American 80s best-seller style, which is just a bit too florid and obvious (it's the kind of book where every sexual encounter ends in a perfect simultaneous orgasm). Because it is trying to be British in style and the beginning takes place in Britain (towards whose genre writers I have a strong bias), this weakness was really pronounced. I was particularly dismayed to see someone driving a Ford around in northern Wales at the height of WWII.

Fortunately, there is a very strong story here and lots of good action and once it gets going, it really gets going. It has two storylines going on simultaneously, the hero's mission to find out a secret Nazi plot that will undermine D-Day and his own upbringing as a werewolf in a Russian forest. Both storylines are equally engaging and you can't wait to find out next. The WWII espionage story has the best Nazi badguys I've read in a while. It reminded me a lot of Inglorious Basterds, though perhaps even less subtle and with the werewolf element (a huge advantage if you ever have to go over enemy lines, believe me). The werewolf story is really cool as well, as the author put in a lot of thought about how such a tribe would survive and what they would be like. He portrays the werewolf behaviour using much more biology than we usually get, with them hunting, when in wolf form, small prey for food and pissing to mark their territory. He also uses his excellent scent in human form to help with his espionage, which is quite cool as well.

Very entertaining. I do agree with Doc that it went on a bit long near the end, but really it was such a fun read, with some cool ideas and kickass action, that I've utterly forgiven the florid prose and lack of subtlety. Had I read this when I was 15, I would have gone out and hunted down the rest of this guy's books for sure. As it is, I'll probably keep on the lookout.

2. Uzumaki by Junji Ito

Uzumaki is a Japanese comic book ("manga" if you don't know by now) about a remoted, isolated town that suffers from a spiral curse. It manifests itself in many different ways, beginning with individuals obsessing with spirals and eventually getting into full blown craziness and destruction (I don't want to reveal any of the details because the fun is in finding them out). The english version is produced by Viz Comics and is in three elegantly small volumes, each of which contains 6 stories. At first the stories are isolated incidents, each built around some manifestation of the spiral curse but not really advancing the overall storyline beyond relating how weird this town is. These chapters reminded me a lot of the old EC comics, but viewed through the Japanese lens. Just weird (and sometimes quite disturbing) little episodes of horror that end with a clever twist. By the middle of the second volume, a greater narrative starts to pick up pace. In the last volume, the shit really hits the fan.

I wasn't expecting much with this, but I ended up really enjoying it. The horror here goes the distance and is quite creative as well. Though the ambience is really creepy, this is not the kind of J-horror which builds up tons of tension and then nothing ever happens. Shit really happens and it is gross and crazy. You can see a lot of the typical adolescenet sub-text and anxieties (obsessive boys, wanting to be popular, generational conflicts) but these themes are always secondary to the insanity so they don't become annoying. This is a quick fun read and there is some freaky crap in here. If you like horror and comics, I would strongly recommend Uzumaki. I know they made a movie which didn't manage to impress my wife too much, but now that I've read the comic, I may give it a second chance, just to see how they handle some of the crazy visuals.



I also note that when I remember Viz comics being the first company to start publishing english translations of Manga back during the black and white comics explosion of the '80s. It's great to see that they survived the ensuing crash and even appear to be thriving with the current manga boom. It sure seemed very marginal back then. What's also cool is that Uzumaki, and I guess a lot of the manga they publish, are organized to be read in the original Japanese order, from right to left, which takes some getting used to but is kind of cool.

1. The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons

I am a huge fan of Bill Simmons and a more reserved one of the NBA, so I obviously asked for the most highly-anticipated basketball books (actually, the only one) in my memory for xmas. And I got it! I am usually struggle with non-fiction, but I could barely put The Book of Basketball down during my vacation and finished all 700+ pages in under two weeks. Before I do a proper review of the book, I would like to talk about Bill Simmons himself a bit.

Bill Simmons is one of my heroes. In and of itself, this isn't all that special as I admire and respect many people in this world. What makes him stand out is that he is the only one who actually hails from my generation. After my brief stint working for Deja.com during the .com boom, I became profoundly disappointed with my people. We have pretty much failed in doing anything good for the world except making parts of it richer. We borrowed the worst parts of our baby boomer predecessors (their ambition and self-involvement) and left all the difficult, good stuff on the ground (their radicalism, their critique of authority). We're the worst kind of sheep, responsible for 8 years of Bush and the SUV stroller. We've somehow managed to combine the extremes of right-wing righteousness with left-wing political-correctness to create a world of excessive consumption and excessive caution. There really isn't much we've done that I'm very proud of.

I know with that set-up it sounds like Simmons is some kind of wild radical. He's not. Fundamentally, he's a sports writer. But there are three elements that make him stand out politically for me: he made his career on his own terms, he embraced technological change and he is highly critical. All of this is mostly limited to the world of sports, but it is significant nonetheless. Sports is a huge business, second probably only to Hollywood in terms of America's cultural and economic influence on the world. (Sports is also the last domain in North America where people argue critically and honestly with any intelligence, but that's another discussion.) Because of his success (due to his skill and hard, consistent work) he has influenced his peers and a generation of readers. With the former, we are already seeing a sea change in the discourse of sports journalism (there are clearly many other factors and invidivuals involved in this change, but Simmons is one of the most significant), where writers are finally starting to find some balls (do you think we'll see another elephant in the room like steroids in baseball during the '90s?). I'll break the elements mentioned above out using Simmons-style structure:

He made his career on his own terms: He started out briefly working at the very bottom of a Boston newspaper, then quit and partied for a bit and then started his own website (bostonsportsguy.com). He was way ahead of his time here (and ahead of me as well, as I didn't jump on the bandwagon until he got to espn) and the success of his website led to him being hired as a regular columnist at espn.com. His success at "The Worldwide Leader in Sports" coincided (and helped) the growth of the website and the web in general for sports information and allowed him a lot of creative freedom. He also gets his face on the front page now. My point here, though, is not that to vaunt his success, but to underline that he became successful following his ideals. He was frustrated at the limitations, both in terms of advancement and content in the traditional newspaper medium and so he went to the web and wrote what he wanted (those early days on his old site must have been a real blast to follow, except that I'm not much of a Boston sports fan*). On espn.com, he refused to pull punches and has come out extremely critical against some very powerful people and institutions. I'm sure there were some interesting conversations in the offices there during certain occassions (though we must give credit to espn for being so flexible and taking some risks, especially considering its size and power today).

He embraced technological change: I already mentioned how he jumped onto the web early, but the other arena that he has fully taken advantage of (and given me hours and hours of entertainment) is podcasting. His podcasts are generally relaxed, casual conversations with a few regular friends (Joe House with his gentle voice being my favorite), colleagues and sports pundits. They are the kinds of discussions you would either be having with your own friends or the ones you wished you could have with some of the great thinkers of sports. He isn't limited to just sports as he gets into reality shows and popular culture (including great back and forths with Chuck Klosterman). He has also gotten quite deep, including an awesome conversation about Obama with JA Adande (you have to scroll down to the 1/21 episode; it really is worth listening to, especially if you want to renew your enthusiasm and optimism now that we are on the verge of invading Yemen) and another one about The Wire (best TV show ever and constantly vaunted by Simmons) with Jason Whitlock that even my wife deigned to listen to.

Simmons recognized the potential of the podcast early on and he pushed hard for it. It took espn a while to appreciate the power of this new distribution form, but they are finally starting to get into it. A couple of podcasts ago, Bill Simmons said that once we get the internet regularily into cars and people can choose podcasts the way they choose radio stations, the medium will exploded and I suspect he is right). (Another podcast visionary, whom I also learned about from Bill Simmons, is Adam Carolla - definitely check his show out.)

He is highly critical: This trait is the one that seals the deal for me. I love following professional sports, especially the NBA but it is a love/hate relationship. I started following the league just as it really started to take off with cable television and Michael Jordan. Unfortunately, there is a constant struggle between the NBA that is the game and the NBA that is the marketing machine and for a while the latter was really winning out (to the point where refs, announcers and the league itself through scheduling and promotion would all work to ensure that a more marketable team or the team with the most marketable player would be more succesful). Simmons was one of the earlier and louder voices on the national stage who really started screaming bullshit at a lot of the stuff that went down. And as he has a legitimacy among the fans, the league and the machine surrounding it (including all the various media outlets) had to listen. I don't know if they've done much about it, but at least they listened and at least someone is screaming. In these times of capitalist supremacy where it's almost considered morally wrong to criticize a corporation or administration, I am grateful for the few voices who still are willing to take a stand. That Simmons has managed to do this and be wildly successful at the same time gives me some small hope for the world. At the very least, I'll get to read some honest and critical writing on a regular basis.

Re-reading the above arguments, I realize that I am ignoring the significance of the context Simmons is working in (the rise of the internet) and many other individuals who have contributed in their own way to these developments (AM sports radio in general, for instance, which has always been much more critical-minded than television or the print media and which had a big influence on Simmons). I am not a hardcore sports nerd, so I tend to read only the most popular writers. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would possibly argue that I am exaggerating Simmons influence and they may well be right. I'm absolutely sure that I have excluded a ton of influential figures, but I am not reviewing a book by any of them.

All these big-issue arguments aside, the main reason I am a big fan of Simmons is that his writing is entertaining, often laugh-out-loud funny but built on a foundation of solid research, well-constructed arguments and interesting ideas. He's writing about sports in an intelligent way but doesn't take himself too seriously.

So onto the book itself. It's huge and is basically a giant look at the entire league from the beginning to last year. He starts out with an intro explaining how he got into basketball and why he wanted to write the book. Then he writes a great broad history of the league (extremely informative). The bulk of the book is him ranking the top 64 players of all time. Simmons loves theoretical arguments (such as "what if player x from the '60s and player y from the '90s played on the same team?") and this section is one giant exploration of how all these players who played in such different eras stack up. The next section is ranking the best teams of all time and then he concludes with his Wine Cellar team, the players he would put together if martians came down and challenged us to a basketball game for the fate of planet earth (seriously; he has a tiny nerd streak that adds to my appreciation). There is a final chapter where goes and meets with Bill Walton which is very moving. I got teary-eyed.

I learned a lot from this book. He has a strong thesis and that is "The Secret", the idea that playing as a team trumps individual athletic prowess and leads to victory. This seems like a truism, but it is a constant struggle in professional sports and many great players have not been able to learn The Secret. I was also shocked (again) by the racism players in the '50s and '60s encountered and how some rose above it and others were taken down by it. Overall, though, The Book of Basketball is kind of like a giant, massive collection of Simmons' online columns, really well-organized and structured with a singular focus. It's not a transcendent work, but terrifically entertaining and highly informative. It's a book about the NBA. If you're not interested in the league or basketball, then I don't suggest you read this. If you are, I strongly recommend it.

(and here's a better review of the book from Slate's Josh Levin, though I disagree that the jokes got repetitive.)

2009 end of year wrap-up

Well as far as reading quantity goes, 2009 was a bit of a shank. If I learned one thing is that I am not able to predict my own behaviour. I started off the year with a bang and was cruising through books, with no sign of stopping (read 11 books by February 24). And then it all came crashing down. My usual spring drop-off turned into a complete embargo. I have some explanations, but ultimately it boils down to a lack of will and focus. I got way too into gaming this year and as there was a lot of really interesting products this year, I spent a lot more time reading RPG books (which I tend not to read straight through or completely, so don't consider them as a book for counting purposes) and planning games than reading books. Life was busier as well. I got married in September (hooray!) and the planning took up a lot of time. My job became quite busy as well as we were leading up to the Copenhagen talks on climate change and had a lot to do (thanks for shitting the bed on that one, world leaders and especially you Harper and co. you shitheel scumbags).

Quantity aside, I enjoyed almost everything I read this year and was particularly happy to re-start the Parker books. I hope to get the next three in the series for my birthday this year and continue my longer analyses of Westlake's masterpiece.

We also did a couple of "book clubs" where most of the people on the list to the right chose a single book and all read it together. Those were quite fun and I wouldn't mind doing it again. I think the comments lacked a bit of energy because we all tend to have a similar opinion and those don't generate a lot of conflict. Maybe a more contentious pick this year if we decide to do it again?

I have a lot of goals and projects in my life this year, so I'll make no reading commitments for the '10 except one: to get a blog post written as soon as I finish the book. No more falling behind this year!

27. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller jr.

A classic of the post-apocalyptic genre, A Canticle for Leibowitz has been on my stagnant on deck shelf for months. I figured it would be good to read during the pre-xmas vacations.

It's too strong to say that A Canticle for Leibowitz doesn't actually fit into the PA genre. But it does feel much more like classic sci-fi. It takes place far in the future, after a civilization and knowledge-destroying nuclear war that sets humanity back to the dark ages. I use the term Dark Ages precisely because the author deliberately sets it up so that the church is the last and only outpost for knowledge, where little bits of information are stored as relics and artifacts from a past age, both to be worshipped and copied. The book takes place in the three parts, covering three periods, each separated in time by several generations, as humanity slowly reclaims the knowledge it lost and starts to make the same mistakes again.

The book is well-written and despite the over-arching themes, each segment contains rich characters and their own compelling storyline so that you get quite caught up in the book. It has some nice touches of black humour as well. It ends up achieving a nice balance of lightness and heaviness while making you think about our relationship with knowledge and humanity's progress such that it deserves its reputation as an all-time science fiction classic.

26. Escape from New York by Mike Maquay

The novelization of Escape from New York has long been respected as one of the few that actually lives up to the quality of the movie. The paperback is also quite rare. I saw a copy once in a movie memorabilia store in TO but it was selling for around $40 or something. Savvy bookhunter Lantzvillager of Mount Benson Report fame did find it though and lent it to me. I re-watched the movie with my wife in order to catch her up on the masterpiece that is the first half of John Carpenter's career. We were going to use the theme song (also composed by Carpenter) for the walk-in music for our wedding, but we couldn't find any sheet music for it. I did buy the musical album, which turned out to be friggin' awesome. I took the neighbour's dog for a walk the first time I listened to it and almost took out the entire park I got so psyched.

So all that is to say that I was motivated to read the book finally. Lantzvillager lent it to me. It was a quick and enjoyable read, giving lots of really cool depth to the world of the movie and Snake's background. There was a radical strain in the '80s that capitalism has almost entirely snuffed out today. It's in Carpenter's movies (the apex being They Live) and was definitely strong in the book. Escape from New York is about sticking it to the man, an attitude considered passé today sadly. Read it and remember.

25. The Snake by John Godey

I found this in one of the many great used bookstores in Winnipeg. I picked it up because the small hardcover was so attractive and because it was written by the author of The Taking of Pelham 123. It turned out to be well worth the $7.00 I paid and will look great on my shelf as well. That Snake is based on a great concept that is fully thought out, both scientifically and the supposition about how New York City would react to a giant, deadly snake in Central Park. I don't know if it is me, as it confirms my existing bias, but this book seemed savagely critical of New Yorkers and humans in general. Hysteria and blind selfishness seem like the defining factors of most of the people but the snake and the protagonists. It all seemed quite realistic to me. Depressingly enjoyable.

24. Sundog by Jim Harrison

This is the story of a dissolute journalist who goes to the wilds of northern Michigan (and they actually do sound quite wild) to interview an old engineer who worked on large-scale projects (dams and the like) in developing countries during his youth. It's a manly, richly-written that I enjoyed reading, but it's also one of those novels that doesn't really have a plot and my simple mind doesn't know what to make of it by the end. I think it's an exploration of living a life and the choices we make. It has an excellent attitude and is really well-written (and also has a good reputation) so I suggest you check it out as well.

23. The White Voyage by John Christopher

Man, John Christopher does it again! I always pick up a John Christopher novel when I find them, but I read so many last year that The White Voyage (in a beautiful hardback) stayed on my on deck shelf for almost this entire year. I pulled it out many times and then put it back, thinking it would be too much of the same too soon. I took this one on my honeymoon, knowing I would finally have some uninterrupted reading time (hmm, somehow that doesn't sound right! ;)) and ended up devouring it. Thoroughly enjoyable and a slight change of pace for Christopher. Though many of his classic themes were present, The White Voyage takes a more optimistic approach and the protaganist makes it through the book being the sexual victor for once!

It's about a strange and motley group (including a small circus and a bear) taking a ship through the north sea who get caught in a storm and stuck in the ice. They must survive the elements as well as their own conflicts. Great stuff, highly recommended.

The image above is not the edition I have (though it's quite nice as well). I'll scan mine in when I get a chance and replace the image above.

22. The House of the Four Winds by John Buchan

Ultimately, The House of the Four Winds was an enjoyable adventure, but through it, I learned that Buchan wrote several series of adventures using the same characters, characters who become slightly annoying in their British pluck over time and it makes me less interested in reading more of his books. I really enjoyed the 39 Steps for the real sense it creates of an individual getting over his head in trouble. I assumed that his other stories would have the same kind of energy and interesting sitatuions. And they do, except that being a part of a continuing series, they rely too much on returning characters showing up and having the appropriate and necessary resources for the situation. It seemed like most of the first half of The House of the Four Winds was arranging convoluted narratives to ensure that all the characters would end up in the same situation. And normally, I like the archetypical British hero of the first half of the twentieth century, but they start to get kind of annoying here in their assumption of certain class and even racial superiorities. The political set-up is quite complex and interesting (with older school monarchical supporters, a younger conservative movement and communists all vying for power in a small eastern european republic) and the second half of the book moves along as it should, but I would rather it was all done with new characters.

21. Lush Life by Richard Price

Meezly snagged this one quite wisely at our local thrift store. She was aware that Richard Price had been one of the principle writers on The Wire and recognized his name on the cover of the book. Good find! The pacing, situation and characters in this book are not those of the crime genre that I favour. It's very deliberate and consistent and much more of a character study (and a place study) than a mystery, suspense or action novel. That being said, it does what it wants to do extremely well, so that I was caught up in it and really didn't want to put it down. Even more in its favour, is that ultimately, Lush Life is a critique of the lower east side of New York city and the gentrification that has gone on there. It is particularily scathing towards the white, artistic hipsters that try to claim the culture their as their own. This I found very satisfying. You can see why Price was a good writer for The Wire. Check it out.

And check out Meezly's review for a more thorough explanation of the plot.

20. The Man with the Getaway Face by Richard Stark

The Man with the Getaway Face is Richard Stark's second Parker novel. My memory of it was that it was good, but more of a transition book. I had forgotten how impactful it is and upon re-reading it, I realize it is perhaps one of the more important books in the series. After Parker gets his revenge on the man who double-crossed him, and strong-arms the outfit to force them to pay the money back that he lost, he realizes he needs to get truly lost so he can return to his life of heisting and hanging out in various resort hotels. To do so, he must get a new face.

Westlake originally wrote The Hunter with the idea that Parker would die at the end of the book. His genius editor said he'd buy the book only if Westlake would keep him alive and continue writing books about him. So The Man with the Getaway Face is Westlake figuring out how to do that. I think because of that the structure of the book is divided up into two stories that remain separated for the duration of the book, giving it a less cohesive feel, which is what led me to feel that it is more transitory.

There are two elements that are established here that become defining features of the series. The first is the Alma. In The Man with the Getaway Face, Alma is the finger. She's an embittered, older waitress at a truck stop where an armoured car makes a regular stop. She is sleeping with a guy who knows a guy who knows Parker and that's how the job gets put together. However, Alma whose been planning and scheming the job for all these years, waiting for the right man to come around, thinks she knows better than Parker. She's also obviously out for herself. A character in this form is present in almost every heist. Someone whose emotional flaws, be they greed, pride, bitterness or even an inability to just be patient, end up screwing up the heist and bringing complication to Parker's life. One of my favourite quotes, from The Green Eagle Score, expresses the Alma pretty explicitly.

Over the years, he'd come to accept the fact that the people involved in every heist were never as solid as you wanted them. They always had hang-ups one way or another, always had personal problems or quirks from their private lives that they couldn't keep from intruding into the job they were supposed to be doing. The only way to handle it was to watch them, know what the problems were, be ready for them to start screwing up. If he sat around and waited for the perfect string, cold and solid and professional, he'd never get anything done.

It's not that the people are inefficient or clumsy or somehow incapable. It's that they allow their emotions to intrude on the job. They cannot separate their own egos from the situation to realize that all would benefit if they could let go of their immediate needs. I think it is a complaint that is shared, unreasonably or not, by a certain mindset, the working man who does his job at work and has a personal life at home. There is also a generational idea here, of men who came out of World War 2 encountering a society where talking about your feelings and encounter groups and the explosion of therapy and personal growth in the '60s were invading all facets of life. I am of neither generation, but have felt a very similar complaint for most of my own work life. So these books resonate with me on this point as I'm sure they did with many crime readers when the Parker books were sitting new on drugstore racks.

The other element in the Man with the Getaway Face that I do not identify as well with, but consume with a sort of compulsive horror, is the brutal factuality of the writing. Acts of cruelty are done in the Parker books that are really tough to take. They aren't done for the sake of cruelty usually but with some other goal in mind and the cruelty is the only method that will apply given the circumstances. They are also not written sadistically, with the kind of prurient sexuality inherent in a lot of crime novels. They are just stated as facts. I apologize for the vagueness, but I don't want to give anything away. The situation that Westlake describes and the way he looks at it, by going into the head of the victim is so black. I think I had forgotten about it because I had sort of skimmed over it the first time I read it, not having quite the calcification around the heart that I have slightly accumulated at this point. Basically, Westlake doesn't pull any punches. You take it, though, because you know the payoff is going to be good.

And it is good. So while The Man with the Getaway Face isn't the best Parker novel, it lays important groundwork for what is to come. And what is to come is The Outfit, which is a giant fucking candy shop of heists. But you'll have to wait until my review is done, or you could just go out and buy it and get reading.

19. Make my Bed Soon by Jack Webb

It's a novel about a guy who gets mixed up with a gang of car thieves who work in and around Arizona and Mexico. It was an interesting look at a crime network, and I remember enjoying it, but I can't give you more than that as the details have faded into the mists of time, buried under the avalance of all the other media I've consumed since then.

18. Deep Powder and Steep Rock: the Life of Mountain Guide Hans Gmoser

If you're a ski geek, especially out in the west, you have almost for sure heard of Hans Gmoser. He is responsible for putting Canadian Rocky Mountain Skiing on the international map and arguably singlehandedly responsible for helicopter skiing in particular. He came out from Austria after the Second World War, already an avid lover of the mountains and outdoor adventure and ended up in Alberta, in Canmore and Banff, on the eastern edge of the Canadian Rockies. He is also the father of one of my best friends, which is why I ended up reading such a book (as many of you know I am part of a small but powerful cabal working on eliminating downhill skiing from the world).

Very briefly, Hans grew up in Austria and got into mountaineering as a young boy, through a Catholic priest who seemed more like a scout troop leader in that he led all kinds of mountain trips. Later, Hans became an electrician and as a young man, emigrated to Canada. He was a pioneer climber and led many first ascents of mountains that are famous today among the clmbing set. He also did a bunch of major treks and lots of skiing. Later, he really got into promoting skiing in Western Canada, driving all over North America and showing skiing films at local community centers. A friend of our family's who is a big skiier remembers when Hans would come into his town and all the ski geeks would get psyched to watch his films and here his talk. He was the first guy to attach a camera to his head and ski with it. Later, he set up a lodge and then got into sending people up into the mountains via helicopter which developed into a full blown heli-skiing empire, Canadian Mountain Holidays. Later, a truly evil empire, Inwest (responsible for the atrocity known as Whistler) bought CMH. That really is a brief, brief version as there is a lot of rich and interesting history behind all that.

As I said, that is a very broad outline of the history. If any of it is interesting to you, the book does a really solid job of portraying the stories and details of the history. Chic Scott gets the facts down and interviewed many of the people who were there, filling out the human side. There is a lot of climbing porn in the beginning, which if you are a climber will get you hard as some nice south-facing granite. As a non-climber, I was able to get through it without too much pain, while retaining a laymen's appreciation of the determination and skill these guys had, doing extremely hard climbs before climbing shoes were even invented. Overall, it's a really interesting story about one man's life as he makes his way from a young person to an outdoor fanatic, to a succesful businessman and finally settles down to being a loving family man, mellow and rightfully satisfied with his life.

I knew Hans first through the anecdotes of his two sons, with whom I went to boarding school. They were an excellent mix of crazy stories from his youth (like the time he was driving through a snowstorm and his defogger wasn't working, so he put on ski goggles and stuck his head out the window, driving through the snowstorm like that for several hours) and some of his more autocratic tendencies as a father. We were all pseudo-rebellious teenagers at the time and most of us bitched about our parents in some way or another and Hans didn't come off as all that bad. He was just particularily freaked out about trivial things like hairstyles, a button the older brother pushed during the new wave '80s. But he did come off as a bit of a hard ass. When I did actually meet him for the first time, he was quite pleasant and friendly. Later, as an adult, when I spent more time out in the mountains and Hans was basically retired, he was super warm and generous, really deep-down happy, great to hang out with and listen to his stories. He seemed so generally psyched and happy to be hanging with his sons, that I had a hard time reconciling the Hans I got to better know with the uptight dad of the teen years, but this book goes a long way in explaining that.

If you are a fan of Canadian history or the Rockies or skiing, I would recommend this book to you. It's an amazing story. For me, it filled in a lot of gaps about my friends' families past and was very informative for that as well as being entertaining. It's important to understand where people came from, especially people who travelled across the world before they were even fully formed to come to a new country and start a new life. It's a very different world today, much more stable for those of us in the first world and a lot of that is thanks to people like Hans who came to Canada with a lot of drive and saw a beautiful land where they could make a life.

Sadly, Hans Gmoser died a few years ago while riding his bike between Banff and Canmore, which is why this book got written when it did. Though Hans would never have been happy had he been in a situation where due to health he couldn't have been active, he was still pretty young and fit when he died, so it was a very sad loss for the community and especially for his family. Here's hoping he's somewhere climbing, skiing, hiking and biking in the most amazing places.

17. Supermanship by Stephen Potter

This is, I believe, the last in the -upmanship series by Stephen Potter, which started with Gamesmanship (there may be one last one called Golfmanship, that I'd love to get my hands on). I was extremely psyched to spot a lovely old Penguin copy of this book sitting on the $1 table outside S.W. Welch's. It's nice to know that there are still quality collectibles that can slip through the fine net of the internet market.

Supermanship is fairly unfocused, being a collection of brief applications of oneupmanship in a wide range of situations, some correspondence and some brief (and fictional) history of some of the major players at the oneupmanship institute. It's the same kind of humour, tons of subtle techniques to make the other fellow doubt himself. I particuarly liked the section on lecturemanship, which dealt with academics and visiting lecturers. It gave strategies for both the host (like wearing a short sock and then crossing one leg over the other and raising your pant leg, revealing your white flesh, so the audience is constantly distracted by it) or the guest lecturer (like turning to the host, making a particularly obscure reference and capping it with "as Professor Gates-Willoughby will surely know").

Some of the humour went far over my head, being very British and very much of its time. But it's a quick read, organized into digestible gulps (great for the bathroom), which is all I'm capable of these days. I'd recommend Gamesmanship or Lifemanship before getting into this more advanced volume. I'm very pleased to have discovered that a friend of mine actually has a copy of Lifemanship, so that will be 3 out of 4 in my hands!

16. In the Country of Last Things by Paul Auster

I was supposed to have read this for another 50 book club shared read, but I didn't get done in time to join in the discussion, which you can find over at the Mount Benson Report.

I was very hesitant going into this book. I recognize that Paul Auster is a very talented writer, with interesting ideas and situations. But everything of his that I have read always seems to have that slight distance from the narrative that renders his work very attractive to pretentious college students. I'm pretty basic in my literary needs and I like a strong story, well-grounded into some setting. Auster seems to like ideas.

The idea of this book, I think, is hope and despair and the collapse of modern civilization. He does a good job of capturing the feel of a society without laws or goods, but still held together by the bare bones of its original infrastructure. He also comes up with a lot of cool and weird situations, like the scholars all barricaded in the library and the competitive world of the scavengers. But ultimately, it is not connected to anything real. There's no actual nation, no real city name given, no history. And it gives me this suspicion that he's trying to tell me something and I'm supposed to figure out. Like what is the role of the Jews in the book. So while I actually enjoyed most of the book, I never really got caught up in it because I kept wondering what was the point of this and the point of that. I left that kind of practice for the Lit majors back in college.

Not a bad read, but not really for me.

15. Branded Woman by Wade Miller

Found this Hard Case Crime paperback used at a great used bookstore in Seattle that the Lantzvillager had sussed out. It's the story of Cay Morgan, beautiful but hardened jewel smuggler who is on the path of revenge. In a deal gone sour 5 years ago, a mysterious criminal mastermind known only as "The Trader" had caught her and branded her forehead with a big "T". At the start of the book, she caught wind that he was going to be in Mazatlan, Mexico doing a deal and she heads there to find and kill him.

She (and the reader) soon find out that there is a lot going on in and around this Mexican town. As she digs deeper, she meets a rich range of sleazy characters. The plot is complicated, but the narrative is driven straight by Cay's intense personality and desire for revenge. She really is a great character, tough and ruthless, but conflicted and unhappy. She uses all her feminine wiles to achieve her goals, but she is never hesitant to throw down. There are some great fight scenes. Wade Miller is the pseudonym for a couple and the passages that describe Cay's outfits and the effect she intends with them seem to come from a woman's perspective. Revealing stuff!

The descriptions of the hot, seaside town and its lively culture are also really well done. You get a strong sense of being there. This is the same couple that wrote Touch of Evil, a movie that captures that feeling as well. An excellent pulp.

Aside: Reading Habits Analysis

As I mentioned in my last post, I am starting to suspect that there has been some consistency in my reading behaviour year after year. I decided to graph it out. Thanks to blogger's archive links on the right hand side, it is very easy to see the quantity of books I've read per month. Here is the result going back to 2005 (so 4 years plus the first three months of this year):



Quite interesting! It's not tons of data, but I think it's pretty safe to say that I have consistently experienced a big dropoff in the spring. I wonder why? There is a similar trend in the fall as well, with a surge at the end of the year. I think the one big lesson I can take out of this is to push hard to be very consistent across the summer. Those dropoffs in spring and fall seem to be some kind of profound psychological issues that will take a lot of deep therapy to overcome and thus not so easy to change. But if you look at the years where I did really well (2005 and 2008), I was strong throughout the summer. The year where I blew it, I had a very unproductive summer. I need to go back and figure out what happened that summer. It seems that the summer is a period where I have some control over my character and thus the outcome of my 50-book challenge.

This is like the Moneyball of 50 books! Improving performance through advanced statistical analysis.

14. Battles of the Boer War by W. Baring Pemberton

Holy crap! I finished a book! I don't know what happens to me, but I've learned one thing, I can't count on periods of great reading productivity to continue indefinitely. I am also starting to suspect that if I went back and looked at my reading patterns, they would be quite similar year after year. I just lost the drive all of a sudden. I've been pretty productive in other areas of my life. I just didn't feel like I could get caught into a narrative. I guess that's as good a time as any to read a detailed stufy of four specific battles of the Boer War.

I found this book for a quarter and the cover and the name of the author just forced me to buy it. That is a very cool looking paperback and you can hear the title and the author's name being pronounced in a super pompous British accent. It's actually part of a penguin series on military history that looks like it has some other interesting titles in it. I knew nothing about the Boer war beyond that some characters in Sherlock Holmes stories had had experiences there. I realize now it is a very significant war on many levels, marking the period between traditional "gentleman's" warfare of the 19th century and the mechanicstic, modern warfare of the 20th. It also is a significant part of the history of South Africa and laid the groundwork for a lot of the ferocity and culture of violence that is still there today.

Battles of the Boer War concentrates on 4 battles, early ones where the British first encountered the Afrikaaner guerrilla tactics and suffered setbacks that cost them a lot of men and resources and a great uproar on the home front. A long chapter is devoted to each battle and Pemberton goes into some detail. His tactical thesis is to demonstrate which leaders were at fault for their various blunders. Most of the military mistakes he blames on the character of the individual leaders. Ultimately, he argues that the real blame for the losses is to be laid at the feet of the British government and the lack of will there to engage in war. He traces this back to Britain's self-image as a benevolent colonial power. Not an uncommon thesis from someone writing not so long after World War II, but interesting to see it applied to this period of British history.

I am usually very impatient with detailed military histories. I'm a visual thinker and need to constantly refer to the map. I'd love to read books like this on some future version of the kindle, where you would have animated maps showing the progress of the battle as you read the text. Despite my lack of attention span, I was able to follow the battles and got quite into it. It was very interesting to learn of the Afrikaaner tactics and skill. They were a purely voluntary organization, made up of the men from the regional farms and knew the veldt profoundly. They also were expert marksmen with rifles that had longer ranges than had ever been used in a military engagement. They were also not afraid to retreat, a difficult tactic for Britain's disciplined formations. So the Afrikaaners would hide out in small groups, pick off the approaching soldiers and then run away. It was early guerilla warfare.

I'd love to explore the Boer War in a bit more historical depth. It was where Winston Churchill made his name. Though the British won, there was extended guerilla warfare and eventually concentration camps and some serious atrocities. All of it was spurred by the discovery of gold and diamonds in the interior parts of South Africa where the British had previously left the Dutch settlers alone. Lots of interesting stuff to discover there. I'm very glad I picked this book up.

13. The Light of Men by Andrew Salmon

I was inspired to choose this as my 50 Book Club choice by Doc's review. After my review goes up, a few other 50-bookers will be putting up their reviews and we will have a discussion about it in the comments section below.

[Here is the Mount Benson Report review.

Here is the review at the University of Crumbolst.

Here is Redwing's review at The June 23rd Project.]

I am therefore going to review this book in two parts. The first part will be the standard kind of review I would have normally done for a book I read: a general overview, with no spoilers and a final recommendation. In the second part, I'll discuss specific issues that came up in the book and there will definitely be spoilers. This is the type of book where it is better to go in ignorant of what happens, so I strongly encourage you not to read the second part unless you are sure you aren't going to read the book. I'll say that The Light of Men is a really good book, but there are certain people for whom the genre doesn't really do much and I'll make that clear.

Standard non-spoiler review
The Light of Men takes place in a concentration camp in Germany in the last months of the Second World War. A new prisoner arrives who is healthier and more aware than the rest. He also seems to have a certain psychological remove from the horrors going on around him. He is on a mission to try and find a specific prisoner in the camp and goes about manipulating the internal politics of the camp to do so. The story is written with a limited omniscient perspective, so although Aaron is the protagonist, the author doesn't totally let you into his head, nor does he give you any more than subtle hints that he is somehow different. I'm going to stop all discussion here of any more of the narrative, because a lot of the enjoyment of this book is trying to figure out what is going on.

I was concerned going in that a story of this type taking place in a concentration camp could have some very inappropriate results. The opening scene, where the trains first show up and the new arrivals are separated from their belongings and each other by older prisoners overseen by the SS, are brutal without being either exploitative or sentimental. It went a long way towards assuaging my concerns. Salmon has done his research and the opening scenes where the horrors of the camp are slowly laid out to the newcomer had the unpleasant but important effect of shocking my mind into realizing once again that this actually happened.

As the book progresses, one becomes used to the constant horrors of the camp. The story takes precedence. I'm torn as to whether the narrative overshadows the horrors unrealistically (and perhaps too easily) or if that is a reflection of the human ability to adapt. It's been a while since I read Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, but I remember that book had a similar effect at points of making the camps seem like really tough prisons rather than soul-destroying nightmares from which nobody wakes up. I guess that's the point. If you were lucky and tough enough to physically survive, it was those people whose minds could absorb the understanding of what humans really are who without snapping could come out the other side with any shred of life will left.

The Light of Men is an absorbing and entertaining read, a novel blend of history and science fiction, mixed with a light enough touch that the true horror of its subject, the holocaust, is emphasized. The story is gripping, a real page-turner. It did lose a bit of steam with me at the end, but ultimately redeemed itself. I'll discuss that more in the spoiler section below. The Light of Men is a small-press publication, available on Amazon but probably hard to find in a retail bookstore. I think the Light of Men would appeal to a wider audience than just science fiction readers, but it might be a little bit cold and removed for some non-geek readers out there. It definitely deserves wide, commercial distribution. A great read.



Part 2 - deeper analysis for book club discussion

SPOILER ALERT!

I think the biggest difficulty I had with the book was the ending and the transformation of the main character. Partly because you spend so long not knowing who he really is that when he suddenly starts changing, you don't really have a base to change from. Furthermore, his internal logic didn't really make sense to me. I guess you could read it as a random result of an error, but it felt a bit like we needed and excuse to have a big action scene. Now, I quite enjoyed the action scene and the minor catharsis that went along with it, so I'm not complaining too much, but it just left me feeling a bit less absorbed into the story. He also never actually confirms whether Liebman is dead or not. As a reader, I felt something had been left out and it bothered me.

One other criticism is that, though really quite magnificently horrific, the scene with the camp Kommandant and all the women veered into exploitation territory for me. It just went a little too far into the details that it felt like it was possibly trying to throw a little titillation (really not the right word because the scene was so horrific) into the mix.

Ultimately, though, the way the book ended, where Aaron's involvement ultimately did nothing significant to change history, saved the book for me. I think the author succeeded in delivering a story without disrespecting the reality of the holocaust and its sufferers. It's a delicate balancing act, though!

So I guess I don't have too much deeper to add than that, but I'll throw out some questions as I'm very curious to hear what other's positions and perspectives were on these things.

Did anyone feel that it is simply inappropriate to have this kind of story take place in a concentration camp? Are there naive elements of revenge fantasy in The Light of Men that are disrespectful of the weight of the history of the holocaust?

Was there a moral message in the book? When Aaron's logic couldn't handle his predicament and he flipped out, was that an argument to act against evil, whatever damage it may do?

Did any of you learn anything from the portrayal of the camp?

12. Strike Force 7 by Ian MacAlister

Ian MacAlister was on Lantzvillager's radar and I found it out in Winnipeg. It's a commando adventure in the manner of Desmond Bagley, but tighter and grimmer. A tycoon's daughter and wife are kidnapped by tribal rebels in Morocco in order to pressure the government to release political prisoners. Knowing the government won't budge, the tycoon hires an ex-mercenary, who then assembles a team to try and infiltrate the mountain hideout of the rebels and rescue the wife and daughter. The story is told almost entirely from the perspective of the lead commando, Canadian Earl Jarrel, who just got out of a french prison for gun-running. Canadians in these books never seem very Canadian. Perhaps we were just way tougher in the '70s or perhaps a life of international warfare and crime will harden you up a bit. It just always seems that these authors like to throw in a Canadian guy without any real knowledge of their culture or character, so they come off as kind of a generic non-American english speaking person. I know we aren't the most identifiable of commonwealth peoples, but a bit more effort could be made on the writer's part.

It's a minor quibble. The book is straightforward and enjoyable. The description of Morocco's crazy markets is captivating and the tracking through the desert and mountains gripping. There is little time wasted with sentiment or stupid behaviour and no unecessary morality to clutter up the proceedings. This is how these kind of books are supposed to be written. On the other hand, there wasn't anything remarkable or mind-blowing, so I recommend this book primarily if you are a fan of the genre.

August West has a nice review here, with a bit more background on the author.