McSweeney's 44

I like Jim Shepard's "The Ocean of Air", a fictionalization of the Montgolfier brothers. The rest of the stories didn't do much for me.

Ford: We Never Called Him Henry

I was expecting a lot more from Ford: We Never Called Him Henry. It's very bare bones -- given the "as told to . . ." it reads like a series of anecdotes told over drinks or dinner. There's little context, few conclusions, and the editorial notes (not the words of Mr. Bennett) are dry and rarely relevant.

At least it's an easy read, but even as a supplement to the history of Ford, there's not much here.

Shattered Sword

Shattered Sword offers a new perspective on the Battle of Midway -- previous English accounts had been based off of mainly American combat records, and a few Japanese sources. The authors here have seen some primary Japanese sources (ships' logs, etc) translated into English for the first time, and as such are able to provide clarification on how events actually occurred.

Worth checking out if you're very interested in this particular area of history.

The Black Jacobins

C.L.R. James' The Black Jacobins is a classic for a reason. What we have is a fascinating narrative of how the Haitian Revolution stemmed from and paralleled the French, as well as how the slave result took the ideals of the French Revolution to their logical end.

James builds a clear narrative that is usually easy to follow, pointing out and correcting errors and misconceptions that other historians have had or perpetuated.

One of the issues with James is that he'll introduce a figure in passing, then repeatedly refer to him later. I'm not sure his index is always good at picking up the first reference to some of the more obscure figures, either.

Probably the biggest criticism I have of this work is that James is occasionally oblique -- he doesn't elaborate well on why the conflict between L'Ouverture and Rigaud was inevitable or necessary. And will occasionally refer to something he'd elaborated on previously as only the "[date] incident", which necessitates flipping back and forth.

An interesting part of the work is how obviously written from a socialist perspective it is, as James interprets events leading up to, and of both revolutions through the (as yet unwritten) lens of Marx. Some of these interpretations are insightful, but other times James ascribes feelings to the people (typically the French peasants) that they may not necessarily have held.

Another interesting part of the work is how James casts the anti-slavery efforts of the British as not motivated solely by altruism and a belief in justice/equality/etc, but in that Haiti required much more slave labor than any British possession, and the colony would have been economically crippled without it. Thus, British anti-slavery sentiment was propped up by a desire to harm France's interests.

I don't know if this is the definitive work on the Haitian Revolution (initially published in 1938, and James annotates his references in the second edition, that this was written during European domination of Africa, and prior to the Second World War), but it's well worth the read.

Sled Driver

Brian Shul's Sled Driver opens with an introduction where he promises that this isn't necessarily a technical book:

This is not a story of the making of the SR-71 , nor is it a technical digest of the
many intriguing facts and figures about the plane. . . Instead, this book is one man's view
of what it was like to fly the world's fastest jet.

 This is, of course, fine with me, and what follows are a series of anecdotes about the author's time with the SR-71, from his training to seeing the final flight of the plane as the last model was transferred to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.

The good: there's a lot of interesting material here, even given that Shul glosses over the actual missions for the most part (which of course makes sense, given the nature of the SR-71's duties.

The bad: the overall tone is akin to the narration of Starship Troopers, and many passages end abruptly (and not just because what would follow would be classified)

The verdict: an easy read with interesting flying stories, so try it if you can find it.

I understand that this is out of print, so I'd recommend seeing if there's a version for the Kindle or if it's available used somewhere.

The Cheater's Guide to Baseball

The Cheater's Guide to Baseball is a fun read, if nothing else. Covered here are such diverse topics as groundskeeping for an advantage, stealing signs, doctoring the ball, gambling, and steroid usage. Zumsteg maintains a relatively lighthearted tone throughout, not venturing much into moralizing until we get to gambling and steroids. As he says, cheating helped create the modern game (with pitchers no longer delivering the ball in a place the batter calls for, in trick pitches, corking the bat, etc)

Worth picking up, if you're interested in baseball.

The Three Musketeers

I realize that I've filed The Three Musketeers under "historical fiction", which isn't altogether accurate -- yes, this is fiction set in the past, but it's almost an alternate history type of fiction; while some of the characters portrayed here (Louis XIII, Cardinal Richeliu, Anne of Austria, the Duke of Buckingham, D'Artagnan himself) are clearly historical, the specific interactions are not. Also, in "I am a big dummy" news, the author's preface states that the following novel is based entirely on some obscure memoirs he found. Imagine my surprise when I realized this wasn't a literary device, but an admission he was borrowing from an earlier novel.

Dumas sets a good pace and keeps it up -- the novel never drags, which is impressive for something that was originally serialized, as that can tend to lead to filler. The one exception was later in the novel, when one character was imprisoned, and there were several chapters from their viewpoint that I didn't find particularly engaging.

The one criticism I would make was that while the musketeers are trusted members of the king's guard, the scope seems a little small, and the denouement seems out-of-place and petty, as does the resolution to another conflict. But this is a fun, well-paced novel that's worth reading once.

Death in the Afternoon

I'd been meaning to read Death in the Afternoon for some time, but hadn't gotten around to it until recently. Mostly, this was due to the fact I could never find it in the bookstore -- most of Hemingway's stuff was in the "fiction" or "literature" sections, but since this is a work of non-fiction, it wasn't with them. Since most bookstores lack a section on "bullfighting", I was out of luck. I tried a few different libraries, as well, but they never seemed to have it, either. Not that it was an all-consuming search, just something I did when I remembered. Now that I've gotten to it, I'm not quite sure whether I should be satisfied or disappointed.

Death in the Afternoon is a travel guide to a place and time that can no longer be visited. Long sections are devoted to recommending accommodations, procuring tickets, where and when to travel. Surprisingly, given that Hemingway was a drinker, the recommendations on alcohol are short -- a note that table wines in Spain are both cheap and excellent, compared to table wines in France, and a few paragraphs on where to find good draft beer. In this way, it's fascinating.

Hemingway is a bit of a snob when it comes to bullfighting . . ."I've been to over three hundred bullfights, but I've only seen [one particular technique] executed properly three or four times. . .", but he's charitable, listing each fighter's faults and skills. One thing I do like is that he rather than accepting as received wisdom the criticisms of current fighters (that they can't hold a candle to past legends, that the bulls they're fighting are smaller and weaker), he goes through contemporary accounts of those legends, both from the newspapers, and the bull-breeding records. It turns out that many of the legends were mocked in their time (not as good as someone previous), and the bulls have stayed roughly the same size and level of aggression. If anything, the bulls Hemingway was seeing fought were as large or larger than ever before.

There's a lot here (in addition to the narrative, there's an extensive glossary, including many terms which are not used in the main text, and a selection of pictures), and overall this is worth reading, for a portrait of a bygone age. Hemingway is a little more self-indulgent here than in his novels, but he's able to keep this flowing.

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

I was unfamiliar with Murakami before I picked up Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World on a whim. While I enjoyed the novel quite a bit, it's not what I expected Murakami to be -- although the more I think about it, the more "the End of the World" sequence is what I had anticipated.

Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is two seemingly unconnected narratives that Murakami gradually draws closer together. "Hard-boiled Wonderland" reads as inspired by Western pulps, although it becomes nearly immediately obvious that this isn't quite the world we currently live in.

"The End of the World", in contrast, is obviously something very different -- the narrator is watching unicorns from afar as the first chapter begins. As the narrative unfolds, it becomes clear that something is very, very different -- this isn't just a normal fantasy world, this is something else entirely. As the novel progresses, more and more is revealed about the world of "The End of the World" and it becomes more bizarre and surreal. In contrats, "Hard-boiled Wonderland" stays at roughly the same level of odd -- sure, the modern world depicted isn't quite our modern world, but it's similar enough.

The unifying thread here is consciousness, and what one's mind is doing beneath the surface. The medical procedure our unnamed protagonist is described as having gone through is a tone-setting example of that. The separation of the narrator from his shadow in "The End of the World" is another, as are the twin narratives here.

Recommended.

I read the concluding three books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series more or less over a long weekend; these final three were completed by Brandon Sanderson, as Jordan died before he was able to finish them. While I wasn't overfond of Jordan's style, I was skeptical of having someone else finish a long series. Luckily, Sanderson doesn't descend into a Jordan pastiche.

Probably the biggest difference between Jordan and Sanderson (although perhaps this is a function of the fact that the series is ending) is that stuff happens. These books simply aren't the moving-the-characters-as-chess-pieces that some of the earlier ones are, since the characters can only move so far. A Memory of Light is action practically start-to-finish, and the other books keep a decent pace, as well. That said, there are a few down points; there's one character who gets the same treatment Jordan gave him (Hey, remember this guy? He's still out there in the world, being ominous, but not doing much else)

Still, I got what I paid for -- fantasy action in a Manichean world. I don't think the series has aged well, or (more likely), I've aged past it, but I don't blame that on Sanderson -- I felt the pacing here was better than Jordan's. Worth picking up if you were curious how everything would end.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

This was an impulse buy at a bookstore while I was killing time. I'm sure I could have gotten this for free on the Kindle, but so it goes.

My particular copy has an extensive introduction that's both more and less than a translator's preface; it's more in that it contains a both a summary of the events of the epic, as well as a historical background of the re-discovery of the poem, historical events in Mesopotamia, relation of the epic to the Bible and to Homer, and a brief overview of the deities involved (since most readers aren't as familiar with Enlil and Shamash as they are with, say, Zeus and Aphrodite). Unfortunately, this is less than a translator's preface in that 50 pages in, our writer admits that this isn't a translation from the cuneiform (which, in Sandars' defense, would be exceedingly tedious, I would imagine), but a straightforward narrative that avoids a line-by-line translation. I'm of two minds here; the first is that I would much prefer a straightforward narrative, as I'm aware how clunky translated poetry can be, particularly with regards to meter. On the other, it's a little frustrating to get something that may be taking liberties with the original text. (Of course, our writer promises to "[add] nothing that is not vouched for by scholarship, nor omitting anything of which the meaning is beyond doubt . . .")

The epic moves quickly and easily, but feels disjointed at times (Sandars notes the relatively sparse language of the original). Some of this could be chalked up to uncertainties in ordering (it's mentioned that there's disagreement among scholars whether a dream sequence should be prior to or after a confrontation), but much of it seems to be the narrative itself. I'm glad I read this, as it's an incredibly important work of literature, but I'd prefer Homer or Virgil. (Although the big advantage to this is length and ease of reading -- this can be knocked out in an hour or two)

2666

Roberto Bolaño's 2666 is a sprawling epic of a novel. Or rather five novels, linked by common characters, themes, and images. Each section is linked to the previous ones, dealing with events or characters who were previously introduced, whether briefly or in depth. 2666 has twin suns -- Santa Teresa, Mexico (a stand-in for Ciudad Juarez) and Benno von Archimboldi, a reclusive German author, the study of whose work is the focus of the first book of the novel.

2666 opens with an introduction to four critics, and their introduction to Archimboldi's oeuvre. It then explores their work, their travels, their relationships with each other, and Archimboldi's growing recognition; as the critics are introduce to Archimboldi (in the late 70s and early 80s), he's

". . .an utter failure, an author whose books languished on the dustiest shelves in the stores or were remaindered or forgotten in publisher's warehouses before being pulped."

At the end of the section, by the mid-late 90s, he's rumored to be on the short list for the Nobel, as our critics search for him in Santa Teresa, Mexico.

From here, we're introduced to a literature professor assigned to tour the critics around, his daughter, who he fears will be abducted and murdered, like so many other women, an American journalist in town for a boxing match who is fascinated by the murders, various policemen, and in the penultimate section, a hideous, lengthy catalog of the deaths of women, ranging from prepubescent to matronly.

That the fictional city of Santa Teresa is one of the axes 2666 revolves around is true, but Santa Teresa really only has one axes -- the murders. The descriptions of the victims is clinical, repetitive, and horrific in its vast scope. The women are mostly young, in their late teens or early twenties, but we get some girls before the onset of puberty, and those in their thirties, forties, and later. Some of the murders are solved (as to how solved that really is, we don't know), but most are closed when no more information can be found, such as the alleged killer disappears. Perhaps the hardest part of this section is that this isn't a detective novel, where everything will be neatly wrapped up at the end -- people are arrested, and a prominent character is convicted and jailed for some of the murders, but they continue. Other suspects are mentioned, then never dealt with again.

The final section of the novel is an intimate look at the enigmatic Archimboldi, the other axis of 2666. In a somewhat jarring departure from the rest of the novel, where all we learn of him is that his name is probably a pseudonym, and that he's a very tall, very old German writer, the final section follows him from his childhood through his old age, although parts of it are told in a way that echoes Bolaño's other works -- we hear about him not through third person omniscient or limited, but from conversations other characters have about him, while he is elsewhere.

2666 doesn't offer many answers, only questions. I'd bought it a few years ago and held off on reading until I'd read more of Bolaño's work, and I'm glad I did. It's absolutely fascinating.

Moby Dick

The nice thing about reviewing a classic is that it needs to introduction. Most people are familiar with Ahab, with "Call me Ishmael", with the fact that Moby Dick is "the White Whale", with the Pequod as the name of the ship, with Queequeg and his harpoon, among other plot points. (Actually, those are probably all the plot points I was familiar with, prior to reading.)

Perhaps what I was most apprehensive about when I started this book was that I'd heard there were long passages concerning the execution of some of the more mundane tasks about a whaleship, that Melville had apparently lifted wholesale from someone else's treatise on the subject, that dragged on and bogged down the narrative. I didn't find this to be the case -- due to the novel's original episodic nature, chapter breaks are frequent, so one isn't stuck with descriptions of the tryworks (where the fat is rendered into oil) for too many pages. And of course, this is mostly a new subject to me, so a little general background is both informative and helpful. While the frequent chapter breaks do move the action along, what I did find a little trying was Ishmael's (Melville's?) attempted classification and categorization of the cetaceans, and the sperm whale (obviously) in particular. But again, this wasn't too long or too frequent.

One of the often remarked upon parts of Moby Dick is the symbolism. Of that, I have little to say other than "it's here." It's not subtle, but that's a good thing. What I do like is Melville repeatedly hammering home the inevitability of the end. (Which, again, not subtle).

What else is there to say? This is a classic for a reason.

McSweeney's 43

McSweeney's 43 is a collection of short stories and non-fiction by various authors, with a supplement of writing from the new nation of South Sudan. (For some reason, I never got McSweeney's 42.)

None of the writing in 43 really stuck with me -- in addition to the letters to the editor, there are four short stories and two non-fiction pieces. The non-fiction pieces are more interesting  than the short stories -- "The Texan from Gaza Does Yoga in Prison," is a young woman's account of her experiences with her father in prison for supporting terrorism. It's a bit meandering, though, and trails off rather than builds to a conclusion. Maybe that isn't a fair observation to make about an account of a close relative's imprisonment, though.

The other non-fiction piece follows the Libyan Revolution in Tripoli.

The fiction from South Sudan is more interesting than the fiction in 43 proper. It mostly concerns village life, although the first (and one of the better) stories is about leaving one's village to avoid arrest. In the introduction, it's emphasized that the region is still young and developing, so there isn't quite anything yet that "illuminates its culture and experiences." Perhaps one of the writers here will provide that.