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.