ReadingBlog

30 June 2011

More about Montana before mid-century

I was enchanted by a four-year-old recently. It probably helps that she's a granddaughter, but she's pretty wonderful without that status.

I was planning on spending a couple evenings with her, but for most of that time, she'd be asleep. So I grabbed a small paperback by Ivan Doig (another of those books I picked up at the used book sale). I figured it would be easy to hold on to while I read to stay awake.

The book was Heart Earth. It was written about a decade after Doig wrote the autobiographical This House of Sky. In This House... Doig told the story of growing up with his widowed father and his maternal grandmother. The time wasn't easy for any of them. Doig's mother died on his 6th birthday. His grandmother joined the household because there was no other way for his father to continue earning a living and maintaining a family. Father and mother-in-law never seemed to like each other, but they joined forces to create a family.

I haven't read This House of Sky, but I did read Heart Earth. Heart Earth is a recreation (or reimagining) by Doig of his mother. After his uncle died, he was handed a packet of letters from his mother to her brother. Doig's uncle served on a warship in the Pacific during World War II, and his mother had time and inclination to write to her brother and share a lot of her thoughts and feelings with him.

From these letters, Doig attempts to describe his mother and her married life. There are many holes in the description, as we'd expect. In spite of the apparent intimacy of the letters, he writes about events more than about the person who was his mother. Maybe that's to be expected, too. Doig was too young to have many memories or first hand impressions. This writing exercise seems primarily to be a personal project in which Doig tries to find out more about the mother he never knew.

I never really got engaged with the story or the people. And it wasn't because I read most of this during a couple nights of babysitting. Doig's prose is rich and smooth. It's also pretty passionless and non-judgemental. His other books have plot that this real life biography doesn't. The book ends with his mother's death. As the number of unread pages dwindled, I knew where the death was going to happen. No dramatic build up or climax here. Just sorrow, but even that was mostly implied.

Maybe you've read Heat Earth and found things there I didn't. If so, write and tell this little bit of the world about your experience with the book.

Ivan Doig's notes on Hearth Earth
Beth Fish's review of Heart Earth

27 June 2011

More interesting books

The Future Has A Past - J. California Cooper
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Texas by James Michener
Rereading the book I wrote, Remnants, so I can write the sequel this summer!
Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin (because when I was 7, I was a UFO investigator)
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

An intriguing book list

My college alumni Facebook page asked grads what they're reading this summer. Here are the results from the first two hours. It's lists like this that often lead me to books I'd never encounter otherwise.

I'll resist the temptation to comment and just post the list (without links too):

My Antonia by Willa Cather
The Portrait by Ian Pears
Uncertain Path: A Search For The Future Of National Parks by William C. Tweed
Unnatural Selection by Mara Hvistendahl [Okay, I'll comment. The author was once in a class I taught.]
Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson
Fire and Ice books by Neal Stephenson
In The Woods by Tara French, great mystery and great writing
The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization by Vishal Mangalwadi
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (listed twice)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Bossypants by Tina Fey
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: dispatches from the front lines of the new girlie-girl culture by Peggy Orenstein
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Emma
Unbroken
Fall of Giants
In the garden of beasts
The Origins of Political Order, Vol. 1 by Francis Fukuyama
Game of Thrones series by George R.R. Martin
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Waiting for Aphrodite (essays about amphibians) by the wonderful Sue Hubbell
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
Embassytown by China Mieville
Philosophical Fragments and Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard

18 June 2011

Great story again

For at least the third time, our family book pusher provided us with a novel by C. J. Box. I think she likes carefully reading these before they become welcome gifts in our household.

I first read a C. J. Box mystery/adventure when Nancy bought one in West Yellowstone. The first one I wrote about here was Winterkill in 2006. However, I mentioned then that I'd read two earlier books by Box. (I read Open Season and Savage Run in the days before I began posting these notes on the blog. I have written about Free Fire, Blue Heaven, and Below Zero. Along the way, I passed on reading Three Weeks to Say Goodbye because it sounded too grim.

Box is such a good story teller, that I've read most of his books even though, as I've said before, I don't like nastily violent books like these.

As with at least two other Box novels, I didn't want to put this book down once I got into it. Paradoxilly, I kept taking breaks in my reading because I didn't want to be done with the book.

There are two stories in Cold Wind, and they pretty much run parallel to one another until the end of the book. In an earlier book, Wyoming ranger Joe Pickett and his outside-the-law doppleganger Nate Romanowski were seriously estranged from one another. As we might expect one of this book's stories is about Joe and the other is about Nate. At the end of the book, the two stories merge and Joe and Nate reach a kind of truce. And the ending sets up the next story which is likely to threaten Nate, Joe, and Joe's family.

Between the covers of this book, a fabulously rich rancher is murdered, his widow (Joe Pickett's mother-in-law) is accused of the crime, someone clumsily tries to kill Nate, Joe's oldest daughter heads off to college, and Joe spends time monitoring the fall hunting season in north central Wyoming between taking comp days to investigate the murder. The plot is satisfyingly complicated, but it's the story telling that stands out.

As usual, there's a fair amount of improbability in the details of the story, but I can overlook it when it's told this well.

Have you read Cold Wind? other C. J. Box books? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

C. J. Box's web site
Wyofile on the local star of fiction
An interview with Box at the blog Jungle Red
Tracy Grant's review of Cold Wind at The Washington Post
Chris Rubich's review in The Billings Gazette

From the Kindle store

15 June 2011

Enough Scandinavian. How about a Canadian author?

Dale Stahl wrote from his post-school year leisure with another suggestion for reading. He's another valuable friend who is regularly reading interesting things. This is what he recommended today. (And no, Dale, no one else has mentioned these before. Thank you.)

Here is another series I wonder if you have read or anyone has written about: The Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny?

They are all set in an idyllic little Canadian village outside of Montreal that seems to have an inordinate number of murders. [Sounds like Murder, She Wrote] The characters are wonderful -- Penny creates a social life of flawed but connected people that I would love to drop in on for dinner. And speaking of dinner, every meal enjoyed by the characters makes one’s mouth water. Not to mention the wine and cocktails before during and after!

The murders in these books are all a little convoluted, no straightforward bludgeoning or stabbing, and I had thought them a bit farfetched until I opened my Star Tribune and read about the MN man who is accused of crushing his wife with a giant totem pole.

PS also I am for sure going to pick up and read the rest of the works by the Norwegian author K.O. Dahl I mentioned to you earlier. Really enjoyed the Fourth Man.

Do you have a suggestion for us? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

Louise Penny's web site

Louise Penny introduces her hero Armand Gamache.

Multiple recommendations

Dan Conrad dropped me an e-mail with an interesting list attached.

I thought you might find this of a tiny bit of interest.

What follows is my "request" list at Hennepin County Library.

The interest, I think, is not what I happen to have on order but as a check of the relative popularity of several books, which we might have a common interest in. Check, for instance, the long list for The Ice Princess. This will be my first Camilla Läckberg book. Have you read anything by her in your perusal of Scandinavian crime fiction? Also, note that Masie Dobbs beats out her "clone" Bess Crawford, 7+ to 1. That seems just.

Anyway, all in all a totally frivolous FYI. Any here you have on your "to read" radar?

Title	Author	Position (Place in Line)
Bad Intentions	Fossum, Karin	15 of 45 (on order)
A Bitter Truth: A Bess Crawford Mystery	Todd, Charles	15 of 32 (on order)
The Devotion of Suspect X	Higashino, Keigo	21 of 23
The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens, and the Search for the Good Life	Hughes, Bettany	15 of 32
The Ice Princess	Läckberg, Camilla	463 of 485
A Lesson in Secrets: a Maisie Dobbs novel	Winspear, Jacqueline	17 of 228
Naughty in Nice: a Royal Spyness Mystery	Bowen, Rhys	35 of 112 (on order)
A Red Herring without Mustard: a Flavia de Luce Mystery	Bradley, C. Alan	87 of 92
A Singular Woman: the Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother	Scott, Janny	102 of 136
So Much Pretty: a Novel	Hoffman, Cara	27 of 67
Started Early, Took my Dog: a Novel	Atkinson, Kate	5 of 214

It's going to be awhile until Dan gets to read The Ice Princess. On my mental to-read list are the Maisie Dobbs mystery and Janny Scott's bio of Obama's mother. However, I'll have to investigate the others on this list as well. Except maybe the Soctates book. I might add Socrates to my fairly short list of things I'm unwilling to spend much time on anymore. Go ahead, call me a philistine.

Dan also wrote with a note that could only come from someone who identifies himself closely with his Swedish immigrant ancestors. But maybe you'll find some recommendations that will fit your reading mood even if you're not Swedish, Swedish-American, or Scandinavian. (I don't think there are any "important" books on this list.)

Two years ago, Dan sent me the same list. That time he'd found it in The Guardian. If you go to that blog entry, "Vem hade kunnat gissa?" you can see links to reviews of the books on the list besides Dan's. If he's read 6 of these books in the past two years, he's made great progress, especially if he's waited for library copies.

"I get a magazine called Swedish Press. In the current issue there is an interview with a current "hot thing" in Swedish crime fiction, Camilla Låckberg (Ice Princess, e.g.--not read it myself, but have it on my library request list, see above). Anyway, they asked her what she thought were the "Top Ten Swedish Crime Novels." Here is her list.

"I put an asterisk by ones I have read and also what I rated it on a scale of 1-5. [Note: I do have a "6" but that's for books I would like to read a second time]. Which have you read?"

Mind’s Eye, Håken Nesser (Read his Borkman’s Point and didn’t care for it)
* Blackwater, Kerstin Ekman (4.5)
* Missing, Karin Alvtegen (4)
* Sun Storm, Åsa Larsson (4)
* The Fifth Woman, Henning Mankell (3)
* Unseen, Mari Jungstedt (2)
Shame, Karin Alvtegen
Echoes from the Dead, Johan Theorin
* Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson (5)
Midvinterblod, Mons Kallentoft (Not translated yet)

If you look at the ReadingBlog entry, you'll find that my reaction to Nesser's Borkman's Point was much like Dan's. I read Mari Jungstedt's Unspoken and liked it. I've read all three of Stieg Larsson's books and I liked them all, although The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was the best. Netflix delivered the third Swedish movie based on the books, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and we watched it last weekend. It was really good -- maybe as good as the first film. I have no interest in seeing the American versions which are currently in production.

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13 June 2011

That's what I get

Every once in awhile, my ego whispers in my ear that I ought to read something more "important" than merely entertaining fiction. Sometimes, I listen to that voice.

Prelude: Forty-some years ago, I trotted off to one of my first college classes. It was a math class titled Math 10. It was the most basic math class offered. The topic was something called calculus.

I had no idea what calculus was. It sounded like calculation. I'd taken all the available math classes in my small town high school. I'd done well, even in the most advanced class: solid geometry and trigonometry. I knew I had to take a few math/science classes to earn my degree even if I wanted to major in political science. What better time to fulfill one of those distribution requirements than a couple months after finishing the math curriculum in high school?

I was lost in the calculus class from shortly after attendance was taken. I don't think I knew how lost I was for a couple weeks, but I was in over my head. Indeed nearly everything that was said in the class went over my head. Unfortunately, the prof lectured. I have no idea what he said. He didn't ask us to do problems in class. He had no way of knowing how lost I was until the mid-term.

I asked a friend for help. She'd graduated from high school at 16 and had taken calculus in high school. She tried to explain things, but it was probably too late. I started hanging out at the prof's office during office hours. That's when he found out how lost I was. He helped me figure out how to solve some basic problems, but he never did succeed in teaching me what calculus was or why anyone would want to know how to use it. I think I passed the class because I hung out asking for help.

What is all this reminiscing about? I picked up an important book recently that I'd read about. The topic sounded interesting and the review I saw was enthusiastic. It turns out, the reviewer was enthusiastic about the anecdotes that dot the book's chapters. But most of the book is about abstract math and quantum physics and genetics, none of which I understand any better than I understand calculus.

The book? The Information by James Gleick. Some of the anecdotes are indeed interesting, but finding them is a chore. They should have been in a different typeface than the other stuff. And since I never really understood what the book was about, I never figured out why Gleick told the stories when he did. I know what a fibonacci series is, but why would anyone care enough to even identify it?

There were whole chapters where all I could do was scan the first sentence of paragraphs looking for an interesting story, because the textbookish stuff was opaque to me. Numbers, to me, are meant for counting and measuring. What do you do with a sentence like, "Turing proved that some numbers are uncomputable." I shrug and say, "So what?"

The book was big, 525 pages with footnotes. The cover was white. It reminded me of Twain's so-called autobiography. It was less interesting, but it was easier to ignore the boring (incomprehensible) parts. I would have been very satisfied with a New Yorker article.

I should have focused on this line from the review, "Gleick ranges over the scientific landscape in a looping itinerary that takes the reader from Maxwell’s demon to Godel’s theorem, from black holes to selfish genes. Some of the concepts are challenging..." Challenging, hell. For me most of the concepts were meaningless.

Anyone have a more basic introduction to information theory? You don't have to answer that question. I'm not sure I want to know anymore.

Have you read The Information? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

Geoffrey Nunberg's review at The New York Times
Janet Maslin's review at The New York Times
Nicholas Carr's review at The Daily Beast

I get the impression that none of these people really understood much of what Gleick wrote either.

Freeman Dyson, I am sure understood what Gleick wrote about. His review in The New York Review of Books helped me make some sense out of The Information even though it didn't help me understand the math and science that Gleick chronicled. But, by the time I read it, I didn't much care anymore.

05 June 2011

Reading what I write

I guess I better read what I write as well as what comes to me from other hands.

A couple days ago, as I concluded my thoughts on a new book, I wrote, "I liked reading Fidelity. Now, I'll have to go looking for a Jane Whitefield mystery and see how Perry handles a series."

When I looked at the plot summary of the first Jane Whitefield novel I thought it looked familiar.

Then I searched this blog. I neglected Bird Loomis' advice and didn't read the first of Thomas Perry's Whitefield novels (Vanished), but I did read Dance for the Dead last fall.

I even wrote about it: First romance, now fantasy. I sort of liked it, but I wasn't terribly impressed. It must not have been very memorable. I'd forgotten about it. I guess writing about things I read isn't a way to remember forgettable things.

01 June 2011

Murders most foul

After reading about Montana at the beginning of the 20th century, I picked up a book about southern California at the beginning of the 21st century. That hundred years might have been the least of the differences between the two books.

First Bird Loomis and then Gary Sankary recommended Thomas Perry's books, and I've read a bunch of them. (Search for Perry in the search box at the top left.) No series of books centered on a few stock characters in Perry's bibliography; the books stand alone and the characters are unique (except for the "Jane Whitefield series" which I haven't come across yet).

Fidelity is one of the books I bought on my most recent Sunday afternoon expedition to a bookstore.

While Dancing at the Rascal Fair was an antique Western romance, Fidelity is a murder mystery thriller. Doig writes about people's lives over a 30 years span; Perry writes about events during a week (with some narrative flashbacks); the tensions in the story of last century Montana came from the ongoing nature of relationships while the tensions in the southern California story come from the murderous intent of a couple of the characters.

The only internal dialogues and reflections indulged in by Perry's characters are directly connected to the mysteries and the dangers. Doig's main narrator was often thinking about meaning and self as well as destiny. There is some progression in the emotions of the threatened widow of the first murder victim in Fidelity, but it seems to come without anguish. Would a woman still in shock at her husband's murder, who just found out about his long term affair, really approach her husband's mistress with an "I dont' care about that, I care about this..." attitude? Ah, well, even if it's unlikely, Perry tells a good story -- and remember, I'm a story guy.

The story begins with an ambush murder. It continues with sinister and horrific threats against the dead guy's widow, and the circle of horror expands from there. The characters and their back stories are lightly drawn, but it doesn't matter. It's an adventure story and well told.

I liked reading Fidelity. Now, I'll have to go looking for a Jane Whitefield mystery and see how Perry handles a series.

Have you read Fidelity? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

Thomas Perry's web site
Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times
Kirkus Review on Fidelity

26 May 2011

Dancing in Big Sky Country

Every year the Northfield Hospital Auxiliary holds a used book sale as a fundraiser. We look forward to it as a way to offload books we don't want to host any longer. This year I went to the book sale to purchase some children's books for a granddaughter who will be visiting in June.

I came home with more than just kid lit. I already had several books from my Sunday expedition to the book store, then I got some birthday books from my favorite family book pusher, and now I have more on the short shelf of books to read.

I did start reading another of the books from the pre-April 15 purchase, but I haven't finished it yet. It's one of those books that's taking a long time to read. When I headed off on a road trip to visit another granddaughter, I grabbed one of the book sale books as well as the tape of the French philosophical novel (see previous entry here).

So, while in the quiet times between play dates with the kid, I began reading Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig. The earlier Doig books I've read have been interesting and entertaining to one degree or another.

Dancing... was published in 1987, and was Doig's third novel. It's set in the northwestern Montana country where he grew up. His love of the country is as obvious as Hillerman's love of the desert southwest. Right away, I have more in common with Doig. However, while Doig likes the east slope prairies, I'd rather be in the mountains themselves. I'm not trying to make a living there though. Doig's people are.

The book is a western romance, starring a pair of young Scotsmen who came to America in the late 1880s. They would have been about the same age as my great-grandparents who came to Minnesota from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. (Well, okay, some of my great grandparents weren't immigrants.) As a little kid, I knew two of those great grands, and as I read Dancing..., I kept trying to think of my ancient worthies. Didn't work. Doig's characters seemed entirely too human, normal, and modern.

The Hancock homestead, July 23, 1910, photo by Walter Lubken, a Bureau of Reclamation photographer (from Wikimedia Commons). Original source

My great grands were near and over 90 years old when I remember them. They were dependent upon my grandmother. They didn't get out. I'd have to work my imagination to the bone to see them as young, vital, and passionate. Even the old great grandfather who bragged about riding a horse to Yellowstone and back as a 21-year-old was probably only telling stories to his grand and great grandchildren.

The worthy ancients of Doig's imagination are human, normal, and modern. And they are young, vital, and passionate. And they're stars of a soap opera. The two heroes arrive in Montana with nothing but the name of an uncle. That part I get. One of my great grands arrived from Denmark with nothing but a name. (Unlike the Scotsmen, he didn't speak English.)

The Scotsmen homesteaded land in foothills of the Rockies. They became sheep farmers and members of a rural community of sheep farmers. They struggled to make a living; they fell in love, wisely and unwisely; they raised families; helped each other; and hurt each other. The ups and downs of life.

Doig adds some drama to the telling and his narrator adds some reflection and analysis. Sometimes that gets in the way of the story. (Remember, I'm a story guy.) Sometimes that reflection is thoughtful and descriptive. It makes me slow down in my reading. There are big sections of this book where I had to read slowly and carefully and pay attention to more than just the verbs.

I enjoyed the book. I'm glad I have a couple more books by Doig on my short shelf (I found three at the book sale). However, I think I'll read other things before I read another. I'll probably even go back to the book I didn't take on the road trip to visit my granddaughter.

Meanwhile, I think Dancing at the Rascal Fair is a good book. Have you read it? Did you like it?

Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

Ivan Doig's web site
Links to 175 reviews at Good Reads
Dan Webster's review at Spokesman Review

18 May 2011

The return of the philosophical rodent

About two and a half years ago, Dan Conrad wrote on Facebook, that The Elegance of the Hedgehog was the best book he'd read in 2008. He didn't write to tell us why, but I picked up his comment here and quoted a review from The Washington Post.

I don't recall that Dan ever explained his preference, but did mention the book by Muriel Barbery a time or two in conversations since.

So, I was heading off for a visit to a granddaughter. That meant 10-11 hours on the road. As usual when facing a road trip, I visited the Northfield library. When I saw the CD version of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I checked it out. I listened to half of it on the way to Jim, Ange, and Jaime's. I listened to some of the rest on the way home.

I know why Dan liked this book. The author is a professor of philosophy. The book is full of philosophy. Ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and metaphysics. There's very little plot. In fact, one English marketer noted that the book wouldn't do well in the UK because people there want plot more than anything else.

I'm a plot fan too. So I had trouble with the book. I don't think I could have read it. For me the philosophical processes of analyzing alternatives and meaning are tedious. I do understand why and how such cogitation can be appealing. It's just not appealing to me. While driving down the road, I could let the philosophical verbiage go in one ear and out the other. When I listened to the last two CDs at home, I kept falling asleep.

BUT, did you notice that I finished listening to the whole book? When I awoke and found that I'd slept through a track, I went back and listened to what I'd missed. Why? None of the tedious philosophizing was imperious or pompous. None of it was trivial. In fact, it was all tied to the "reality" Barbery created in the book. There were far too many big issues raised for me to keep track of. I think I could have spent a month with this book if I was of a mind to think through all the ideas she raised. But, I'm a plot fan.

AND, the three main characters are just amazing. There's a middle-aged Parisian concierge in an upscale condo building. She acts like the dumb country bumpkin the residents expect her to be. But in her back room she's reading Kant and Tolstoy, listening to Purcell and Mahler, and studying 17th century Dutch still life paintings. In her spare time, she's seen all the arty films of Yasujiro Ozu.

There's a friendless 11-year-old resident of the building, who is equally bright and forced to keep that quality under cover to satisfy her bourgeoise family. (She gets to narrate a third of the book through her journals.)

And then there's the new guy in the building. He's a rich Japanese businessman who, while being a successful importer, is also a secret intellectual, whose tastes in art and philosophy match those of his new concierge.

And then there's the ending. Eleven year old Paloma says, "I learned 'never.' It's awful!"

Have you read The Elegance of the Hedgehog? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it. Or, if you read it, don't forget to tell us about your experience.

Caryn James' review in The New York Times
Michael Dirda's review in The Washington Post
Why The Elegance of the Hedgehog Is For Grownups by Delia Lloyd in Huffpost Living
Viv Groskop's review in The Guardian

Your choices are the book, the recording, the Kindle version, or the French film on DVD.

26 April 2011

Reading in Antarctica 80 years ago

In 1928, Admiral Richard Byrd led a scientific expedition to Antarctica. His chief scientist and second in command was geologist Larry Gould. Gould did real science and confirmed that Antarctica was geologically similar to the other continents.

When the Byrd explorers returned to the US in 1932, they were famous heroes and many of them went on speaking tours around the country. Gould also wrote a book about the expedition titled Cold.

Gould went on to become a geology professor and president of my alma mater, Carleton College. The college has kept the book in print for decades. (Used copies are still available at Amazon.com and ebay.) Then last fall, Northfield's Cannon River flooded. The basement of the college's West Gym filled with water. The swimming pool's pumps and the building's HVAC system had to be replaced. And the remaining copies of Cold became sponges.

My talented wife now has the job of editing the text for the next edition of Cold. She reports that it's well-written and interesting. And, luckily, the 50+ photographs in the book are available for republishing in the national archives.

In the process of editing, she found these amazing discussions of reading in Antarctica over 80 years ago. (What was Jean Christophe, by the way?)

[Reading during the "winter night"]

I believe the most important single source of recreation that made the time pass easily was our library of some 3,000 volumes.

When we were looking forward toward the winter night all of us anticipated great times with the books, but few of us, I think, had such ambitious projects as did one man who came to me one day early in the winter and said: “Larry, do you know what I am going to do during this winter night?” Of course I hadn't the slightest idea.

“Well,” he said, “I am going to learn aerial surveying and navigation and read the Encyclopedia Britannica through.”

It seemed a fairly ambitious program to me, but I didn't want to discourage the man so I assured him that if he carried out the project he would certainly achieve the essentials of a liberal education. His literary aspirations were rather short lived. He did start with volume I, letter A of the encyclopedia and got as far as “ammonium tetrachloride.” I saw him throw the book down with a look of disgust and asked him what was the matter.

“The stuff in that d--- book is no good for an aviator,” he replied.

Commander Byrd had charged me with the responsibility of collecting the library as part of our preparations back in New York. I asked him what sort of books he especially liked to read. His reply indicated considerable catholicity of taste: “Dickens, detective stories, and philosophy.”

And of all the various classes of reading matter that were represented detective stories were the most widely read, with accounts of other polar expeditions making a close second. The most widely read single book of all was W. H. Hudson's Green Mansions. Donn Byrne and Joseph Lincoln were more exhaustively read than any other two authors -- Mark Twain came next. We had a complete set of Kipling's works which was scarcely touched. As for myself, had the winter night given me opportunity for no other reading than Romain Rolland's Jean Christophe and Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga in its entirety I should still have considered it well spent. To me these are two works of this day that will live if any do. Jean Christophe is the most satisfying work of art with which I have ever come face to face...

[Reading while returning from the Queen Maud Mountains, a three-month geology expedition by dog sled that encompassed a total of 1,525 miles .]

We were in such excellent physical condition from the hard work of the summer that we travelled along with great ease, especially as compared with the hard work that had accompanied our southward trek. But the dogs were showing the effects of the gruelling summer's work and we had to be careful for their sake, and, purely on their account, we decided to limit ourselves to 23 miles per day. Some days when the surface made sledging easy for them we made good this distance within six or seven hours, nevertheless we forced ourselves not to get impatient but stopped and made camp…

There is much more variety in a polar night than there is in a polar day, and besides, one can create light when he tires of the darkness. But there was no way for us to induce even semi-darkness...

I don't know just what I should have done with all my free time had it not been for the few books that we had brought along with us. Each man had been allowed one book and ordinarily I should have brought Browning with me, but I had been reading him off and on all winter and elected to bring a thin paper edition of Shakespeare, complete in one volume. I regaled myself with Hamlet and Macbeth and King Lear and Love's Labor Lost and The Passionate Pilgrim, trying to fall asleep. When the day's journey had been particularly easy we would have supper over and be finished with the work for the day, ofttimes as early as 6 o'clock. I would crawl into my bag and lie there and read until 12 o'clock or later before going to sleep.

But I ran out of Shakespeare. One doesn't realize how much reading he can cover when he has five to seven hours per day without any kind of interruption. It had never before occurred to me that one of the real advantages and benefits of an Antarctic Expedition would be the opportunity to read Shakespeare in his entirety. I have never appreciated all the tragedy of Lear quite so much as I did in this reading of it out in the midst of the Ross Shelf Ice.

Mike Thorne had brought along W. H. Hudson's Purple Land and though I had read it but a few weeks previously, I read it again with the delight I always find in Hudson's exquisite prose. Eddie Goodale had brought a volume of English poetry which I devoured and in which I was glad to find one of my great favorites by Browning, "The Bishop Orders His Tomb." O'Brien had a big thick volume containing H. G. Wells short stories. I read this too, and it would have afforded me no end of satisfaction to have dropped this volume down the deepest crevasse I could find, but O'Brien objected strongly. He had borrowed the book from Russell Owen who wanted it returned...

The Research Vessel Laurence M. Gould was commissioned in 1995 and is chartered by the National Science Foundation for use in the oceans between Chile and Antarctica.

The RV Gould at Ross Station, Antarctica.

18 April 2011

Sunday, the library is closed

Already we suffer from reduced public spending. The Northfield library used to be open on Sunday afternoons in the winter. No more.

So, when I came home on Saturday wtih a book I'd already read and didn't want to reread, I was stuck.

What it meant was a 35-mile ride to the nearest bookstore. It was a nice Sunday afternoon. Driving the Prius meant I used less than 2 gallons of gas for the round trip. Still, it was a luxury I would think more than twice about after writing checks today for income taxes. (Tom Paxton, at the time of the first auto industry bail out, wrote a song, "I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler." Later he updated the song to "I am Changing My Name to Fannie Mae.") Today, I want to change my name to GE. I don't want any of its billions in profits. I just want to avoid paying taxes on my income like it did.

Back in the halcyon days before I saw our tax returns, I made the drive to the bookstore and came home with several books. One of the was A Test of Wills, that I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Another was Last Rituals by Yrsa. Yrsa is another of the Icelanders who usually do without a family name. When publishers outside of Iceland demand a second name, she gets her revenge by saying, "I'm Yrsa Sigurðardóttir." (Go ahead try and write or type that one.) It's so difficult that her publisher transliterates her name into Yrsa Sigurdardóttir.

Enough about Icelandic names.

The cover of the book says that Last Rituals is "A Novel of Suspense." An unnamed USA Today reviewer was more accurate when describing the book as a "fascinating and deliciously creepy mystery." The closest to suspense I could identify was what was wrong with the main character's teen age son or how long would it take for the divorced Icelandic lawyer, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir (Þóra Guðmundsdóttir) to get into bed with the gorgeous German guy who was directing the investigation.

No suspense, but definitely creepy. And sort of fascinating. The story is strung out like a trail of breadcrumbs behind Hansel and Gretel. One thing leads to another and another. Sometimes the trail is a dead end, but if you haven't eaten the breadcrumbs, it's possible to get back to the main route.

Yrsa writes well and translator Bernard Scudder does a great job of putting things into casual and correct English. Thóra and the German factotum talk to each other and to the people involved in a grisly murder. The dialogue moves the plot along very well (I've noted that before; for me it's usually much better than straight story telling most of the time.)

The victim was the son of a wealthy German family researching Medieval witch burnings in Iceland. His death seems as symbolic and horrifying as the persecutions he was studying. Matthew, a representative of the German family, needs help understanding Iclandic and Iceland. Thóra is an attorney who could use the generous fee offered by the family. Besides, she's a quick study and smart. The local police are on the fringe of things, but pretty much quit investigating when they're satisfied that their suspect is guilty.

So, no suspense. If there was any suspense, it happened in the back story. Lots of creepyness. Not very delicious. But it's a well-told story. Several of the characters are interesting. Ysra has written a couple more novels about Thóra, and I'll be looking for them in the library. (Buying books is on hold for awhile.)

Have you read Last Rituals or another of Yrsa's novels? Did you like it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

Yrsa's Facebook page
The publisher's web page
Maxine Clarke's review at EuroCrime
Karen Russel's review at How Mysterious!

17 April 2011

Goodluck and bad luck

The early returns from Nigeria point to the reelection of President Goodluck Jonathan. It seems a good time to write about Goodluck Tinubu.

Tinubu is the title character (and victim) in Michael Stanley's book The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu. After reading A Carrion Death at the beginning of last year, I was looking forward to reading another book by the writing team who go by the name of Michael Stanley. But in the blur of daily life, I forgot.

Then blogging friend Gary Sankary reminded me that there was another "Detective Kubu mystery." So, I looked for it on my next trip to the Northfield Library.

The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu is a big book. It has about twice as many pages (460+) as most of the mysteries I read. Then again, there are two authors. The main character is Botswanan detective David "Kubu" Bengu. (Kubu is the name for hippo. The detective resembles a hippo in girth as well as in determination.)

If you're not familiar with a bit African history, you'll have to learn about apartheid, Southern Rhodesia, Zimbabwe and its war for independence, and the proximity of Botswana to South African and Zimbabwe. It also helps to know a little about the terrors of present-day Zimbabwe.

You see, George Tinubu got his name Goodluck when he survived a murder during the hostilities between the white settler government of Southern Rhodesia and the independence fighters. However, the authorities listed him as dead because they found his identity papers with his fingerprints on them. Goodluck Tinubu went on to become a school teacher in Botswana. Many years later, he was killed in a tourist camp in northern Botswana near the border with Zimbabwe.

The local police don't seem able to make much headway in solving the murder because there are so many likely suspects and so many possible motives. So Detective Kubu Bengu is called in from the capital.

The story is set up well in the opening chapters, and it's well-told through conversations and bits of inner dialogue. I enjoyed reading the first half of the book and was thoroughly immersed in the story.

Then the book got better! The story telling never seemed to falter. Michael and Stanley write short snappy chapters and manage the information flow very well. There are partial escapes from the hunt for a murderer or murderers when Kubu gets home for weekends with his wife and his parents. But his wife gets more involved than expected when she's kidnapped -- seemingly by Tinubu's murderers who think Kubu has a briefcase full of cash that's gone missing.

Kubu ventures across the border into Zimbabwe to interview Goodluck Tinubu's mentor, the headmaster of a closed Zimbabwean school. He almost catches one of the bad guys by draining most of the gas from an outboard motor. He figures out that the past had caught up with several of the people at the tourist camp where Tinubu was killed.

But all that's told in a great story. And, if you need your stereotypes of Africa shattered, there's no better place for that to happen in a story set in Botswana.

I recommend it for many reasons.

Have you read The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of it.

The publisher's web page
A reading by Michael and Stanley
A review by Bernadette Inoz at Reactions to Reading
Julie Kramer's review at the big Thrill Archives

05 April 2011

Swedish crime novel

And here's another view of Sweden to fracture your stereotypes (well, at least the stereotypes of the descendants of Swedish immigrants in Minnesota). Leif GW Persson’s novel also jostled the images of reviewer Katherine Powers, writing in The Boston Post. Persson's description of Sweden's police and intelligence organizations give credence to the cabals in Stieg Larsson's series of "The Girl Who..." stories. Powers also adds a reference to Arnaldur's Arctic Chill, something I read and wrote about just over a year ago.

From Nordic climes, come chilling thrillers

[H]ere before me is Leif GW Persson’s Between Summer’s Longing and Winter’s End: The Story of a Crime, unquestionably the best Swedish crime novel I’ve read so far.

In it, Persson takes up the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, a crime that has never been solved. Aside from that event, the specific goings-on, as well as the characters, motives, involvements, and actions are fictional, but they are also completely believable. The novel consists of two chronologies and a fraught history. Sweden’s geo-political predicament is the backdrop, especially the years that spanned the end of World War II as it segued into the Cold War up to the mid-1950s. In Sweden this was the time during which “wherever you turned you only saw the Russian bear with his mighty paws, ready to deliver the final embrace.’’...

But be warned: This is a novel to read with your cerebral capacity at its highest setting and with, perhaps, a little notebook at your side. Most of the book’s characters are members of the Stockholm police force or of the country’s security organizations. They are numerous, and their names and official titles are nothing but trouble...

The Swedish security organization in place here is made up of a number of bodies: a central organization... a smaller “external group,’’ camouflaged as a management consulting firm established for the purpose of pursuing the most secret operations; a special “threat group,’’... and a further group, whose task is to spy on everyone else in the organization....

As I'll explain at a later date, my dance card for reading is pretty full right now, but I'm going to keep Persson's book on my waiting list.

01 April 2011

Rereading again

Awhile ago I had to look at my notes here to figure out whether I had already read the latest Arnaldur novel I'd started. (I hadn't.)

When I went to the library to return that book, I checked out a James Lee Burke novel (good recommendations and good memories). I'd only read two pages when I began to suspect I'd read it before. By page three I was sure. I read the back cover and was even more sure. It was Swan Peak. If I'd written about it, it was in the old newsletter. I couldn't find any record of my reactions online. I remembered it enough to decide not to re-read it.

It was Sunday. The library was closed. The closest open bookstore was 30+ miles away. Off I went.

I bought a couple birthday presents and four books for myself.

The first one I sat down to read when I got home was A Test of Wills by Charles Todd. Before long, I realized I'd read it before, too. I looked back on what I said about it a year ago. It was okay, except I felt cheated at the end.

I decided to read it again, in part because I remembered so little of the plot.

I read it. It was okay. I felt cheated at the end. (Red herrings are one thing, but magical resolutions are something totally different. And unwelcome to me.)

Did you read A Test of Wills? What did you think? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

For me it's on to new and unread books.

27 March 2011

The NYT reviewer speaketh

Marilyn Stasio, writing in The New York Times really likes the final Wallander novel by Henning Mankell, but she's not so enthusiastic about Jacqueline Winspear's new Maisie Dobbs mystery.

She does recommend a second Michael Robertson mystery about the brothers Heath, who rent an office for their law firm on London's Baker Street in exchange for answering letters sent to Sherlock Holmes. The first book was The Baker Street Letters. The new one is The Brothers of Baker Street. Hmmm...

26 March 2011

New Botswana mystery?

Gary Sankary asks, "Any word on when the next Detective Kubu book might come out?"

Great question and good reminder. He and I read A Carrion Death and liked it.

There was a hint about a new mystery featuring Detective Kubu in Botswana.

At the Detective Kubu web site, there are three books listed: A Carrion Death, The Second Death of Goodluck Tunubu, and Death of the Mantis. I guess we missed the invitation to the publication party.

I am planning to go to the library today. Anything else I should look for?

25 March 2011

More cold mystery from Iceland

So, when I returned books to the library, I scanned the "new fiction" shelves as usual. Just in case.

What I found was an oversized paperback of Arnaldur's latest, "Reykjavík Murder Mystery," Hypothermia. (It's a British publication with all the extra vowels.) It was pretty good and the last half was better than the first half.

In fact, I read to about page 60 and then went online to search this blog. Things just seemed very familiar, and I wasn't sure I had hadn't read this book already. But, no, I hadn't read Hypothermia. The main character, the setting (Iceland), the prose, and the pacing all seemed very familiar. In fact, a couple of the "cold cases" in this book were mentioned in earlier books.

When things seem that familiar and the pace of the story telling is a slow march, I have trouble getting enthusiastic about reading. I'd read a chapter and put the book down. The next day, I'd read another chapter. However, things picked up in the last half of the book.

Arnaldur's main character, Erlendur, is off on his own in this story. Things are slow at the Rekjavík cop shop. Erlendur is doing paperwork on a suicide and taking a last look at a couple 30-year old cold cases left over from early in his career. He's motivated, in part, because the father of a young man who went missing without a trace back then is dying.

Of course things get complicated. Details of the suicide don't add up. A guy retires from a career in Denmark and comes home to Iceland. Guess who he used to know. Erlendur is still haunted by the death of his little brother in a blizzard that almost killed both of them. His adult daughter is pushing him and his ex-wife to sit down and talk to each other (something they haven't done for 20 years). There are hints of ghosts and words of mediums.

Nearly all of that is in the second half of the book. And that's worth reading. I don't know how well the second half would stand up without introduction, but I'd guess you could skim the first 120 pages.

Now, there's the issue of counterparts. Dan Conrad noted that Charles Todd's Bess Crawford character (first created in 2009) is strikingly similar to Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs. The first Maisie Dobbs novel was published in 2003. Both women were nurses during World War I and both are independent women who get involved in solving mysteries in London after the war. I haven't gotten around to reading a Bess Crawford story yet, but here's another pair to draw to.

In 1991, Henning Mankell wrote the first Kurt Wallander novel. The Swedish detective has become incredibly well-known. The eleventh (and last) novel is about to come out. There have been television series produced in Sweden and Britain featuring Wallander. And there's a Swedish movie.

Wallander is a morose and phlegmatic man, whose wife left him and whose daughter worries him (in several senses of that verb). He's a passionate detective whose life is centered on finding the facts and explanations behind awful events. He lives in a neglected apartment and doesn't take care of himself.

Arnaldur's Erlandur first showed up in 1997. He's a morose detective, haunted by his past and anxious to explain tragedies and atrocities he confronts as an Icelandic detective. He abandonded his wife and two children long ago and has no clue about finding closure with those people. He lives in a neglected apartment and doesn't take very good care of himself. Books about Erlandur have been published in 26 countries, but none have been made in to television shows or movies. And Erlandur's putative apartment building is not a tourist destination like Kurt Wallander's.

Oh, and Arnaldur is Icelandic and doesn't use a family name. In the UK and the US, his books list him as Arnaldur Indriðason. I guess you can't be an author in the English-speaking world with only one name unless you were a 19th century short story writer or you've established yourself as a performer.

Northern exposure, an interview with Arnaldur by The Guardian's Nicholas Wroe.
Jane Jakeman's review at The Independent
Maxine Clarke's review at Euro Crime
A review at Mysteries in Paradise

23 March 2011

Wait for it

Henning Mankell: the last Wallander

Forget the 40 plays, the Gaza flotilla arrest and the good work in Africa, what Henning Mankell is really famous for is the anguished detective he created 22 years ago. Now, with the final Wallander novel published this week, he tells Jon Henley why he is happy to say farewell

That's it then; the end. Twenty-two years after his first appearance and more than a decade since the one everybody - even his creator - had assumed would be his last, Inspector Kurt Wallander is working his last case.

The lugubrious, all too human but ultimately decent Swedish cop with the never-ending health problems and the terrible family life has sold 30m books in 45 different languages. This will be a sad day for a lot of people.

But not, on balance, for Henning Mankell. "Hand on heart," he says, "I thought I'd written his last adventure a long time ago. I don't even particularly like the man. We have certain things in common: we enjoy the same kind of music, we have a similarly conscientious approach to work. We wouldn't be enemies if we knew each other, but he wouldn't be a close friend. He's not someone I'd invite to dinner."...

"When you reach your 60s, you realise certain things," he says. "First, that you've lived well over half your life. Second, that you've pretty much made all your really big decisions; people very rarely change direction after that. And that leads you to look back. It's quite a . . . scary moment. So I asked: am I afraid of anything? I'm not afraid of dying. Nor of pain; we can control most pain these days. But there is one thing I'm scared of."

The thing Mankell is scared of is the reason this is Wallander's last case, so obviously I'm not going to tell you what it is. But thinking about that, and about the whole business of looking back on a life, and the idea of Wallander realising how all along he had been so resolutely non-political, then wondering what might happen if you confronted him with perhaps the biggest political scandal in Sweden's postwar history – thinking about all those things, Mankell says, "I began to think I really might have a story for Wallander. One last one."...

Crime writing, he came to realise, was not – as everyone had always told him – a literary genre that was invented by Poe or Hammett or even by Shakespeare. "It was around in classical drama," he says. "Even then, we were holding up a mirror to crime to observe society. Look at Medea: a woman murders her kids because she's jealous of her husband. If that's not a crime story, I don't know what is. And if the ancient Greeks had had a police force, you can be damn sure a detective inspector would have had a part in Medea. Society and its contradictions become clear when you write about crime."

Wallander took off almost instantly in Scandinavia, and nearly as fast in continental Europe. Britain, after a slower start, is catching up, carried on a wave of Scandi-crime enthusiasm that also features the likes of Stieg Larsson, Jo Nesbø and Detective Sarah Lund. Wallander, though, retains a special appeal. What is it?

Partly, Mankell reckons, that he has never instrumentalised the detective. "Everything has always started from a big question, not from within Wallander," he says. "I did sometimes use him, of course. But I never held him between my fingers and looked at him and said: So, what can I find out with you today? I'd written three novels with him before I realised this was . . . like a cello, that I could play."

It's also important that Wallander is real. "No one could imagine James Bond stopping to inject himself with insulin," Mankell says. "That's because James Bond isn't real. So it's important that Wallander has diabetes, he's ill, his ideas progress, he has relationship problems. He changes, like we all do." It helps, too, that he thinks: "It's challenging to have him enter a room and think for 10 pages. But that's what I'm interested in – how he reads facts, traces, situations. Running around and shooting people is easy. And it isn't normal. Normally you solve problems by thinking."...

But now Wallander has reached the end of his road. Would Mankell, prolific and hugely successful for over 40 years, be happy for the rumpled detective to be his greatest legacy? He thinks. "I believe," he says, "the most important thing you do in your life, you may not even know what it is. It may be that one day you sat down on a bench to comfort someone who is crying. That could be the most important thing you ever do. So no, I would like to be thought of as a good, and quite generous man, who tried to make life a little better for others through what he did. And the things he wrote."...