women of troy

Pat Barker is an English writer that’s been at it for 40 years or so. She’s won the Booker prize and has a few other accolades. When I did a web search for the cover of this book the title hit on this book and two other things, well, maybe it’s two variations of the same thing: The Trojan Women, a play written by Euripides in 415 BC, and a modern play adapted by Jacob Kempfert and Benji Inniger for Bethany Lutheran College. A little more scrolling gave me a movie of the same name about a women’s basketball team.

The story takes place in the aftermath of the War of Troy, as told by Homer in The Iliad. I wouldn't call this a sequel to The Iliad, but a different perspective, focused on the people ravaged by war and typically forgotten. The story is told from the POV of the women living in the camp of the victorious Greek or Achaean army, taken from their homes in Troy and forced into slavery, or in some cases matrimony, by their Greek overlords.

Barker writes of how these women manage to express their wishes, and strive to fulfill their own agendas, even under the strict supervision of their captors, as women have always had to do when living in a patriarchal societies. Barker also shows us is that there is very little difference between women who are stolen from their homes and families, and often their own husbands, who live as slaves and those who are forced to marry the higher echelons of the invading army. The very men who killed their families, and murdered their male children.

This was an interesting read, and the writing is simple and to the point. You can see why Barker has won a number of awards.

rembrandt affair

This Gabriel Allon installment is copyrighted in 2010, so its a step backwards in the overall story arc of the Allon series for me, but I've never tried to read these in order; I've always just read what ended up in my hands at the time. Like this one.

The Rembrandt Affair is number 10 in the series, according to Book Series in Order, so that puts it in about the middle of the story arc as it it exists thus far. Daniel Silva has it down, and I guess you could say the structure of each book in the series is a little reminiscent of the others, but I think that's probably what dedicated readers of series are probably looking for. If the formulas formulae? didn't work, I guess no one would use it.

Allon decides to look into a long lost Rembrandt for a friend, a project he does on his own time, outside his relationship to the organization he works for. That is until he puts his foot into a problem that quickly becomes an international issue. 

Trouble ensues.

This was a good one in the series. While based on the same formula as many of the others, its was fun to see a variation. Dedicated readers of the Allon series will enjoy this one. 

I finished this one a week or so ago, so I'll try and post the most recent book I just finished.

lord of the rings

Is this a re-read? Yes.

This may be the fourth time I've read this... maybe? could be the fifth? The first time I was a teen; maybe 15 or so? I suppose I could do that math, but the results would include some guess work. I was assigned The Hobbit in the 8th grade, and then I actually read The Hobbit the summer after the 8th grade. I think I read The Lord of the Rings in high school, which I borrowed from my Uncle, or.... maybe he got another copy and gave me his old one? Yes, I think that's right, those iconic 1970s paperbacks, as shown on the left.

The second time I read through them I read these same books, but after a while, they started to take a beating, and the glue binding was starting to break down. So at some point, I bought a one volume paperback edition. I did the one volume thing so I could get to the appendixes when I needed to. In the three volume versions, the appendixes only appear in the third volume, so you need to carry that around if you need it. The one volume paperback is fine, but the stresses on the glue binding are too much and its been falling apart for a while. Because of its size, its also cumbersome to read, and I eventually went out and bought a three volume set of paperbacks, which is what I read the last time through, in 2016. But the one volume is fun, I think I'm going to try and re-bind it.

After reading through this a few times, I've begun to see some of the rhythms in Tolkien's writing shining through a bit. There are some spots where he seems to be impatient to get to the next (major) point and the narrative, and doesn't provide as much of the detail of those moves are accomplished as he had in other places. I wonder if this is pressure from publishers, or a self-imposed pressure or editing on his own part. You may have heard that one of Tolkien's regrets about The Lord of the Rings is that its too short. In response to the questions and opinions of critics and others, Tolkien offers no quarter, response or apology, in his Forward to the Second Edition, but offers only this to those who have complained that the book was too long:

"The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being fortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, except one that has been noted by others: the book is too short."

This can probably be read two ways: at face value, or as a subtle jab at his critics, which was only partly meant or facetious. After having read through a number of times, I believe Tolkien did have more story to tell, and while he may not have been referring to The Lord of the Rings specifically, I think he did see a number of his works still spinning in his head, which he was unable to get into print. Tolkien complained a number of times about not having his notes in order, and that peccadillo, along with the rigors of his non-writing life, prevented him from bringing many of those other stories to fruition. I wonder what we'd have if Tolkien had a computer. Would it have increased his productivity, and if so, would there have been a cost to that, in the quality of his work? Perhaps from a lessening of the contemplative way he wrote, and re-wrote, in longhand? mmmm...

All this to say, I believe I've said it all in other reviews of this book. I didn't break down my review this time into three chunks to correspond to the traditional three volumes, only because this is well traveled ground, both for me and for many others. I did want to get some of my thoughts down on why reading a one volume editions vs. the three volume (they both have pros and cons) and on the length of the tale itself. On that point I will add that if you are left wanting more, there is a little more in the Appendices, and I can recommend highly enough that you read them. In fact, back in 2016, when I read through all of these books the last time, as noted above, I recommended that if you are re-reading the Middle Earth books that you read the Appendices first, right after The Silmarillion, and before The Hobbit. This time I was just reading The Lord of the Rings, but I did read all of the notes in the front matter, and the Appendices at the back, before I began the body of the text.

Tolkien is a champion world-builder and creator of mythologies. The Lord of the Rings has a depth and richness that is unmatched by most of its counterparts in fantastic fiction. It still has staying power, the ability to thrill and entertain, even after multiple readings, which hasn't been dimmed by the films, in my mind at least.

Read this book.

the secret servant

My wife has looked up of Daniel Silvia’s books and bought a copy of all of them used, for cheap, on the interwebs. This has given us both an opportunity to read some of the earlier Gabriel Allon books we haven’t yet read. Or perhaps we have but have forgotten. The Secret Servant is not the first book in the series, I’m not sure what that would but the evernet knows. 

Yep, it’s The Kill Artist. This book is the seventh in the series, while it’s not recorded on this blog, it’s possible that I read it before I started keeping track. It’s also possible, that because Allon books often have both a similar story arc and subject matter, that just feels like I’ve read it. In any case, I thought that this was a good installment in the series and there were a few things covered here that I don’t recall hearing about before, and in some cases, helps to fill in some of the backstory referred to in later installments.

Silva and Allon fans will not be disappointed. If any one knows of an author writing similar stories from the Arabic perspective and history, leave a comment below. It might be interesting to see an alternative viewpoint.

 

 

vineyard in tuscany

Ferenc Maté has been writing for years; this book is from 2007 but the time period it recalls is closer to the 1990s I think, after Maté and his wife moved from New York to Tuscany, and bought a small house near the vineyards with their young son. After staying in that small house, becoming friends with their neighbors--who operated their own small vineyard--Maté became enamored with the idea of owning his own vineyard. A Vineyard in Tuscany: A Wine Lover's Dream is his love letter to Tuscany's wine making culture and history, and is his story about how his dreams came true.

Organized in a mostly chronological order, this book follows the Maté family's journey from wine lovers to wine makers. The text appears to be based on Maté's diary entries from the period when the story takes place. The notes aren't complete enough to form an entire story arc, but enough to help you follow along. Its a curated glimpse into the origins of the Maté Winery, which is by all accounts, a very successful, small, family run winery.

Many chapters of the book are stand alone stories and anecdotes related to their search for and eventual purchase of a collapsing ancient villa, its restoration, the clearing and preparing of the fields, the planting of vines, to their first run of wines. They had a lot of expert help in all of these endeavors, and it seems to have cost a pretty penny. Maté acknowledges the help he received through stories and in explicit thanks in the back matter. The back matter also includes a number of recipes of the simple foods Maté raves about in the book. My guess is that you'll really need to have local ingredients to make them taste the way he describes them, but it can't hurt to try! one of these recipes is cooked on burning grape vines. yeah, hold my wine whilst I grab some of my vineyard trimin's

If I had to guess, this book appears to have been roughly outlined by Maté and then given to his editor along with the copies of his journal entries for polishing. I may be wrong, but if that's the case, then perhaps the editor deserves more credit. I have no evidence of that however, and it could just be that this book was meant to read like it does; a relaxed, slightly disorganized, free associative remembrance of a wonderful time in the author's younger life with his family.

A fun book to read before a trip to Italy, for sure.

sweet tooth

To prepare for this review of Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth--NOT to be confused with the book that inspired the Netflix show of the same name--I was looking for a cover shot, and another cover showed up that was very familiar. I wasn't searching for another book by McEwan, but maybe I picked this book up at the same library book sale. Maybe they were donated by the same fan. Who knows?

Sweet Tooth is the name of an operation, undertaken by the British secret service, and our protagonist is just getting her feet under her, learning the ropes at her new job, when she is tapped, along with a group of other new young women, to take on this task. Seems pretty thankless; a kind of late, cold war, down-with-communism effort that doesn't seem like it has the potential to win many hearts and minds.

The overall pace of this novel is a little slow, and the stakes aren't especially high. This isn't a James Bond story. I actually got to within about a hundred pages from the end, and I put it down to take a break and read something else. I don't do that often, so yeah, pretty slow. But I'll tell you, when I picked it back up, I was glad I did. The last hundred pages or so were not what I was expecting, and the book ended up being better than I thought it would be. 

I'm a pretty slow reader, and I usually read in short spurts (at breakfast, before going to sleep, maybe 20 minutes at a time) so it takes me a few weeks to pound through a book. If you're a fast reader, then this probably won't be a problem and I can recommend it as a pretty good read. If you are a slower reader, this one might be okay if you have a little more time on your hands, and don't necessarily need a book that keeps you rapt. Like, maybe you're going to the beach, but you also have to keep an eye on the kids, so they don't get swept into the ocean.

music of the spheres

The Music of the Spheres is the first novel by Elizabeth Redfern, which was published in 2010. Since then she has released one more book that I can find; Auriel Rising, which doesn't seem to have done all that well, given that its hard to find.

The Music of the Spheres doesn't appear to be a wildly popular book either, as I don't get a lot of hits for it when searching the web.* The plot was compelling, but perhaps the book was longer than it needed to be. They used a smaller font when printing it, perhaps to keep the size down (420 pp.) With a larger font, it could have been a considerably larger tome.

The story takes place mostly in 1795 London, during the month of June, and follows Jonathan Absey's increasingly frantic search for those responsible for his daughter's murder. What he ends up uncovering is much more geopolitically charged, and he begins to believe that his daughter's murder was just a small part in a much larger plot having to do with the end of monarchies and the rise of republicanism in Europe.

Perhaps it was Redfern's nod to realism, but readers do like a happy ending, I think or at least something nice to happen to someone along the way, if only to lighten the load of the reality of death.

Nope.

I did find myself wanting to know how it would all end, and I kept up hope, until that end came.

Nope.

 

* I even had trouble finding a decent cover image, and had to take my own photo, which I rarely need to do.

sirens of titan

1959.

That's when The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut Jr was published. I read a paperback copy that I found on the (many!) shelves of the house we stayed in up in New Hampshire over the Independence Day weekend. This has become an annual trip with my family, and this year's foray was another success. I had never read this sci fi blast from the past, and it looked pretty good, and not all that long, so I took it for a whirl.

So, right off, folks reading this book today will  see that its dated. Not just in the wildly inventive scientific speculations, which have clearly been been proven false since it was written, but also the number of quirks about 1959 society that Vonnegut assumed would last into the indefinite future, and, you know...haven't.

I've seen this a number of times in classic SF, from Asimov and others, who foresaw a world where alien carrying spaceships bopped around our solar system, and humans are augmented and/or armed with super-cool laser technologies, but where women are still fetching coffee. asimov, one could argue, got it even worse

That said, this book has got some pretty original thinking, some wild ideas, and speculates on some pretty crazy ways to accomplish one's goals, despite the worse-case scenarios you may be living in. Its also witty in many places, and pretty funny in some others. There are also some over-arching themes, and even some interesting views on the development--and potentially the very existence--of human life on earth, that reminded my a little of the Hitchhiker's Guide.

This was a fun little throwback, and a treat to read for those interested in classic Sci Fi.

homer & langley

Homer & Langley is a novel by E.L. Doctorow, and it follows the lives of two brothers living in New York city from their boyhood to old age in their family mansion on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park. The Collyer Brothers, were left alone when the flu pandemic of 1918-1920 carried their parents away not long after the older brother, Langley, returned from the Great War with his lungs burned and his body scarred by mustard gas.

The story is narrated in the voice of the younger brother, Homer, who has slowly lost hist sight in his early twenties, and so the brothers stay together in their family mansion, and try to take care of each other. They keep on the staff--the cook and the housekeepers--for as long as the money and the staff patience holds out, but both eventually drift away.

Perhaps it's post traumatic stress disorder (shell-shock in World War I) or maybe that, combined with the abrupt loss of his parents, but Langley isn't coping well and begins to obsess about a number of things, including getting his brother's sight restored, saving newspapers that his brother might one day read, helping his brother where he can by providing him with things he thinks may help, and a manic interest in a self-made theory that all things that happen are merely repetitions of things past, including people, which are the replacements for earlier generations.

Homer's voice calmly tells of his brothers eccentricities, their early adventures, his learning to play piano, the glamour of the roaring 20s in New York for two wealthy young brothers, and how their rudderlessness and idle combined with what was left of their wealth began to both isolate them from the world, and especially in Langley's case, from reality. By the 1970s, the two recluses live in a rabbit warren of hoarded stacks of newspaper and junk, through which the blind Homer can no longer find his way, and is afraid to try given that Langley's paranoia has driven him to booby trap the narrow paths against intruders.

The story ends as you might expect. A quick look online reveals what you may already know: that the Collyer Brother's story is true, and the facts in the case served as fuel for Doctorow's novelization. The birth order of the brothers was changed, and their story extended into the 1970s by Doctorow's story, leaving them at a ripe old age, when in fact they both died in their mansion in 1947 when Langley was 61, and Homer was 66. 

The house, after it was cleared of trash (120 tons, according to the Wikipedia article!) was declared by the city to the be unsafe, and in the summer of the year their bodies were discovered, the house was razed. In the 1960s, the city placed Collyer Brothers park on the site, which incidentally, is not across from Central Park, but further up Fifth Avenue in Harlem.

The real story seems much more bizarre and horrifying than Doctorow's fictional view of the inner thoughts of these brothers would have us believe. I don't think Doctorow really captured the insanity the two were clearly gripped by at the end of their lives, but perhaps Doctorow's theory is that Langley was crazy, and Homer was an innocent victim, swayed by the love of his brother and caretaker to portray him in a positive light. myeh.

E.L. Doctorow died in 2015.