Heading Into the Weekend - A Reading Update

 

OK. Well, I probably shouldn't be ranting but I feel like ranting a bit before I get into my reading update. This past week has just got me so darned mad. I look at things in Canada and they seem minor but it's just the tip of the ice berg I think. Do we want to let things get out of control so that we have the problems they have down South?

In the past week, both the NDP and Liberal leaders had to deal with threats and racist abuse from protesters, when they were attending local events. On Twitter (and I don't know how reliable that might have been) some guy was gloating that he had forced our Prime Minister to cancel his attendance at an event in BC. This guy had his picture taken holding a noose. In Peterborough, the NDP leader was subjected to racist abuse as he left a riding office in the area. This type of activity is becoming more and more prevalent in our country. And the Conservative Party does nothing to decry these activities. In the Ontario provincial election, people (and I can only assume it's from right wing agitators) are destroying political signs from Liberal and NDP candidates. Truck convoys disrupt Canadian cities and citizens shouting that their freedoms are being abused. But of course, that only applies to their petty peeves; they don't care about the rest of Canada's rights and freedoms. *rant*

This was the front page of the Uvalde Leader-news yesterday, May 24. The reason? Well, if you don't know yet, you've got your head in the sand. Another school shooting, an 18 year old armed with an AR-15 (maybe two) shot up an elementary school, killing 19+ children and two teachers. CHILDREN! And the right wing have already started mealy-mouthing their responses. 'Don't make it a political!' they shout. 'The guy was mentally - deranged', they say. (and yet he was able to buy these weapons and 100's of rounds of ammunition on his 18th birthday.) GOP Senator Rafael 'Ted' Cruz, the Senator for Texas, blamed it on the fact that a back door wasn't locked. He said that there should only be one unlocked door in schools. WHAT! Another, Senator Ron Johnson from Wyoming, blamed it on teachers, for not teaching values anymore! And of course, this weekend, just a couple of hours from where this murder took place, the NRA will be having its annual convention, with speakers like the self-same Rafael Cruz, the ex-President and others. It makes one so very mad. And if it doesn't, what's wrong with you! Even the President of Ukraine, who is battling to keep his country safe from invading Russian troops, took time out to offer his condolences to the citizens of Uvalde. 

I had to get it out of my system. Personally I hope that thousands of people demonstrate outside of the NRA convention, peacefully of course. Oh one last thing. The NRA convention has banned carrying weapons because the ex-president is speaking there. So while they rant on about 2nd Amdt rights, you're not allowed to exercise them at their own convention!! How's that for irony? Is irony the right word.

OK rant over, now on to a look at books. Since my last reading update, I've purchased a couple of books (I'll provide the synopses). I've finished a couple of more books as I wind down May and, of course, I've started a few others... more synopses for you). So let's go.

New Books

1. Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East by Keith Kyle (1991). I had seen this book a few years back but didn't buy it at the time. Recently I read a sort of primer on Suez and thought about this book again. I hope it gets more into the surrounding histories and personalities involved in this crisis.

"Keith Kyle has drawn on a wealth of documentary evidence to tell this fascinating political, military, and diplomatic story of how Britain, France, and Israel colluded in attacking Egypt, ostensibly to protect the Suez Canal, but in reality to depose Gamal Abdul Nasser . The US opposition to this scheme forced an ignominious withdrawal, and Nasser was triumphant. Above all, Britain's imperial posture was decisively over. "Suez" is acknowledged as the classic work on the subject."

2. Malice by John Gwynne (The Faithful and the Fallen #1 / 2021). This is a new series for me. I think I saw a review of this book or another by John Gwynne and I thought I should check him out. I do like me a good Fantasy story. 😃

"The world is broken. . .and it can never be made whole again.

Corban wants nothing more than to be a warrior under King Brenin's rule -- to protect and serve. But that day will come all too soon. And the price he pays will be in blood.

Evnis has sacrificed -- too much it seems. But what he wants -- the power to rule -- will soon be in his grasp. And nothing will stop him once he has started on his path.

Veradis is the newest member of the warband for the High Prince, Nathair. He is one of the most skilled swordsman to come out of his homeland, yet he is always under the shadow of his older brother.

Nathair has ideas -- and a lot of plans. Many of them don't involve his father, the High King Aquilus. Nor does he agree with his father's idea to summon his fellow kings to council.

The Banished Lands has a violent past where armies of men and giants clashed in battle, the earth running dark with their heartsblood. Now, the stones weep red and giant wyrms stir, and those who can still read the signs see a danger far worse than all that has come before. . ."

3. Bedelia by Vera Caspary (1945). I had previously read and enjoyed Laura by Caspary. Jo and I have enjoyed the movie based on Laura quite a few times since. Bedelia was also turned into a movie. I'm looking forward to trying the book. This copy is a first edition hard cover and it does show it. Nicely for me, Jo took the time to fix the cover as it was falling apart. Book looks great now.

"Long before Desperate Housewives, there was Bedelia: pretty, ultra femme, and “adoring as a kitten.” A perfect housekeeper and lover, she wants nothing more than to please her insecure new husband, who can’t believe his luck. But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a “kitten with claws of steel”—a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake.

Caspary builds this tale to a peak of psychological suspense as her characters are trapped together by a blizzard. The true Bedelia, the woman who chose murder over a life on the street, reveals how she turns male fantasies of superiority into a deadly con."

Just Finished

(I've finished two books since my last update, one history, one graphic novel, both excellent)

1. The Sandman Book 1 by Neil Gaiman (this contains the first 20 issues of the series.). I've enjoyed a few of the books by Gaiman; Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods. This was an excellent intro to a fascinating series.

"I saw The Sandman Book One by Neil Gaiman in my local book store while I was out shopping with my wife the other day. Since I knew I might have time to spare while she looked in stores, I bought it and sat outside one, beginning to read it. (Yes that's my story and I'm standing by it!). The book is a collection of the 1st 20 graphic novels in this series. Well, now I'm going to have to get Books 2 - 4 and I think also Death: The Deluxe Edition because she appears in this collection and was automatically one of my favorite characters.

So simply put, The Sandman was captured by a human, er... magician. He was trying to capture Sandman's sister, Death, but failed. His reason was that by capturing Death, Death would no longer exist. However, having captured Sandman, he keeps him locked up for years. Without Sandman (aka Dream) around to control the world's dreaming, everything goes somewhat crazy. People spend years just dreaming or trying to stay awake. The book focuses on certain people in the early chapters; e.g. Unity, who is basically in a coma, is raped while so and has a child. This will be resurrected in later chapters.

Sandman finally escapes and now has to spend the next chapters straightening things out. Some of his creatures have left his realm while he has been incarcerated and he's also lost some of his 'equipment', his helm, etc. so the next chapters involve him searching for these artifacts and beings. It's a fascinating adventure and we get to meet other characters, John Constantine, Death, etc. There are other smaller stories, like The Dream of a Thousand Cats and his work with William Shakespeare that add to the richness of this series.

Great artwork, great stories. The more I read Neil Gaiman, the more I enjoy and appreciate his imagination and story - telling. So what next, Death or Book 2? (4.5 stars)"

2. The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz (2020).

"The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War is the first novel by American author and historian Catherine Grace Katz. It covers the last meeting between President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Yalta in the Ukraine. The purpose of the meetings is to coordinate the final battle against Hitler's Germany, to sort out the independence of Poland and to sort out a future world order, aka the UN. Winston Churchill brought along his daughter, WAAF officer, Sarah Churchill. FDR brought his daughter Ann Roosevelt and US Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Averill Harriman and brought his daughter Kathy. Stalin had a daughter, Svetlana but he didn't not bring her. In fact he didn't have much of a relationship with her.

It's an interesting, involved historical story, made more fascinating by the involvement of the daughters. We wander back and forth between the daughters, as they accompany their fathers to the conference, flash back into the lives before, their relationships within their families and their personal relationships and their efforts to help during the conference. 

We are also provided with an excellent perspective on the conference, it's importance and many of the historical events leading up to it. It's a rich story, filled with wonderful personalities, the people who helped end the war and even the results of their deliberations. Was the Yalta conference a success or a failure. Catherine Katz presents the history logically, offering personal perspectives, correspondence and the thoughts of the participants. It's a rich, entertaining, thoughtful view of an important part of WWII history. The women each had their tragedies and life difficulties, with relationships, with the parents and were complex, intelligent, thoughtful women. Such a fascinating, well written story. (4.0 stars)"

Currently Reading

1. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Ursula K. Le Guin (2019). I recently finished a similar book on philosopher Hannah Arendt. I'm looking forward to reading this one as Le Guin is one of my favorite authors.

"Ursula K. Le Guin was one of our most imaginative writers, a radical thinker, and a feminist icon. The interviews collected here span 40 years of her pioneering and prolific career.

When she began writing in the 1960s, Ursula K. Le Guin was as much of a literary outsider as one can be: she was a woman writing in a landscape dominated by men, she wrote genre at a time where it was dismissed as non-literary, and she lived out West, far from fashionable east coast literary circles. The interviews collected here--covering everything from her Berkeley childhood to her process of world-building; from her earliest experiments with genre to envisioning the end of capitalism--highlight that unique perspective, which conjured some of the most prescient and lasting books in modern literature."

Women Authors I've Been Enjoying - Mo Hayder

Mo Hayder

Mo Hayder lived from 1962 - 2021 and created the Jack Caffery mystery series, as well as standalone novels. I have read the first two of the Jack Caffery series thus far, Birdman and The Treatment. I have 4 more of her books on my shelf to enjoy.

1. The Devil of Nanking (2004).

"With the redolent atmosphere of Ian Rankin and the spine-chilling characters of Thomas Harris, Mo Hayder's The Devil of Nanking, takes the reader on an electrifying literary ride from the palatial apartments of yakuza kingpins to deep inside the secret history of one of the twentieth century's most brutal events: the Nanking Massacre. A young Englishwoman obsessed with an indecipherable past, Grey comes to Tokyo seeking a lost piece of film footage of the notorious 1937 Nanking Massacre, footage some say never existed. Only one man can help Grey. A survivor of the massacre, he is now a visiting professor at a university in Tokyo. But he will have nothing to do with her. So Grey accepts a job in an upmarket nightspot, where a certain gangster may be the key to gaining the professor's trust. An old man in a wheelchair surrounded by a terrifying entourage, the gangster is rumored to rely on a mysterious elixir for his continued health. Taut, gritty, sexy, and harrowing, The Devil of Nanking is an incomparable literary thriller set in one of the world's most fascinating cities-Tokyo-from an internationally best-selling author."

2. Ritual (Jack Caffery #2 / 2008).

"Just after lunch on a Tuesday in April, nine feet under water, police diver Flea Marley closes her gloved fingers around a human hand. The fact that there's no body attached is disturbing enough. Yet more disturbing is the discovery, a day later, of the matching hand. Both have been recently amputated, and the indications are that the victim was still alive when they were removed.

DI Jack Caffery has been newly seconded to the Major Crime Investigation Unit in Bristol. He and Flea soon establish that the hands belong to a boy who has recently disappeared.

Their search for him - and for his abductor - lead them into the darkest recesses of Bristol's underworld, where drug addiction is rife, where street-kids sell themselves for a hit, and where an ancient evil lurks; an evil that feeds off the blood - and flesh - of others ..."

3. Skin (Jack Caffery #4 / 2009).

"When the decomposed body of a young woman is found, it appears that she’s committed suicide -- and that’s how the police want to leave it. But DI Jack Caffery isn’t sure: he’s on the trail of a predator, and for the first time in a long time he feels scared. Police diver Flea Marley is beginning to wonder whether her relationship with Caffery could go beyond the professional -- until a discovery that changes everything. This time not even Caffery can help her."

4. Gone (Jack Caffery #5 / 2010).

"When a car is taken by force, with an eleven-year-old girl inside, Detective Jack Caffery knows this is a carjacking unlike any other. Sergeant Flea Marley, head of the Police Underwater Search Unit, has a theory that the car-jacker is far more dangerous than everyone thinks. Soon the perpetrator will choose another car with another child in the back seat…"

The complete listing of Hayder's work can be found at this link. Now I'm going to take the dogs out and feed them and Jo and I are going to have a nice lunch at Benino's and play 3 games of Sequence. 😀 Have a great weekend!