I’m just finishing up The Burma Campaign by Frank McLynn.
It’s an entertaining read, but the author has the habit of taking very definitive sides in the (multiple) clashes of personality that took place during this time period - and, once he’s done so, he can see no good in the guy in the wrong and no bad in the guy in the right.
The problem with this approach is that it is hard to make sense of what actually happened from the portrayal in this book.
To give an example, the author clearly thinks Wingate was a lunatic and a charlitan. Fair enough, others thought the same. But the author has simply no explaination as to how this person managed to charm his way into power, to create the Chindits - according to the author, Wingate was hated by just about everyone and was self-evidently crazy, to the point of being positively disfunctional. He must have had some ability to convince, or he’d never have got where he was - but you’d never know it from this book.
I’m having one of those, kinda broke-can’t afford a holiday sorta summers—and my husband read me The Grapes of Wrath—Then I didn’t feel so hard up—hey get on to that poorly paying job, look at these folks—Now I’m reading The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck–another ‘people with hard lives’ book, and I feel very wealthy
Finished The Crack In The Lens a tale from the youth of Sherlock Holmes. It attempts to explain how Sherlock became Sherlock, and various idiosyncrasies. It was OK, but in general I was unimpressed.
This weekend, I finished Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters. Waters is great at taking writing styles from the past (In Fingersith’s case, Dickensian-style melodrama and in The Little Stranger’s, gothic horror) but adding a modern perspective. There are some twists in Fingersmith so far-fetched they made me yell out “C’mon! Really??!” but some that caught me completely off guard.
I think Waters has joined my list of go-to authors, the ones I pick up when I need a good story and my brain needs a workout.
Finished Kathryn Stockett’s The Help over the weekend, and liked it, although the ending was a bit more anticlimactic than I would’ve liked. I’ll still see the movie when it comes out next month.
Also made some progress with Theodore Sorensen’s massive Kennedy. Now reading his chapter on the economic problems with which JFK dealt (esp. tax policy, unemployment due to automation, more and more high school dropouts unable to find good work, and a balance-of-payments crisis as Western Europe’s economy picked up steam), something I knew relatively little about.
This seemed like the right place to mention this, since Donald Ray Pollock’s new book has been mentioned a few times. Don will be interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR today.
I finished Skippy dies and can wholeheartedly agree with the posters who said it’s an amazing book. Didn’t know what to read next so decided to pick one of books mentioned a few posts up and devoured Johannes Cabal the Necromancer and Johannes the Detective within a span of two weeks. I have now started Rule 34 by Charles Stross
Finished reading through the Lonely Planet: New York City guidebook in preparation for our trip next spring. Seems an interesting place. It will be somewhat refreshing to spend time in a smaller place like NYC for a change. Just over eight months until we leave.
I enjoyed Winesburg, Ohio myself. But Main Street is definitely better. Lewis based in on his own hometown in Minnesota, and his father was a small-town doctor too.
Finished The Trouble With Demons the third in the Raine Benares series. The series is OK, but starting to wear thin on me. I am finding is somewhat redundant. I will read the next two however.
Finished Ghost Story, Jim Butchers newest Dresden book. I have already commented in the thread devoted to it.
If I said as much as I wished, I would spoil it for those who haven’t read it yet, so I will simply copy the comment here.
IMO Butcher continues to grow as a writer, but I found this book rather bleak. (Perhaps that is more the current mindset of the reader than the book, I’m not sure.)
But there were some interesting twists and I was fine with how Butcher resolved things.
Based on comments last year I held off on Changes until Ghost Story was published, so I’m about 80% through the first one now. Ye Gods, things just keep adding up on poor Dresden in this one. Unfortunately, I did not catch the spoiler alert in Side Jobs about the last story therein, so I kinda know how the Changes story ends…someone give me a heads up on this:
Do we find out in Changes who killed Dresden? If so, was it Kincaid with a high-powered rifle from miles away, like he said he would do it if he needed to, and like Butcher foreshadowed in the beginning of Changes? .
So obviously I’ll start August reading Ghost Story. Most of my books are packed up pending a move, so I will probably be ransacking the rest of my Kindle files for something to read. A couple of options that I have, because I started the first couple of pages already:
Gerald (?) Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe. Sounded clever, is a bit slow on its first couple of pages.
Patrick Rothfuss’s Wise Man’s Fear, but I’ll have to read the summarizing web comic for Name of the Wind again first.
G.R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons. Not sure if I should hold off until the holidays for that one.
I finished a couple of other books: Stephen Budiansky’s Perilous Fight, documenting U.S. high-seas naval operations during the War of 1812. Very well written, very enjoyable, with one significant defect: it doesn’t talk about the Great Lakes or Lake Champlain, except to summarize the major battles. I would have liked more about that.
I was going to read The Devil All the Time on Wednesday, but I had a whopping migraine and was having trouble concentrating, and I needed something stupid. So I had Maeve Binchy’s latest Minding Frankie, the usual about a bunch of Dubliners who get in each other’s business and make each other’s lives better and we are the world and it takes a village and children are our future and there’s someone for everyone if you’d just look right in front of you and open your eyes to the possibilities and every third person is named Declan or Fiona.
Then yesterday I read The Devil All the Time, and today I’ve just started a mystery by Ian Rankin called Resurrection Men. Back cover says he’s the “#1 bestselling mystery writer in the United Kingdom,” but I think this is the first book of his I’ve read.
