The mattries37315 reading thread of 2020

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The mattries37315 reading thread of 2020

1mattries37315
Editado: Jan 1, 2020, 3:45 pm

Hello everyone and Happy New Year,

The first book I'm reading this year is K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner, this was a Christmas present from my aunt and so I'm going to read it right away at the beginning of the year.

I've added my "home" reads into my "reading plan" for the year (see link below). My first "home" read will be On the Dignity of Man by Pico della Mirandola. And on the weekends I'm going to continue with my "tame"/religious book reading focusing on biographies of pioneers in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination beginning with A. G. Daniells: Shaper of Twentieth-Century Adventism by Benjamin McArthur.

I'm looking to get at least 45 books this coming year and you can check out which books from my ever expanding shelves I hope to get through this year in my 2020 Reading Plan post linked below.

2020 Reading Plan

2Peace2
Jan 1, 2020, 4:03 pm

Wishing you all the best for 2020. I hope you enjoy your reading.

3mattries37315
Jan 1, 2020, 4:44 pm

>2 Peace2: Thank you, wish you best in life and reading for 2020.

4libraryperilous
Jan 1, 2020, 5:10 pm

I need to bump the Kepner up my list. I received two baseball books for Christmas, but pitching is my favorite part of the sport. I look forward to your review of it.

I've been interested in Pico della Mirandola since reading Jo Walton's Thessaly trilogy.

5Narilka
Jan 1, 2020, 5:11 pm

Happy New Year and happy reading!

6YouKneeK
Jan 1, 2020, 6:49 pm

>1 mattries37315: Happy New Year. I always enjoy browsing your reading list each year. This year, there are very few on there I’ve read. I think Best Served Cold by Abercrombie is the only one. I’d like to read the Sanderson, Rothfuss, and Lynch books you listed someday if/when those series are ever completed.

7Sakerfalcon
Jan 2, 2020, 6:04 am

Wishing you all the best in life and in books for 2020.

8littlegeek
Jan 2, 2020, 1:48 pm

>1 mattries37315: OOOH, baseball is wonderous. (Although my team is in the doldrums rn, they did win 3 WS in the last decade!) That book sounds great.

9mattries37315
Jan 2, 2020, 3:49 pm

>4 libraryperilous: So far, it's been an interesting reading. Took me a bit to get use to his writing style, but things are clicking now.

>5 Narilka: Happy New Year and thank you!

>6 YouKneeK: Happy New Year! Just to let you know that Warbreaker by Sanderson is a standalone.

>7 Sakerfalcon: Thank you.

>8 littlegeek: It's been a 25-year wait for us in the South, hopefully in the next few years. So far it's been interesting (in a good way).

10libraryperilous
Jan 2, 2020, 3:55 pm

>8 littlegeek: Isn't it just about perfect? I love baseball so much. No other sport comes close.

>9 mattries37315: When I skimmed it, it seemed a bit heavy on anecdotes, but I'm not sure that's a correct impression.

11majkia
Jan 2, 2020, 4:28 pm

Happy New Year!

12littlegeek
Jan 2, 2020, 5:49 pm

>10 libraryperilous: To be honest, tennis is still and always my favorite sport, but I do love baseball.

13YouKneeK
Jan 2, 2020, 6:57 pm

>9 mattries37315: I prefer to wait even if the current book stands alone fine on its own, because then I would feel the need to re-read it when the next book comes out so everything is fresh in my mind. Especially since it sounds like it may be a few years yet based on Sanderson's latest State of the Sanderson.

In the unlikely event that I run out of other stuff I want to read, those are the kinds of things I’d probably start slotting into my schedule though.

14clamairy
Editado: Jan 4, 2020, 6:58 pm

Happy reading, Matt!

15mattries37315
Jan 5, 2020, 2:23 pm

>14 clamairy: Thank you!

16mattries37315
Jan 8, 2020, 5:06 pm

K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner

Baseball is a simple game; a pitcher throws a ball towards a batter who swings either missing or hitting the ball to put it into play. K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner explores the how the importance of the pitcher and the tools he uses has grown over 150 years of the sport as strategy has evolved along with and against it.

As the title of the book says, Kepner divides the book into ten chapters focusing on the different types of pitches that have endured throughout baseball history and some that have risen in prominence but have nearly faded away by the time of publication of the book. Through interviews and anecdotes from current and past players—both pitchers and hitters—that Kepner conducted himself or researched from past articles written as far back as the first decade of the 20th Century, the story of each pitch’s evolution and the prominent players that used them is discussed through particular careers and game situations that defined baseball history.

Kepner is extensive in his research in showing the history and the importance to the game that each pitch, through the careers of Hall of Famers or players that had spectacular runs for year but not an entire career. Yet Kepner had an issue with distinguish pitches that are very close to one another in one way or another though he tried his best, it wasn’t that I was looking for a tutorial on how to pitch but definitive elements about why pitches that appear similar to the casual fan are completely different and to me he didn’t quiet accomplish that.

K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches is a very good look at one of the most important positions in American sports over the course of 150 years and how the players who played the position were able to gain an advantage over their competitors.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Clive Tyler Kepner, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Out of the Ashes by Dick Couch and George Galdorisi.

17littlegeek
Jan 9, 2020, 11:23 am

>16 mattries37315: That sounds fascinating. I've always been a pitching slut.

18mattries37315
Jan 12, 2020, 6:16 pm

Out of the Ashes by Dick Couch and George Galdorisi

The combination of the refocusing of intelligence after 9/11 and Congressional budget cuts shuttered the original Op-Center, fifteen years later after the worst terrorist attack since 9/11 the new President decides to reestablish it. Out of the Ashes by Dick Couch and George Galdorisi relaunched Tom Clancy’s Op-Center series as former four-star admiral Chase Williams is tapped by a new President to relaunch Op-Center to avenge the latest terrorist attack and work to prevent the next one.

A rich Kuwaiti couple are assaulted in New York by upset Giants fans after a game resulting in the wife being braindead, her husband hires a Indonesian engineer/terrorist-for-hire that results in a attacks on four NFL stadiums and hacked other stadium’s PA to cause panic. In the wake of thousands of dead, the new President and his National Security Advisor decide to reform Op-Center are surprised when Paul Hood turns them down only to learn he has ALS, but did bring his recommended pick former Admiral Chase Williams who the President approves after along discussion. It takes Williams three months to get a skeleton version of Op-Center up and running with the focus on the Kuwaiti and the Indonesian who are taken out by Joint Special Operations Command team under Op-Center’s control. Almost a year and a half later, a Saudi prince in charge of a oil pipeline through Jordan and Syria finds the new Syrian government an obstacle and decides to have the U.S. get rid of it. Hacking a military drone, he makes it appear that the Syrians have missiles that can take out the newly arrived U.S. carrier group which sets off the U.S. military to begin planning an attack on Syria. The new leader of Syria goes to Iran to ask for help and the new Grand Ayatollah mines the Strait of Hormuz adding fuel to the Saudi prince’s plan. However, a civilian analyst realizes there is issue with the drone footage and send it to her former colleagues at the NRO who agree and determine the site is in Saudi Arabia but the captain of the ship she is on refuses to send the information up the chain of command. However, Op-Center intercepted the emails and redirected their JSOC team from investigating Syria to the site in Saudi Arabia only for the civilian analyst and a Navy helo pilot to take it upon themselves to go to the site and get shot down by the prince’s on-site leader and captured. The JSOC team rescues the two women, “interview” everyone on the site, and send the information to Op-Center which is sent to the White House stopping all plans for an attack on Syria. But the President orders a strike on Iran’s mining capabilities, which results in the Iranian leader to order a Sarin attack in Washington as retaliation. Even though Williams warns the FBI Director repeatedly, the attack still occurs. After Williams gives the President the information his team had collected, the President orders the death of the Grand Ayatollah and destroys the Iranian navy as retaliation. The civilian analyst loses her job and the helo pilot her wings, but both are recruited by Op-Center.

The book suffered not from two authors but two different stories that could have each made a good book being shortened and mashed together. This resulted in the actual Op-Center portions of the book being shafted with only Chase Williams the only character connected with it being given depth and character interactions shown being stilted and dry in comparison to the scenes in the Middle East were the characters and dialogue were more rounded and livelier. Yet despite the mashed together stories, Couch and Galdorisi did one other “mistake” and that was the helo pilot and civilian analyst’s rogue trip seemed more Hollywood than reality which the author’s were at pains to portray actually though there was a goal in mind as seen at the end of the book though it had been telegraphed the entire second half of the book. Yet the book was fast moving and kept the reader interested if you were able to figure out quickly that it was essentially set up for the future books.

Out of the Ashes restarts the Op-Center franchise though a book that contained two stories that would have been good books on their own but were forced together by either the decision of the authors or by the publisher. Dick Couch and George Galdorisi gave an interesting preview of what they might bring the series though it could also very easily make one not continue given the issues with the book.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Out of the Ashes by Dick Couch and George Galdorisi, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood.

19mattries37315
Editado: Jan 19, 2020, 5:35 pm

On the Dignity of Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

The Renaissance was a time of reevaluation of philosophical and theological teachings in various forms and the results at times were interesting and strange. On the Dignity of Man contains three treatises by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola including the titular treatise has been called the “manifesto of the Renaissance”.

The “Oration on the Dignity of Man” is Pico’s justification of the importance of the human quest for knowledge within a Neoplatonic frame as well as an introduction to his unpublished 900 thesis in which he believed provided complete and sufficient basis for the discovery of all knowledge. The second treatise, “On Being and the One”, is an attempted reconciliation between Platonic and Aristotelian writings on the relative place of being and “the one” and a refutation of opposing arguments. The finale treatise, “Heptaplus”, is a mystic-allegorical exposition of the creation according to the seven Biblical senses, elaborates on his idea that different religions and traditions describe the same God.

The titular treatise of this collection is the best of the bunch as Pico is eloquent in his thoughts, justifications, and introducing his thesis. The other two treatise are a combination of Christian, pagan philosophy, and Jewish thought which ultimate stretches credibility even though Pico tries his best to bring forth his ideas. However even thought I’m not truly well read in Plato and Aristotle, even I know they do not agree while Pico tries his best to make them agree. Pico’s belief that all other traditions and religions were pale imitations of future Christianity and thus worthy to be combined with Scripture to bring forth quasi-theological ideas like St. Augustine.

On the Dignity of Man is a collection of treatise by Giovanni Pico in which the titular treatise is the best of the bunch while the other two are well written but utterly worthless due to Pico’s thinking.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of On the Dignity of Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, feel free to comment here or there.

20mattries37315
Jan 22, 2020, 3:13 pm

The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood

War is hell, just imagine it lasting for an entire generation with armies crisscrossing the same ground again and again producing famine, depopulation, and disease all in the name of religion, nationalism, and then finally simple greed. C.V. Wedgwood’s The Thirty Years War covers nearly a half century of history from the causes that led to the conflict through its deadly progression and finally it’s aftereffects.

From the outset Wedgwood sets the German domestic and the continental political situations in focus by stating that everyone was expecting war but between Spain and the Dutch while the German economy was on the decline due to the rise of new trading patterns over the course of the last century. It was only with the succession of the Bohemian throne and the ultra-Catholic policies of the Ferdinand II after his election that started the war everyone knew was coming, sooner and further east than expected. The war began as a purely religious conflict that saw the Catholic German princes led by Emperor Ferdinand crush the Protestant opposition because many of the Protestants decided not to help one another until it was too late due to political conservatism that Ferdinand used to his advantage. It wasn’t until Gustavus Adolphus and the Swedes entered the conflict a decade later that the conflict turn slowly from religious to international and an extension of the Bourbon-Habsburg in which the former used first allies then their own troops to prevent the encirclement of France by both branches of the Habsburgs. The negotiations for the end of the war took nearly five years and would change as events in the field would change strategies until finally allied members of the Bourbon and Habsburgs would cut deals with the other side to quickly break deadlocks and achieve peace but how it took almost six years to stand down the armies to prevent chaos.

Wedgwood’s narrative historical style keeps the book a very lively read and makes the war’s progress advancing even when she’s relating how the continuous fighting was affecting the German population. She is very upfront with the men, and a few women, who influenced the conflict throughout it’s course from the great kings of Ferdinand II, Christian IV of Denmark, and Gustavus to the great princes Maximillian I of Bavaria, John George of Saxony, and Frederick Henry of Orange to the mercenary generals that gained in importance as the conflict continued like Albrecht von Wallenstein to finally the political masterminds of Richelieu and Mazarin. With such a large historical cast, Wedgwood’s writing keeps things simple and straight for the read thus allowing the conflict’s long drawn out nature to fully impact the reader and how it affected those out of power. And in describing the aftereffects, Wedgwood disarms many myths about the effects of the war that over three hundred years became considered fact.

The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood is an excellent narrative history of a conflict that saw the end of one kind of conflict and the beginnings of another with interesting personalities that fought and conducted policy around it while also showing the effects on the whole population. If you’re interested in seventeenth-century history or military history, this book is for you.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson.

21haydninvienna
Jan 23, 2020, 3:04 am

>20 mattries37315: Seconded. I read this as part of a course called "Government and Society in the Early Modern West" at uni about 40 years ago and remember it favourably.

There's a novel by Gunter Grass called (in English) The Meeting at Telgte about a part of the peace negotiations, and I remember that favourably as well.

22-pilgrim-
Jan 23, 2020, 7:34 am

>20 mattries37315:, >21 haydninvienna: OK, you two have got me; I will be looking for this.

23haydninvienna
Jan 23, 2020, 8:05 am

>22 -pilgrim-: *... cutting another notch...*

24mattries37315
Jan 29, 2020, 5:35 pm

Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson

Princesses, an atheistic god, two near immortals who have history, a zombie army, and an interesting magic system that involves color can only result in something very interesting happening. Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker follows two princesses in a strange land, a grumpy near immortal, and a god that doesn’t believe in himself as politics, religion, and personal conflicts swirl together to either bring peace or war.

Idrian princess Vivenna has been prepared her entire life to marry the God King but at the last moment her father sends her unprepared and carefree youngest sister Siri instead. Vivenna follows hoping of save her sister and meets with Lemex, her father spy in the city, and a team of mercenaries in his employ led by Denth. However, Lemex dies shortly thereafter, though not before bequeathing his large sum of BioChromatic Breath to her. Vivenna and Denth’s team begin making guerilla attacks against Hallandren's supply depots and convoys that will hopefully give the Idrians an advantage in the seemingly inevitable war all the time watched by one Vasher, a mysterious man who can use his Breath to Awaken objects and wielder of a sentient sword called Nightblood. Siri, after spending many terrified nights waiting for the God King to consummate the marriage, finds that he is not actually the feared entity that she thought, but has actually had his tongue cut out by his priests, making him nothing more than a figurehead. They bond as Siri teaches the God King to communicate, however she comes believes that the priests are secretly plotting to kill her and the God King if she produces an heir, and fears that Hallandren will soon launch a war against Idris. Siri finds potential allies in the unorthodox god Lightsong, who is plagued by nightmares of war and is struggling to discover his purpose, and the Pahn Kahl servants headed by Bluefingers. After being temporarily kidnapped by Vasher, Vivenna discovers that Denth is not working for her but against her, having been hired by an unknown third party to instigate the war with Idris, and she barely escapes their custody with her life. Vasher finds her after weeks hiding and living destitute in the Idrian slums of Hallandren. Together, Vivenna and Vasher work to undo the damage done by Denth and avert the war before Vivenna convinces Vasher to try and save her sister. However, Vasher is captured and tortured by Denth, who is revealed to have been working for the God King's Pahn Kahl servants, who are trying to incite war between the Idrians and Hallendren so that they can take gain their freedom. The servants capture Siri, kill many of the God King's priests, and throw the God King in the dungeon along with several gods including Lightsong. The Pahn Kahl, having gained the Commands to control the city's undead Lifeless army, send them to attack the Idrians and start the war. Lightsong sacrifices himself by giving the God King his Breath, which heals the king, giving him his tongue back and allowing him access to his godly cache of BioChromatic power and save Siri from being murdered. During this Vivenna uses her own budding powers to break into the God King's palace and free Vasher, who kills Denth. Vasher reveals that he is actually one of the Five Scholars, ancient beings who originally discovered the Commands for using BioChromatic Breath, and bestows upon the God King the code to awaken the city's secret army of nearly indestructible D'denir Lifeless soldiers that sent to destroy the Lifeless army before it can reach Idris. While Siri and the God King begin a new rule and life together, Vivenna joins Vasher as he sets out on another quest to a distant land.

The narrative of the story is divided between point-of-views of Siri, Vivenna, Lightsong, and Vasher thus giving a wide swath of the two distinct cultures and religions that have vast misunderstandings not only with one another but within themselves. Sanderson’s creation of such a unique magic system is by itself a reason to read the book because of just how innovative it is and how it’s still not completely understood by those who use it even a long-lived individual like Vasher who helped shaped what is already known. Sanderson’s princess swap at the beginning of the story caused instant character reexamination and growth that helps drive the narrative while at the same time Lightsong’s quest to figure himself out while the populous believes him to be a god was another unique perspective that helped pushed the narrative forward in many locations. There is so much that was good, that it’s hard to find something to criticize.

Warbreaker is a unique standalone book within Brandon Sanderson’s larger Cosmere that blends fascinating characters and cultures with a stunning magical system to create an amazing narrative. If you’re interested in reading a Sanderson book and don’t want to be stucked into a series, this is the book you should read.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Story of Wales by Jon Gower

25Narilka
Jan 29, 2020, 8:37 pm

>24 mattries37315: I liked Warbreaker a lot too.

26Sakerfalcon
Jan 30, 2020, 8:59 am

27mattries37315
Jan 30, 2020, 1:50 pm

>25 Narilka: >26 Sakerfalcon: I had heard so many good things, I was a little worried it would live up to the "hype". It didn't take me long to not worry any more.

28mattries37315
Editado: Fev 9, 2020, 5:48 pm

The Story of Wales by Jon Gower

The perception of Wales has changed over the past two millennia not only within its own borders, but also how others look at it. The Story of Wales by Jon Gower follows the 30,000-year history of the land that would one day become Wales that’s story is still being told today.

Beginning with a prehistoric burial during a warm period of the Ice Age era, Gower takes the reader through the human occupation of the 8,023 square miles that would become Wales. Until after the Roman occupation, the people within Wales were apart of the larger Briton culture, it was only after the Anglo-Saxons came that Wales came into being and the Welsh identity began to be formed. While both the evolving English and the evolving Welsh had many petty kingdoms eventually the English unite while the Welsh didn’t not, resulting in the larger kingdom slowly beginning to influence its smaller neighbors. After the Norman conquest, the Welsh were almost always on the cultural defensive until they finally were overthrown by Edward I. As a conquered people the Welsh attempted to keep themselves united but the things changed with the Welsh-descended Tudors making their leaders important but also saw them annexed by England resulting in English laws and language being more and more forced upon them for the next 400 years. Gower goes into the effects of the Reformation and later Nonconformity upon the Welsh as well as how the land, or more importantly what’s under the surface, lead to the nation becoming the first to be industrialized not England. Yet even with all the work, the Welsh were still oppressed as outside—English—money and ownership dominated them resulting the rise of labor unions resulting in first Welsh liberalism then later Labour beliefs in the 20th Century. Gower ends the book about how modern Welsh identity has been centered around saving the Welsh language and how it’s unique cultural traits are being revived and saved along with how the successes of Welsh Rugby have united the nation over the past century ultimately resulting the political devolution.

Boiling down millennia of history is not easy, but Gower does a remarkable good job at juggling the political, the cultural, and everything in between. However, how accurate some of the details are is a little questionable especially in relation to other nations as Gower has several mistakes especially relating to English history—Henry Tudor is mentioned as both a Lancastrian and Yorkist claimant within a few paragraphs—thus making it not a perfect book. Yet it feels that Gower, a Welshman himself, knows his Welsh history and facts thus making this a very reliable read.

The Story of Wales is fascinating read of a small nation that has survived its uniqueness throughout almost two millennia of facing a large political and cultural entity on its doorstep. Jon Gower knows Wales and its history thus making this a very good read for anyone of Welsh descent—like me—interested about where their ancestors came from.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Story of Wales by Jon Gower, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be rereading Cutting Edge by Jerome Preisler

29mattries37315
Editado: Fev 10, 2020, 1:04 pm

Cutting Edge by Jerome Preisler

In equatorial Africa as a small nation attempts to become a leader in the region through its offshore resources and becoming headquarters to information revolution for all of Africa, but who is in charge is suddenly up in the air. Cutting Edge is the sixth book of Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series written by Jerome Preisler, as Roger Gordian’s UpLink International takes over a pan-African fiberoptic network he unexpectedly finds himself against Harlan DeVane who’s attacked his company and tried to kill him already.

Offshore of Gabon two divers for a French technology company die after sabotaged by Harlan DeVane’s associates which leads to the company selling their fiberoptic network to UpLink and getting government approval even though DeVane bribed numerous politicians to stop it. Pete Nimec leads the Sword team as UpLink moves into the country as DeVane plans to strike at UpLink and Gordian himself. DeVane begins to harass UpLink’s buildup including an assault on a convoy, but as a distraction for his main strike against Gordian. DeVane activates his mercenary agent who activates his sleeper sell in the United States that stalks the Gordian family before finding a target, his daughter Julia. The DeVane’s crew abducts Julia from the greyhound rescue shelter she’s been volunteering at, killing one of the owners and her infant daughter in the process. After the police visit UpLink headquarters, Tom Ricci begins investigating her kidnapping skirting around the police to get evidence that quickly leads to the conclusion it’s the same man who he faced off in Ukraine and Ontario. DeVane sends Gordian a ransom message to dissolve his company immediately or his daughter dies, however before Gordian decides to do so Ricci finds where Julia is being kept and leads a Sword team that rescues her and kills the mercenary that’s trouble them for years. In the end, DeVane slinks away from Gabon.

Preisler emphasize characters and technology throughout the book, not at the expense the plot but the narrative was quickly transitioned from one time period to another until towards the end during Julia’s kidnapping. Though Preisler does a great job at exploring DeVane’s, Nimec’s, Ricci’s, and the mercenary’s characters in this book and keeps the reader hooked; yet the departures into technological explanations bogged the book down at times. This book was longer than the previous installment which resulted in a overall better book.

Cutting Edge is a return to the very good standard that Preisler established in this series after the substandard previous installment. With DeVane exit at the end of the book, the best subplot of the three of the last four books is finished with a bit of satisfaction for the reader that’s invested in the reading the series.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Cutting Edge by Jerome Preisler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz

30suitable1
Fev 9, 2020, 10:27 pm

>29 mattries37315:

Looks like cut-and-past strikes again.

31mattries37315
Fev 10, 2020, 1:05 pm

>30 suitable1: Thanks. Corrected.

32mattries37315
Editado: Fev 12, 2020, 9:37 am

White Sand Volume I by Brandon Sanderson

The desert planet of Taldain is locked between two suns so that that with one side is constantly in light and the other in constant darkness with powerful magic apparently only occurring amongst the sands on the dayside. The first volume of Brandon Sanderson’s White Sand graphic novel trilogy is an introduction to a new world of the Cosmere and another unique magic system.

Kenton, a weak but skilled sand master, tries to earn a higher-ranking position in the guild of sand masters by running the Mastrell's Path, despite the disapproval of his father, the Lord Mastrell. The day after Kenton proves himself on the Path, the sand masters gather for a ceremony where new rank advancements will be granted. One man, Drile, is demoted for having attempted to sell out himself and others as mercenaries. Just as Kenton is grudgingly granted the highest rank, his father is shot with an arrow, and an army of Kerztian warriors attacks. The sand masters, being surprised and unprepared, are soundly defeated. Just before his death, the Lord Mastrell unleashes a wave of power that leaves Kenton buried beneath the sand. After waking, Kenton is joined by Khrissalla, Baon, and two Darkside professors who are lost. They are searching for information about Khriss' late fiancé and the "sand mages" he sought. On the way to the nearest city, they are attacked by a small group of Kerztian warriors. Kenton's sand mastery suddenly proves to be inaccessible, but Baon drives the warriors away with his gun. Upon arriving in Kezare, Kenton's powers return with greater strength than ever, and he stands before the Taishin, who plan to disband the Diem of sand masters. He is granted the position of acting Lord Mastrell and is given two weeks to convince the Taishin otherwise. Kenton returns to the Diem and drives away the rebellious Drile, who Kenton believes was responsible for betraying the sand masters to the Kerztians. Elsewhere, Trackt Ais works to catch a crime lord, Sharezan, amid threats to her family. The Lady Judge meets with Ais and asks her to spy on Kenton. Meanwhile, Khriss inadvertently locates Loaten, an infamous Darksider, in her search for information. He offers little direct help but sets her on a path to meet with the leaders in the city. Ignorant of the role of the sand masters, and of Kenton's new station, she arrives at the Diem just as Drile returns to do battle with Kenton.

The story has all the hallmarks of Sanderson book with excellent execution of character introduction and conflict amongst the important members of the cast. The art of Julius Gopez and coloring of Ross A. Campbell bring this unique world and environment alive very well. However, while the elements that makes Sanderson, well Sanderson, are there the book also doesn’t feel like Sanderson. I do not want to blame scriptwriter Rik Hoskin for this, the change of format to graphic novel from the usual book could be the main factor and Hoskin could very well be the reason this story still reads like a Sanderson story but there is a noticeable difference from other Sanderson works. The other main issue I somewhat have is more biological than story, the color pigmentation of the characters is reversed from what it should be given the planetary environment they are living in unless there was a cosmic shift that changed things.

White Sands Volume I is a wonderful addition to Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere and is given a unique place in it with the graphic novel format. The art and color are amazing, yet the change from word medium to visual does have an impact on how Sanderson’s style comes across. Overall a very good beginning with story, characters, and atmosphere.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of White Sand by Brandon Sanderson, feel free to comment here or there.

33mattries37315
Editado: Fev 19, 2020, 12:10 pm

The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz

Months after confronting her sister and feeling that she is become far to well-known, Lisbeth Salander can’t help but stand up for the underdog as well get revenge on those that made her childhood hell. The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye is the fifth book of the Millennium series and second written by David Lagercrantz that follows Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist as they examine the twisted history of Sweden’s recent past.

Nearing the end of a two-month jail sentence for crimes committed while protecting August Balder, Lisbeth Salander observes that Bangladeshi prisoner Faria Kasi is tormented nightly by ruthless prisoner Beatrice "Benito" Andersson. Already needing to use a computer after a visit from her former guardian Holger Palmgren informs her that she was involved in something called the Registry. Suspicious, Salander forces the Warden to let her use his computer, where she learns the Registry is a secret project that places exceptional children in specific environments to test the effects on their growth. Salander asks journalist Mikael Blomkvist to investigate in her stead, pointing him to wealthy businessman Leo Mannheimer. Blomkvist learns that Mannheimer had been acting strangely lately and comes to suspect that not only does he have a twin, Dan Brody, but Brody has been going around pretending to be Mannheimer. Meanwhile Palmgren’s investigation alerts Rakel Greitz who poisons him and takes the file. Blomkvist arrives too late, but Palmgren tells him to find Hilda von Kanterborg, a former Registry agent whose initials were in the file, before he dies. Blomkvist tracks Hilda down and, though she doesn't believe Dan stole Leo's identity, she confirms that they are twins. She also tells him that Greitz tried to take Salander away from her family as a child as part of the experiment, only for her to react violently and escape. Blomkvist confronts Mannheimer who, after saving him from Greitz' henchman Benjamin, reveals that he is Dan and why he’s impersonating his brother. While this is happening, the Warden of Flodberga makes plans to transfer Benito to another prison. Upon learning this, Benito prepares to kill Faria, which she reveals she was hired to do by Faria's brothers. However, Salander stops and severely injures her, sending her to the hospital. After Salander is released, she investigates Faria's history, learning how she ended up in prison and that her brother Bashir hired Benito. Salander tricks Bashir into confessing on video and convinces Faria’s younger brother Khalil to do the same to the police for a murder he committed. She then plans to go after Greitz after talking with Blomkvist, only to be kidnapped by Bashir and an escaped Benito. She gets an alert out to her hacker allies, who manage to track the truck they're in and alert the police. With Faria's help, the police find them just as Salander escapes and arrest Benito, Bashir, and their colleagues. After recovering from a wound sustained in her escape, Salander confronts and subdues Greitz and Benjamin, deciding to spare the former so she can suffer the shame of her reputation being ruined as she's arrested. Faria's charges are lowered and she's presumably released. The people involved with the Registry are sent to prison as Millennium publishes Leo and Dan's story. Everyone who knew Palmgren gather for his funeral, where Salander makes a speech about her guardian.

While the novel is entertaining in areas, the plot is sluggish and the tension relying on an overreliance of annoying tricks. In fact, the book doesn’t feel like a Salander novel as it’s labeled because compared to the Larrson trilogy she’s only an instigator to the plot while Blomkvist feels to be more important of the two main characters. Lagercrantz’s own created characters were focused on more than Salander thus making it seem like she’s only billed on the cover to sell books. Its hard to know that if this book wasn’t connected with the Millennium what I would think of it, but given it is I’ve got to rate it the lowest of the series so far even after a good previous installment.

The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye feels off from the rest of the Millennium series and doesn’t measure up to David Lagercrantz’s previous effort in the series. While some parts are entertaining and add to Salander’s mythos, she is in the background of a book that bills her as the main character.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye by David Lagercrantz, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Sahara by Clive Cussler

34mattries37315
Fev 19, 2020, 12:14 pm

Sahara by Clive Cussler

Within the vastness of the Malian Sahara hides numerous mysteries, some like the desert itself are deadly and some will change history. Sahara is the eleventh book in Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series as the titular character traverses back and forth across to save the world from a threat created from chemical pollutants.

A week before the surrender at Appomattox the ironclad CSS Texas runs the gauntlet of Union ships and artillery down the James River then heads out to the Atlantic after displaying their prisoner, Abraham Lincoln. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sets up a hoax assassination with the murder of an actor at Ford’s Theater by setting up John Wilkes Booth. In 1931 Kitty Mannock is flying over the Sahara in quest of a new aviation record when a sandstorm takes out her engine and she crashes in the desert; she dies ten days later but after finding an iron ship. In the present a convoy of tourists crossing the Sahara reach a scheduled stop at a village in the country of Mali where they are attacked by red-eyed savages who kill and eat them, with only the tour guide escaping. Meanwhile, working in Egypt on an archaeological mapping of the Nile, Dirk Pitt rescues Dr. Eva Rojas, a scientist working for the World Health Organization, from assassins sent by the military dictator of Mali Zateb Kazim with the backing of French businessman Yves Massarde. Eva’s WHO team flies to Mali investigate a mysterious disease while Pitt, Al Giordino, and Rudy Gunn are ordered up the Niger River to find a pollutant that is causing red tide to mushroom out of control and where that pollutant is coming from. The WHO team and the NUMA trio run afoul of Kazim and Massarde with the former captured and sent to a unknown gold mine as slave labor and the former running around Mali to find the source of the pollutant that Gunn has identified and escaped the country to report on. Pitt and Giordino find out Massarde’s detoxification facility is the culprit but are captured and sent to the gold mine, but escape over the desert and only saved by finding Kitty Mannock’s plane and salvage the parts to escape to Algeria via land yacht. Once in Algeria, Pitt and Giordino lead a UN rescue team on an assault on the gold mine to rescue foreign nations then battle the Malians in an abandoned French Foreign Legion fort until US Special Forces arrive in relief and kill Kazim in the process. Pitt and Giordino capture Massarde, poison him with contaminated water so he dies as a savage madman. The two then venture out into the Sahara using Mannock’s journal to locate the CSS Texas and find Lincoln.

The Lincoln subplot—including everything connected with it—is the major reason this book barely gets the rating it does, it’s bad and ruins an otherwise good book. The next complaint is the “happy ever after” type ending which features the secondary characters introduced in the books, which along with the previous subplot soured the ending of the book. Cussler’s female characters were an assortment of good and bad, the tertiary characters like soldiers in the UN rescue team who were actual soldiers not medics stood out because the major female character (Rojas) might have been a doctor but was two-dimensional. The main plot with Pitt, Giordino, and the major antagonists was actually very good as well as the Kitty Mannock subplot, however everything else just brought it down the overall book.

Sahara is a book that was good but could have been better if not for subplot and characterization choices that Clive Cussler made. Pitt is at his action-packed adventurer best, but it was fringe features that distracted me from enjoying things.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Sahara by Clive Cussler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Into the Fire by Dick Couch and George Galdorisi.

35mattries37315
Fev 26, 2020, 7:59 am

Into the Fire by Dick Couch and George Galdorisi

The hermit kingdom is looking to take on an apparently limping superpower by once again scoring a propaganda coup by taking a naval crew hostage, but this time Op-Center and a resilient US Navy Commander have different ideas. Into the Fire is Dick Couch and George Galdorisi’s second installment in the Op-Center franchise reboot which sees North Korea and the United States on a collision course for war and the crew of a US ship caught in the middle.

After finding substantial reserves of oil and other energy resources in the Yellow Sea, North Korea negotiates with China to get military equipment in exchange for said energy resources, so China doesn’t have to depend on the Middle East. However, to get those energy resources North Korea needs to expand its claim in the area and plans to do so by taking a crew of a US Navy ship as hostage believing the U.S. would agree for something so simple as changing the lines of their territorial waters. Masking their operation at sea with troop movements to the DMZ, the North Koreans target the minesweeper USS Milwaukee during a joint exercise with South Koreans. The Milwaukee’s captain, Kate Bigelow, unknowing that she’s the target leads two North Korean ships on a chase before a missile strike cripples the ship forcing her ground it on a small South Korean island not far from the North Korean coast. Just before the attack, Op-Center’s top Geek Aaron Bleich notifies Director Chase Williams and begins following the high-seas drama until the ship’s grounding. Williams sends Op-Center’s Joint Special Operations Command team to Japan where it gets together with local SEAL team to find a way to get the crew off the island as the North Koreans and a US Fleet are at literal arms-length from the island on the verge of war. Using an experimental minisub to ferry the crew from the island to waiting nuclear subs, the JSOC stops a North Korean commando unit before calling in cruise missiles to destroy the Milwaukee. However North Korea’s supreme leader wants to send a message to the world and activates a terror cell in New York to destroy the UN, but Bleich’s Geek team finds out and notifies Williams who sends in a FBI Critical Incident Response Group team to New York to stop the attack. After one of the North Koreans calls her mother to say goodbye, not believing her leader’s promise they’ll make it out alive, Bleich’s team gives the CIRG and NYPD a location near the UN to surround and prevent the team from accomplishing their mission though they commit suicide and takeout a CIRG helicopter with a quarter of the team. The US and China come to an agreement about isolating North Korea and the energy resources in the Yellow Sea, but neither side is happy especially the Chinese at the loss of face at North Korea’s actions.

The focus on one plot was in instant improvement over the initial book of the reboot of the franchise helmed by Couch and Galdorisi, then add a quickly moving story that keeps the reader engaged throughout. The Op-Center team in Washington headed by Williams and prominently featuring Bleich and his Geek Team was well executed, yet the Op-Center personnel with the JSOC team seemed a little heavy on direct involvement from office personnel like Mike Rodgers did in the original series. Kate Bigelow was the character who did the heavy lifting through the book and was well written, unfortunately her first officer was a cliché out-of-his-depth liability that was a poor attempt to make Bigelow look better when she didn’t need it.

Into the Fire is a action-packed, quick moving thriller that keeps the reader hooked from beginning to end. Overall Dick Couch and George Galdorisi brought together an intriguing plot and great cast of characters to bring forth a good book, though there are missteps it doesn’t hurt the book too much to make the reader lose interest.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Into the Fire by Dick Couch and George Galdorisi, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Henry Clay: The Essential American by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler.

36Peace2
Fev 26, 2020, 10:26 am

>28 mattries37315: The Story of Wales sounds really interesting.

37mattries37315
Fev 26, 2020, 1:04 pm

>36 Peace2: Gower does a fantastic job, my maternal great-grandfather came from Wales in the 1890s so I've always been interested in the history and culture of the country not related with larger British history.

38clamairy
Editado: Mar 1, 2020, 5:47 pm

>24 mattries37315: I am so glad you enjoyed Warbreaker, but it reminds me that I really need to make myself start this one.

39mattries37315
Mar 8, 2020, 7:37 pm

Henry Clay: The Essential American by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler

One—if not the most—of the most influential politicians in American history who never became President, though he tried several times, was praised and vilified throughout his life then slowly forgotten in the century and a half after his death. Henry Clay: The Essential American by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler follows the dramatic political rise, the stunning setbacks, and tragic family life of the man who became Andrew Jackson’s great enemy and Abraham Lincoln’s great hero.

The Heidler’s begins moments after Clay’s death and describes the journey of his body to Lexington with the outpouring of honor along the way then turn their attention as to how Clay became so honored. Born in eastern Virginia as a scion of a long-time colonial family and fatherless early in life, Clay was fortunate to have a stepfather and several mentors who gave him opportunities which he took hold off and used to establish himself in the legal profession in Kentucky. Though idealistic early in his political career, especially on the issue of slavery in the state, Clay downplayed it sooner after to gain connections especially through marriage and accumulation of wealth in which slaves were an important facet though he would continue to advocate for his brand for emancipation throughout his life. Clay’s time in the Kentucky legislature foreshadowed the parliamentary advancements he would bring to the House and later the Senate, especially the Committee of the Whole which allowed Clay as Speaker of both the Kentucky and U.S House to join debates. A staunch Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican, Clay’s views and future policies would shift to include several Hamiltonian policies like a National Bank and tariffs but in Republican language. Upon his arrival in Washington in 1811 until his death 41 years later, Clay would be the most influential man in the city even though he never resided in the White House which would be occupied by either his allies or his avowed enemies though he would campaign for the Presidency either actively or with the am to from 1824 to 1848. Three times during his time in Washington, he championed the Union in the 1820 Missouri Compromise, the 1833 Nullification crisis, and the Compromise of 1850 his final political act as slavery threatened to ripe the country apart.

First and foremost this was a political biography which the Heidlers expertly detailed for the reader, however Clay was a family man with a particularly tragic tinge as all of his daughters predeceased their parents with Clay’s namesake dying in the Mexican-American War while another was to spend half his life in an asylum. The issue of slavery is given significant space in various parts of the book as the Heidlers put Clay’s views in context of their time and how he was as a slaveowner, but don’t excuse him for hold human beings as property. Though not stated explicitly this was also a light history of the Whig party primarily because, until slavery tore it apart, Henry Clay embodied the party even when younger members decided to jettison its ideological center for Presidential victory.

Henry Clay: The Essential American details the life of the most important politician of the Antebellum era. The husband-wife historian team of David S. and Jeanne Heidler write a very scholarly yet lively history of the man and his times that gives the reader a view of how important their subject was during his time on the national scene.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Henry Clay: The Essential American by David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

40mattries37315
Mar 11, 2020, 6:59 pm

A.G. Daniells: Shaper of Twentieth Century Adventism by Benjamin McArthur

The man tasked with heading the implementation of a new administrative structure of a growing world-wide church and later to lead that church after the death of its prophet. A.G. Daniells: Shaper of Twentieth Century Adventism by Benjamin McArthur follows the life of the longest-serving General Conference President in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist church which simultaneously corresponded with a rapidly changing world and church in the first two decades of the 20th Century.

McArthur efficiently covers Daniells early life in Iowa and his humble beginning in service of the denomination as a minister in the Iowa Conference and a missionary in Texas before being called to be a missionary in New Zealand. Then beginning with Daniells time in New Zealand and then Australia, McArthur details not only how Daniells time in the Southern Hemisphere made him a strong supporter of world missions but also brought forth his administrative skill as this faraway branch of the growing worldwide church innovated in bureaucracy to compensate for the distance away from world headquarters in the United States. Daniells return to the United States was the precursor to his election at the 1901 General Conference session to be President and the much-needed administrative overhaul of the church using the model Daniells had helped shape while overseas. McArthur’s attention to detail examples how this overhaul not only shaped the overall church, but Daniells presidency which was early dominated with the controversy with John Harvey Kellogg and the medical establishment of the church then the resulting fallout and need to reestablish the medical wing of the denomination. Among the biggest struggles McArthur’s book brought out was the budgetary reform to get the denomination out of debt, which played into the controversy with Kellogg, when building new institutions. But one thing was always in the forefront of McArthur’s analysis of Daniells’ presidency—and before—his relationship to Ellen G. White, whose opinion mattered not only to church officials but regular church members. And it would be his relationship with White and her prophetic gift that would end his presidency due to the rise of fundamentalism that crept into denomination and Daniells perceived lack of belief in her gift. McArthur closes out Daniells life with how he became an advisor to his two successors as well as his authorship of two important Adventist books including defending White’s prophetic gift.

Given the significance of Daniells time as General Conference president, McArthur focused the bulk of his biography on the 21 years he served in that office with extensive scholarship as seen in the citations at the end of each chapter. Though covering many topics over Daniells life, McArthur’s prose was engaging and allowing the reader to understand the interconnectedness of numerous issues Daniells had to deal without overwhelming them. One of the interesting things McArthur did early in the book to give context to Daniells and his time was comparing him important non-denominational figures who had a similar impact in their professions as he did with the General Conference, one of which was Theodore Roosevelt. But the most important facet of the biography was Daniells’ relationship with Ellen White and the gift of prophecy which McArthur’s scholarship is shown at its best.

A.G. Daniells: Shaper of Twentieth Century Adventism is not only the biography of one man but shows how the Seventh-day Adventist church’s administrative structure was reset to accomplish its mission to the world. Benjamin McArthur’s excellent scholarship and engaging writing gives the reader an insight into how significant this time in the church’s history is important for today and how one individual was able to use his skills to help move the denomination forward.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of A. G. Daniells: Shaper of Twentieth-Century Adventism by Benjamin McArthur, feel free to comment here or there.

41mattries37315
Mar 15, 2020, 3:06 pm

Harleen by Stjepan Sejic

She has become one of the most popular comic characters in the past few decades though her character began on the greatest superhero animated series of all-time. Harleen is a character origin story written and drawn by Stjepan Sejic about Dr. Harleen Quinzel’s turn into Joker’s right-hand woman Harley Quinn.

Professionally struggling psychiatrist Dr. Harleen Quinzel doesn’t know what to do with her career as her theory on the suppression of empathy for too long as part of the flight or fight response results in losing it and being mentally unbalanced. After a failed grant presentation and a late night of drinking her disappointment away, Harleen is walking home when she suddenly finds herself at gunpoint across from The Joker only for Batman to save her. The next day she is surprised when Lucius Fox gives her a grant from the Wayne Foundation to pursue research on her theory at Arkham Asylum. Harleen interviews the inmates, a who’s who of Batman’s rogue’s gallery, except Joker until she breaks down and does so. All throughout this time, she can’t sleep which is affecting her perception and thinking. The Joker quickly realizes she’s his ticket out and through his contacts gets her research to manipulate her in the future. But Harleen’s theory doesn’t sit well with Harvey Dent who wants her to quit, which she refuses and days later he is attacked with acid to the face. But the mob boss who attacked him is kidnapped by rogue police officers who execute him and release the video though it shows Batman and Robin coming in at the end. The arrival of “the Executioners” seems to make the Joker’s interviews stand out and she focuses on him for her research, though he has nothing to do with the rogue officers. Dent recovers though the acid also caused brain damage, ironically taking away his empathy, and he publicly derides the failures of the system which makes the Executioners come to him looking for instructions. Dent’s plan is to release the inmates of either Arkham or Blackgate Prison to cause havoc in Gotham City to make the general pubic allow for literally executing offenders. The coin toss lands in favor of Arkham and they stage a raid on the Asylum to release the inmates, but once free Joker tells his fellow inmates that the Executioners are there to kill them which sets them off on a rampage on their rescuers. Harleen rushing into the Asylum to find Joker, not only her patient but now lover, kills a security guard to save Joker’s life then has a mental breakdown as a result and becomes Harley.

Sejic did a wonderful job in building upon the foundations that Paul Dini and Bruce Timm laid in Batman: The Animated Series of Harley Quinn/Harleen Quinzel’s origin as Joker’s doctor to his henchwoman-lover. Taking advantage of the DC Black Label’s adult focus imprint, Sejic shows how Harleen’s slow mental spiral between reality and a living dream/nightmare develops throughout the book including a stunning final page that brings things into clear focus. Sejic includes references to previous incarnations of Joker in various Batman media adaptations now and again as nods to the past, which do not distract from the main story adds to the enjoyment of fans of the franchise. As a longtime fan of Sejic’s art, the book showcases it magnificently and frankly I wanted to go back through ignoring the text and study every panel again.

Harleen is the story of an earnest, dedicated psychiatrist slowly through her own actions and skillful manipulation of her patient joins those she wanted to help. Stjepan Sejic’s wonderfully written and amazing drawn story is a must get for anyone that is a fan of the character or a fan of a well-constructed origin story.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Harleen by Stjepan Sejic, feel free to comment here or there.

42mattries37315
Mar 18, 2020, 10:35 am

Let My People Go!: Using Historical Synchronisms to Identify the Pharaoh of the Exodus by Steven Collins

The debate on if the Bible is historical comes down to one event for proponents on both sides, The Exodus, not only if it happened but when. Let My People Go!: Using Historical Synchronisms to Identify the Pharaoh of the Exodus by Steven Collins combines what the Biblical text says with the historical record that Egyptologists and other historians have pieced together from numerous ancient sources in search of the man who Moses confronted.

Collins begins by examining the variables of the problem at hand from the actual Biblical account of events as well as the geographic extent of place names used, the propagandic nature of Pharaonic Egypt, and the on-the-ground facts that modern Egyptologists have constructed to get at actual history behind the propaganda. Using the Biblical account of the events from the time of Joseph to Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, in particular the consequences and impact of the Exodus events on Egypt, Collins looked to see if they matched up with Egyptian and wider Middle Eastern history at anytime to see if the Bible was historically accurate. Using this “synchronism” method, Collins pinpointed the 18th Dynasty’s rise as an anti-Semitic, due to the foreign Hyksos, empire that reached the Euphrates to it’s suddenly rapid fall internationally with domestic upheaval as seen with Akhenaten to the era that matched most of the points of reference. Collins then eliminated one-by-one the established candidates of the 18th Dynasty, as well as Ramesses II given popular culture, that Biblical scholars and mainstream Egyptologists put forward as the Pharaoh of the Exodus then showed how the “synchronism” timeline didn’t match the historical timeline. Collins ends the main body of the text with establishing Thutmose IV, the last Pharaoh of the powerful Thutmosid empire before it’s dramatic decline under his son Amenhotep III and grandson Akhenaten, as fitting perfectly the events of the Bible to go with the historical record.

In roughly 142 pages filled with text as well as tables and charts, Collins puts forward his case for the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Overall the scholarly portion of this monograph is very good for familiar with the Bible and the general history of the era, yet Collins unfortunately tried to find a middle ground between his main audience of Christians (fundamentalists or otherwise) and general readers that did not work as he explained a tad too much for one and too little for the other. The short length of the book and its layout between the covers were also problematic. In lengthening the book to explain certain things like the avenue of mainstream research he was comparing the Biblical events to and the leading Egyptologists behind them, even if those same individuals find the Exodus dubious; the book’s layout was unfortunately a mess considering it had very informative tables and charts, but those items were times with the text explaining them and at others back in the appendixes resulting the use of numerous bookmarks or looking back and forth.

Let My People Go! is an informative look at the Biblical narrative of the Israelite sojourn in Egypt, the Exodus, and the beginning of the Conquest in comparison to the mainstream view of ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern history. While Steven Collins brings a lot of knowledge to the subject and does well to bring it across to the reader, his efforts are undercut by length and layout of the book which doesn’t do justice to his argument.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Let My People Go!: Using Historical Synchronisms to Identify the Pharaoh of the Exodus by Steven Collins, feel free to comment here or there.

43mattries37315
Mar 25, 2020, 9:11 am

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Some innkeepers are just friendly entrepreneurs, but some had lives before and one is a myth in his own time. The Name of the Wind is the first book in Patrick Rothfuss’ The Kingkiller Chronicles as the mysterious innkeeper Kote recounts the actual events of his life to a chronicler whose come looking for him.

After dealing with polite bandits, a chronicler finds a man building up a fire off the road and the two are attacked by spider-like monsters and the chronicler is knocked out. Waking up two days later the chronicler finds that the man is the innkeeper where he’s sleeping and who he was looking for to write down his life. The innkeeper, Kote, says the chronicler has the wrong person only to be confronted by his real name, Kvothe, and agrees if he tells it over three days which the chronicler agrees to. Throughout the next day around the events of patrons and Kvothe’s fae student Bast, Kvothe tells the events of his early life from travelling with his parents among the performing troop they led, their murder by the mythical The Chandrian, and his three years surviving in the streets of Tarbean before finding a way to the University and being admitted thanks to the yearlong schooling—in both mundane and “magical” disciplines—he had from an arcanist Abenthy who travelled with this troupe. Once in the University, Kvothe gets on the bad side of several Masters and another student, Ambrose, in his first few days through he rises through the ranks of students quickly but is also banded from the University’s Archives. Kvothe describes his studies and battle against poverty over several terms, as well as his rivalry with Ambrose, before adding the element of his lute and singing at a nearby tavern where he meets Denna who begins becoming an obsession to him. After escaping an attempt on his life by Ambrose, Kvothe learns about a Chandrian attack and travels to the village meets up with Denna and has a run in with a drug-addled draccus to save the village. Returning to the University, Ambrose destroys Kvothe’s lute which results in Kvothe using “the name of the wind” wounding Ambrose which results in his getting whipped though advanced in the standings of the University with a new Master sponsor. The book ends with the leader of the bandits that stole from Chronicler come into the inn though it’s a demon in the man’s skin, killing one of the patrons while the blacksmith’s apprentice kills it. Later that night, Bast confronts Chronicler that his job is to make Kvothe a hero again over the next two days or something unpleasant would happen to him.

The hype surrounding this book made me cautious as I began reading it not wanting to heighten my expectations, which resulted in me getting interested in the story until the scene shifted to the University resulting in the book become tedious until Kvothe finally left for his excursion and interaction with the draccus. Frankly a lot of this book I felt was a different version of Harry Potter, which isn’t fair to Rothfuss especially when the action picks up in the flashback narrative or the Waystone Inn scenes of which the later I back looking forward too because they were more engaging.

The Name of the Wind is an overall nice book and hopefully sets up a lot more exciting stuff in the next two books of Patrick Rothfuss’ trilogy. While I personally didn’t buy into the hype that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t finish the trilogy, at this point at least, because there are very engaging scenes that Rothfuss writes that make the book a page turner.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Zero Hour by Jerome Preisler

44Sakerfalcon
Mar 25, 2020, 9:49 am

This is a very good review of The name of the wind and sums up its problems and its strengths. I loved the novel upon first reading, but after rereading, (and especially after reading book 2) I realised that a lot of the narrative is really a fantasy "slice of life" as we hang out with Kvothe and his friends. What will keep me waiting eagerly for the next book is that I am intrigued to see how the brash, confident young Kvothe became the close-mouthed, cautious innkeeper.

45mattries37315
Mar 25, 2020, 12:38 pm

>44 Sakerfalcon: Thanks, like I said in my review I weary about the hype but I was also hopeful that there was something to it. Thanks for the heads up for book 2, I heard that Kvothe leaves the University for a while and I hoped things would be less tedious.

46mattries37315
Mar 26, 2020, 7:13 pm

Zero Hour by Jerome Preisler

Precious stones, secret technology, and black-market deals plus New York City makes for an interesting combination that slowly finds UpLink getting involved via an unexpected source. Zero Hour is the seventh book of Tom Clancy’s Power Plays series written by Jerome Preisler who brings together secondary characters from previous books to join the main cast.

Patrick Sullivan leaves his mistress’ apartment to meet his buyer of artificially created sapphires as well as plans for a laser gun codenamed Dragonfly but is killed by his buyer and becomes a missing person. Sullivan’s employer, a Pakistani national who doesn’t know Sullivan stole the plan, is planning to use the laser gun for a massive terrorist attack by releasing a deadly acid vapor cloud over New York City as well as sell the other prototype to Muslim freedom fighters in Kashmir. Sullivan’s wife goes to an UpLink employee who was his last meeting and asked for Sword’s help—thanks to newspaper reporting on UpLink’s help to find the Russian conspirators who attacked Time’s Square—to find her husband. The employee goes around the local Sword leader to Roger Gordian to ask for the favor forcing the new UpLink CEO to send Tom Ricci to New York to investigate the matter. Ricci and the local Sword leader discuss her investigation into Sullivan’s employer on what to do with the Sullivan matter then Ricci goes to upstate New York to spy on Sullivan’s employer and sees men packing things into a U-Haul that he tails to a nearby motel and has a local Sword operative observe it while learning where it was rented. Unfortunately, one of the terrorists make the lookout and arrange an escape, but Ricci meets with Sullivan’s murderer and learns about the Dragonfly that he connects with where the U-Haul was rented. Ricci leads a Sword team that intercepts that van just before the laser gun was powered up.

Honestly the above synopsis is leaving out two subplots that at the end of the book amounted to just taking up space even though one was entertaining and had potential to add to the overall story but fizzled to nothing. Upon ending this book it wasn’t hard to rate this the worst book of the Power Plays series as nothing really came together and Preisler focused on characters who in the end amounted to nothing in the overall scheme of things while a character study on Ricci was underwhelming. And as one of the shortest books in the series it really tells and exposes one of the biggest weaknesses of Preisler’s writing.

Zero Hour is short and devoid of coherence in the various narrative threads while focusing on characters that in the end did not having anything to do with the endgame. Jerome Preisler has written some good installments of this series, but all the things he’s done wrong in the so-so installments were on display making for a disappointing book.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Zero Hour by Jerome Preisler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Bleak House by Charles Dickens.

47BookstoogeLT
Mar 26, 2020, 7:52 pm

>46 mattries37315: I really hope you like Bleak House. I liked it so much when I read it that I just want everyone to like it :-D

48mattries37315
Mar 27, 2020, 6:39 pm

>47 BookstoogeLT: I'm 10% through two days and I guess Dickens is setting things up right now, but then again this was originally a serial so it might meander for a bit.

49BookstoogeLT
Mar 27, 2020, 7:41 pm

>48 mattries37315: Meandering is a good word for it. I recommend just sitting back, relaxing and let Dickens drive at his own pace ;-)

50mattries37315
Mar 28, 2020, 9:51 am

>49 BookstoogeLT: I'll get into the reasons in my WP March Update, but I'm reading less at work and when I am I just relaxing so Dickens' meandering isn't bothersome right now.

51mattries37315
Abr 18, 2020, 8:50 am

Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City by Steven Collins and Latayne C. Scott

The Genesis 18-19 account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has become part of the Western cultural zeitgeist and its location a mystery ever since the beginning of Biblical archaeology. Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City by Steven Collins and Latayne C. Scott goes into the decade-long excavation of a site in Jordan that Collins purposes the evidence points towards it being the location of the destroyed city.

Much of the book is written by Collins who first explores the everything around the account of Sodom in Genesis and denoting that it must be read “authentically” not “literally”. One of Collin’s most important points early on is looking at the actual Hebrew wording of the text and what important words actually mean, this factors into where Collins believes the Bible locates the city of Sodom not at what is the bottom of the southern Dead Sea or on its southeast coast but on the eastern side of the Jordan River opposite Jericho. After laying out what the Bible actually says about Sodom and the historical era the Bible describes it in—the Middle Bronze Age—Collins then goes into the what his numerous archaeological excavations at Tall el-Hammam have made him believes he’s found Biblical Sodom including the fact that after the large city that was located there was destroyed in the Middle Bronze Age, nothing was rebuilt there until the Iron Age around 700 years later. Scott’s contribution was related Collin’s professional journey giving tours that located Sodom at the traditional southern Dead Sea location to his letting reading of the Bible lead him to look for a large prosperous city in the Jordan plain across from Jericho and the discoveries made at el-Hammam that made Collins realize he had found the city of Sodom.

Both Collins and Scott did a very good job with their respective parts of the book with Collins focused on the academic side and Scott doing a biographical look at Collins’ personal journey over several decades when connected to this subject. The biggest positive of the book is Collins’ balance of keeping to the authenticity of the Biblical account and dealing with facts found in the dirt, not only at el-Hammam but across the Levant. The biggest issue with the book is the same as another book by Collins’ and that is layout as the maps were placed in the back of the book and not nearer to the relevant text where they would be helpful. However, given that there were two authors the change of font style denoting when each author was writing was a very choice.

Discovering the City of Sodom is an enlightening read with Collins’ engaging writing that made what could have been dry academic details lively while Scott’s biographical sketches give a more personal touch. While the layout of the book is a bit of a mixed bag with differing fonts denoting which author was writing is a positive, the placing of maps in the back of the book instead of near the text that they illustrated is a negative. Whether you agree with Collins’ archaeological discoveries and research, this is a informative read about the era of the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Old Testament’s Most Infamous City by Steven Collins and Latayne C. Scott, feel free to comment here or there.

52mattries37315
Editado: Abr 29, 2020, 11:15 am

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

There are many curses that people place upon themselves and their descendants, some are the rest of their actions and others by their indecisions complicated by bureaucratic failures then sometimes it’s both. Charles Dickens shows the effects of both in his 1853 novel Bleak House not only on his main characters but also on secondary characters who are just unlucky to interaction with the afflicted persons.

Sir Leicester Dedlock and his wife Honoria live on his estate at Chesney Wold. Unknown to Sir Leicester, before she married, Lady Dedlock had a lover, Captain Hawdon, and had a daughter by him. Lady Dedlock believes her daughter is dead. The daughter, Esther Summerson, is in fact alive and is raised by Miss Barbary, Lady Dedlock's sister, who does not acknowledge their relationship. After Miss Barbary dies, John Jarndyce becomes Esther's guardian and assigns the Chancery lawyer "Conversation" Kenge to take charge of her future. After attending school for six years, Esther moves in with him at Bleak House. Jarndyce simultaneously assumes custody of two other wards, Richard Carstone and Ada Clare (who are both his and one another's distant cousins). They are beneficiaries in one of the wills at issue in Jarndyce and Jarndyce; their guardian is a beneficiary under another will, and the two wills conflict. Richard and Ada soon fall in love, but though Mr. Jarndyce does not oppose the match, he stipulates that Richard must first choose a profession. Richard first tries a career in medicine, and Esther meets Allan Woodcourt, a physician, at the house of Richard's tutor. When Richard mentions the prospect of gaining from the resolution of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Jarndyce beseeches him never to put faith in what he calls ‘the family curse’. Richard disregards this advice and his subsequent career endeavors fails as a result of his growing obsession while his personal relationship with Jarndyce deteriorates. Lady Dedlock is also a beneficiary under one of the wills and while looking at an affidavit by the family solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, she recognizes the handwriting on the copy and almost faints, which Tulkinghorn notices and investigates. He traces the copyist, a pauper known only as "Nemo", in London. Nemo has recently died, and the only person to identify him is a street-sweeper, a poor homeless boy named Jo, who lives in a particularly grim and poverty-stricken part of the city known as Tom-All-Alone's. Lady Dedlock investigates while disguised as her maid, Mademoiselle Hortense. Lady Dedlock pays Jo to take her to Nemo's grave. Meanwhile, Tulkinghorn is concerned Lady Dedlock's secret could threaten the interests of Sir Leicester and watches her constantly, even enlisting her maid to spy on her. He also enlists Inspector Bucket to run Jo out of town, to eliminate any loose ends that might connect Nemo to the Dedlocks. Esther and Lady Dedlock see each other at church and talks at Chesney Wold without recognizing their connection. Later, Lady Dedlock does discover that Esther is her child. However, Esther has become sick (possibly with smallpox, since it severely disfigures her) after nursing the homeless boy Jo. Lady Dedlock waits until Esther has recovered before telling her the truth. Though Esther and Lady Dedlock are happy to be reunited, Lady Dedlock tells Esther they must never acknowledge their connection again. Meanwhile Richard and Ada have secretly married, and Ada is pregnant. Esther has her own romance when Woodcourt returns to England, having survived a shipwreck, and continues to seek her company despite her disfigurement. Unfortunately, Esther has already agreed to marry her guardian, John Jarndyce, who sees Woodcourt is a better match for her and sets not only Woodcourt with good professional prospects and sets the two of them up for an engagement. Hortense and Tulkinghorn discover the truth about Lady Dedlock's past. After a confrontation with Tulkinghorn, Lady Dedlock flees her home, leaving a note apologizing for her conduct. Tulkinghorn dismisses Hortense, who is no longer of any use to him. Feeling abandoned and betrayed, Hortense kills Tulkinghorn and seeks to frame Lady Dedlock for his murder. Sir Leicester, discovering his lawyer's death and his wife's flight, suffers a catastrophic stroke, but he manages to communicate that he forgives his wife and wants her to return. Inspector Bucket, who has previously investigated several matters related to Jarndyce and Jarndyce, accepts Sir Leicester's commission to find first Tulkinghorn’s murderer and then Lady Dedlock. He quickly arrests Hortense but fails to find Lady Dedlock before she dies of exposure at the cemetery of her former lover, Captain Hawdon. A new will is found for Jarndyce and Jarndyce that benefits Richard and Ada, but the costs of litigation have entirely consumed the estate bring the case to an end. Richard collapses and Woodcourt diagnoses him as being in the last stages of tuberculosis and he dies before the birth of his namesake son. John Jarndyce takes in Ada and her child, a boy whom she names Richard. Esther and Woodcourt marry and live in a Yorkshire house which Jarndyce gives to them. The couple later raise two daughters.

The above synopsis only covers the main plot, but expertly woven throughout are two subplots surrounding Caddy Jellyby and Mr. George Rouncewell who interact with the main characters at various times throughout the novel. Dickens masterfully crafts the cast of characters and the plot in an engaging and intriguing serious of plots that make the book a complete whole thus showing why his work is considered among the greatest of literature. Yet Dickens is also a bit too wordy resulting in scenes taking longer than they should and making some readers like myself, to start skimming through places in the later half of the book when a character that likes to spout off begins having a soliloquy of some indeterminable length at the expense of missing something connected to the slowly culminating climax.

Bleak House turns out to show Charles Dickens at his best as well as showing off what might be his one little flaw. The interesting characters and multilayered narrative keep the reader engaged throughout the book even as they must sometimes endure Dickens wordiness that might drown them in unnecessary prose. Though over 900 pages, a reader should not feel intimidated given that many Dickens books are an extraordinary length and the reader keeps on being engaged throughout their reading experience so that length does not matter.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Inca Gold by Clive Cussler

53pgmcc
Abr 22, 2020, 12:36 pm

>52 mattries37315: I enjoyed Bleak House a lot. It is a few years since I read it and your post has reminded me of some of the details.

With regards to the length of novels by Dickens you have to look at the way and the time they were first published. The books were published serialised in magazines that were one of the few media entertainments of the day. Reports indicate that up to 10,000 people eagerly awaited each issue. You could regard them as the soap operas of the day. In that context it was in the interests of the author and the publisher to have a story run for as many weeks as possible as each episode kept the audience on the edge of their seats and maintained the demand for the next edition.

54mattries37315
Abr 22, 2020, 2:49 pm

>53 pgmcc: I know, but I rather have wordy action over wordy monologues.

55Sakerfalcon
Abr 23, 2020, 6:10 am

>52 mattries37315: Bleak House is the one novel by Dickens that I really like. Esther is one of his best female characters.

56clamairy
Editado: Abr 23, 2020, 6:31 pm

>52 mattries37315: I listened to this one instead of reading it. That worked better for me because the barrage of words was easier to forget when it wasn't critical to the story. I did enjoy it quite a bit.

>54 mattries37315: Agreed.

>55 Sakerfalcon: Yes, Esther is awesome!

57mattries37315
Abr 23, 2020, 3:46 pm

>55 Sakerfalcon: Esther was enjoyable to read.

58mattries37315
Editado: Maio 5, 2020, 10:31 pm

Inca Gold by Clive Cussler

The vast amounts of gold the Inca possessed at the time of Pizarro is legendary, yet even as the Spaniards plundered the riches they began wondering if they had found everything. Inca Gold is the twelfth book in the Dirk Pitt series by Clive Cussler as the titular character and his ever faithful friend Al Giordino begin their adventure with going on a rescue mission in the Andes only to end up needing rescue at the end in the Sea of Cortez.

In 1532 a fleet of ships sails in secret to an island in the middle of an inland sea. There they hide a magnificent treasure vaster than that any Pharaoh would ever possess. Then they disappear, leaving only a great stone demon to guard their hoard. In 1578 the legendary Sir Francis Drake captures a Spanish galleon filled with Inca gold and silver and the key to the lost treasure, which includes a gigantic chain of gold, a masterpiece of ancient technology so huge that it requires two hundred men to lift it and a large pile of diamonds worth more than 200 billion dollars that belonged to the last Inca. As the galleon is sailed by Drake's crew back to England, an underwater earthquake causes a massive tidal wave that sweeps it into the jungle. Only one man survives to tell the tale. In 1998 a group of archaeologists is nearly drowned while diving into the depths of a sacrificial pool high in the Andes of Peru. They are saved by the timely arrival of the renowned scuba diving hero Dirk Pitt, who is in the area on a marine expedition. Pitt soon finds out that his life has been placed in jeopardy as well by smugglers intent on uncovering the lost ancient Incan treasure. Soon, he, his faithful companions, and Dr. Shannon Kelsey, a beautiful young archaeologist, are plunged into a vicious, no-holds-barred struggle to survive. From then on it becomes a battle of wits in a race against time and danger to find the golden chain, as Pitt finds himself caught up in a struggle with a sinister international family syndicate that deal in stolen works of art, the smuggling of ancient artifacts, and art forgery worth many millions of dollars. The clash between the art thieves, the FBI and the Customs Service, a tribe of local Indians, and Pitt, along with his friends from NUMA, two of whom are captured and threatened with execution, rushes toward a wild climax in a subterranean world of darkness and death – for the real key to the mystery, as it turns out, is a previously unknown, unexplored underground river that runs through the ancient treasure chamber.

This is the book that originally got me into the Dirk Pitt series—via audiobook—and over twenty years later it very much holds up as a fun adventure yarn that keeps the pages turning. While the book isn’t perfect for various factors, the first being that the “main” antagonist went from being clever conman that kills when necessary to a raging would-be killer in one scene in the middle of the book that was jarring especially since his main henchman was already a wanton murderer who took pleasure in it. Cussler switches with his female “lead” with Dr. Kelsey being replaced mid-book with Pitt’s on-off flame Loren Smith, but for once Smith is fully fleshed out and not giving off damsel-in-distress vibe like previous books. The main positive of the book is that all the subplots are not only intriguing but have good characters like Billy Yuma that tie into the main plot as the book reaches its climax.

Inca Gold is the book I personally feel that the Dirk Pitt series began hitting its stride at least what I remember from the late-90s to the mid-00s. Clive Cussler mixes characters, plot, and action to create a real page-turning adventure that will make you take a look around for more of his titular character.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Inca Gold by Clive Cussler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Scorched Earth by George Galdorisi.

59mattries37315
Maio 5, 2020, 10:31 pm

Scorched Earth by George Galdorisi

After making a huge propaganda killing against the United States, a terrorist leader is incensed when a retaliatory strike hits too close to home and makes his war even more personal. Scorched Earth is the third book of the Op-Center reboot and the first exclusively by George Galdorisi as retired Admiral Chase Williams coordinates his Op-Center team in fighting the war on terror that has suddenly become personal on both sides.

General Bob Underwood—a special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL—is kidnapped after his security detail is massacred then hours later is beheaded on live television. American forces retaliate with a strike on Mosul resulting in the death of the ISIS leader's son, his father promises vengeance. A homegrown terrorist cell kidnaps the admiral who oversaw the strike on ISIS but are accidentally foiled in their attempted to send him to Mosul to be killed and retreat to a hideaway in rural Maryland. Based off information that it’s Geek Team Op-Center’s SEAL team is sent to Iraq to investigate all the aircraft delivering to the city, but come up empty resulting in the Geek Team backtracking and the terrorist cell and finding their location in Maryland. Op-Center’s CIRG team locates the house and rescues the admiral while taking out half of the terror cell. Meanwhile the admiral’s son, a SEAL himself, believing the Navy fumbled the ball goes AWOL to Iraq with help from an old teammate and infiltrates the ISIS headquarters in Mosul but is captured. The SEAL team, with information from the Geek Team, with a contingent of Rangers rescues the prodigal son while shaming the ISIS leader.

Like the previous book this was a quickly moving story was an engaging read from start to finish, especially the first two-thirds of the book when the kidnapping of the admiral was the main plot. However, once his son decided to go rogue the end of the book was relatively telegraphed paint-by-the numbers ending. Yet despite the “going rogue” cliché and the ISIS leader’s desire to “go live for the evening news”, the action was particularly good which made up a tad for the headshaking narrative turn. Overall Galdorisi’s solo effort was good and while I wish he would have avoided the stupid “going rogue” trope as it probably would have improved the book some, it did not ruin it.

Scorched Earth is a good military-political thriller and is George Galdorisi only solo effort in the reboot series, so far. While I did not like subplot that finished off the book, it did not make the book bad and throughout the action scenes were solid. Overall, this book is better than a vast majority of the original Op-Center run.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Scorched Earth by George Galdorisi, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Behemoth, or The Long Parliament by Thomas Hobbes.

60mattries37315
Maio 14, 2020, 7:44 pm

Behemoth, or The Long Parliament by Thomas Hobbes

For supporters of Charles I and his son, the middle of the 17th Century was a hard time and in the aftermath of the Restoration was a time to show they were right. Behemoth is Thomas Hobbes’ history of the lead up to the English Civil War and the resulting Interregnum.

Covering roughly two decades of political, military, cultural, and religious upheaval within the frame of a dialogue, Thomas Hobbes uses the political framework written in Leviathan to analyze the breakdown of political order and how it was restored. The first and second section of the book concerns how Charles I strong political position was undermined by seven factions acting independently of one another and how the King’s attempts to combat one faction were used by other factions to represent tyranny against their own party eventually leading to a rupture and war between King and Parliament. The third section covered the civil war itself with neither side getting an advantage until the rise of Oliver Cromwell turned the tide for Parliament that eventually lead to the capture of the King and after political machinations from both sides, Charles is put on trial then executed. The last section highlights how Parliament had no idea how to replace the King and went from one solution to another all the while Cromwell continued to accumulate power until taking over the place of Charles in all but the title of King. However, after Cromwell’s death and weakness of his son’s leadership, General Monck uses his army to takeover the political situation and invite Charles II to take the throne.

While Hobbes uses the ideas in Leviathan to frame this history, it is essentially a Royalist view of the history of the 1640s and 1650s. Throughout the book the prime factor that Hobbes saw as being the instigator of Parliament’s position against the King wasn’t taxes, but religion more specifically Presbyterian minister preaching from the pulpit against the King so they could achieve leadership of the nation like John Calvin had done in Geneva. Though Hobbes did mention several other factors, his obsession on the religious aspect overawed everything else in this history which at times became too much.

Behemoth is ultimately a royalist history of events in the mid-17th Century. Thomas Hobbes shows the breakdown of political order when the sovereign’s position is challenged and usurped by those that have no right to it and the chaos that follows, but through his partisan lens.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Behemoth, or The Long Parliament by Thomas Hobbes, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz.

61mattries37315
Editado: Maio 17, 2020, 7:01 pm

The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz

Two sisters, mirror opposites, have been on a collision course for years and now it comes to a head on either side of an investigation into an ill-fated Everest expedition. The Girl Who Lived Twice is the sixth book of the Millennium series and third by David Lagercrantz, sees the final confrontation between Lisbeth and Camilla after finding out the truth behind an incident on Mount Everest.

Lisbeth Salander attempts to kill her sister Camilla in Moscow, but can’t pull the trigger and goes to Copenhagen and gets into a relationship with a domestically abused woman while spying on her sister and helping in-a-slump Mikael Blomkvist investigate the death of a homeless man. Blomkvist’s investigation happens when a coroner calls him because the dead man has his phone number and Mikael learns the man accosted a female journalist spouting about the Swedish Defense Minister who is enduring a disinformation campaign from Russia. The homeless man turns out to be a Sherpa who was apart of an ill-fated expedition up Mount Everest that caught global attention because of the death of a socialite who was on it, but it turned out so was the Defense Minister before his political career. It turns out the Minister’s friend was working for the Russian mob and essentially killed the socialite for her American billionaire husband who is also connected with the mob and convinced the Sherpa to leave her and help the Minister off the mountain instead. The Sherpa feels guilty and after the death of his wife loses his mind and wants to tell the truth, but the Minister is convinced to get him out of Nepal to a asylum in Sweden but he later escapes and the Minister’s corrupt friend killed him then started blackmailing him resulting in him almost committing suicide but Blomkvist saves him. While Blomkvist is going to interview the Minister, he is abducted by Camilla and her associates to be tortured and get Lisbeth to them. Lisbeth now in Sweden, tracks them down, and confronts her sister who attempts to set Lisbeth on fire only to light herself up instead and kills herself because she is no longer beautiful. The Minister’s corrupt friend is arrested, Mikael’s new lover writes the article about the truth of the ill-fated expedition, and he learns of Lisbeth’s “help” at his stalled article.

While Lisbeth and Mikael are “featured” they aren’t the heart of the book, that goes to the characters created by Lagercrantz that are connected with the main plot of the mysterious Sherpa and an ill-fated Mount Everest expedition he was apart of along with the future Swedish Defense Minister and his friend as well the socialite that died on it. Throughout Lagercrantz’s books in the series, Lisbeth has been sidelined and Mikael has been “used” more but only for original characters to have the spotlight. If the Mount Everest plot had been a book not connected to the Millennium series, I might have really enjoyed it more. But this series is supposed to be about Lisbeth Salander and throughout the last three book it has not been. The “climactic” confrontation between Lisbeth and Camilla at the end, is so disappointing that the build up over the previous books was a waste as well. Frankly Lagercrantz’s Lisbeth is a pale imitation of Larrson’s Lisbeth thus making this and the previous two books a waste.

The Girl Who Lived Twice might be billed a Lisbeth Salander novel, but in fact she’s just a name so David Lagercrantz can sell books.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.

62mattries37315
Jun 9, 2020, 9:03 pm

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

How does a man become a myth in his own time, well he does stuff and recounts his adventures to an audience either through stories or songs then lets gossip do it’s thing. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss is the second installment of The Kingkiller Chronicles framed around the second day of Kvothe’s recounting of his life with the Chronicler of their agreed upon three-day conversation.

Continuing the narrative where he left off in The Name of the Wind, Kvothe recalls his education at the University and feud with fellow student Ambrose that culminated in Ambrose getting him arrested on charges of Consortation with Demonic Powers, a capital crime, for having called the Name of the Wind. Despite successfully defending himself in court, Kvothe his tuition will be extremely high for the new term tuition due to the negative attention he has attracted to the darker aspects of the University. Kvothe decides to take a term off during which Count Threpe arranges for Kvothe to aid the Maershon Lerand Alveron in Vintas in hopes that Kvothe might earn a writ of patronage. Arriving in the Maer seat in the city of Severen, Kvothe tricks his way into a meeting with the Maer and is contracted to write songs and letters to woo a young noblewoman that the Maer wants to marry. During this shadow courtship, Kvothe saves the Maer’s life by discovering and thwarting a plot to kill the Maer thus earning the nobleman’s respect. After saving his life and helping win his bride, the Maer charges Kvothe to lead a group of mercenaries to hunt bandits that have been waylaying taxmen in The Eld. It takes a month, but the group find and kill the bandits. A few days later they stumble upon the Fae Felurian, Kvothe travels after her, has a lot of sex, is able to use the Name of the Wind to combat her power, and convinces her to let him go but only after speaking to The Cthaeh about his future. Upon his return to the “mortal” world Kvothe learns he endangered the life and career of an Adem warrior by copying and learning the Adem way of fighting. The two travel to Ademre where he earns the right to train and learn the Adem way of life and fighting then earning the right to enter the school for further training if he wanted but in doing so saves his friend’s career. After being given an Adem sword, Caesura, and learning the Adem legend of the Chandrian, Kvothe sets off for Severen once again. On this way he comes across robbers posing as Edema Ruh that kidnapped and were assaulting two young women from a nearby village, Kvothe kills the robbers and returns the two young women to their village then races to the Maer’s court before the news reaches him to present himself, the waylaid taxes, and his deed in person. The Maer’s new wife makes her thoughts on the Edema Ruh clear—utter contempt—to which Kvothe knowledges he is one and his days at court are over. The Maer shows his gratitude by pardoning him for killing the robbers, providing a writ of performance, and ensuring Kvothe’s University tuition is forever compensated. Upon his return to the University, Kvothe and the bursar make a deal so both Kvothe and the University will get money from the Maer’s coffers achieving financial independence for Kvothe. In the present day during pauses in recounting his life, Kvothe and Bast help out the townspeople from around the Waystone Inn before Kvothe is beset by two soldiers prompted by Bast to rob him in an attempt to revitalize his friend but Kvothe loses and waits his apparently soon death while Bast kills the soldiers.

Unlike the first book, this book did not become tedious as Kvothe’s time at the University did not last long and throughout he was doing different things that set up things later in the book. The only time the book became a tad annoying was Kvothe’s sexual adventures with Felurian that was basically read like Rothfuss writing his teenage fantasy. The contemporary scenes at the Waystone Inn did not seem as engaging in this book, but I feel that it was because the flashback narrative was a lot more engaging than the previous book with everything Kvothe was doing.

The Wise Man’s Fear is clearly superior to its predecessor that began paying off things Patrick Rothfuss set up in the initial book. As the final book is taking a while to be written, I don’t feel a rush to know how Kvothe’s story ends but I’d like to read how it ends whenever it comes out.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Wild Card by Jerome Preisler

63mattries37315
Jun 14, 2020, 3:22 pm

Wild Card by Jerome Preisler

There is trouble in paradise as oil, murder, and long-lived shadowy cabals overshadow Trinidad just as UpLink is setting up an installation. Wild Card is the eighth and final installment of the Power Plays series written by Jerome Preisler as Pete Nimec goes to Trinidad on a working vacation and steps into international intrigue while suspended Tom Ricci goes renegade to rescue a kidnapped daughter for a small-time Mexican cartel leader.

Over two centuries ago, a French nobleman living on Trinidad and an English pirate form a partnership that their descendants continue by selling oil to rogue nations that the United States have put an embargo on. A Trinidadian Jarvis Lenard escapes from a rogue element within a high-end resort’s security force after his cousin attempted to blow the whistle and was murdered, staying for weeks in a nature preserve causing fits to the rouge security force. Pete Nimec is sent to look at the new UpLink project in Trinidad as well as figure out about the mysterious emails they received, he sees an oil transfer not knowing at the time what he saw but later figures it out, but the rogue security teams aims to kill him and his wife while they’re enjoying the resort. Nimec and his wife escape on a boat, making their way to the nature preserve where Lenard is hiding and swims out to them as Sword helicopters come in and scare off the rogue security team’s helicopter. Meanwhile Tom Ricci is on leave from UpLink after saving New York City because he did so without letting local, state, and federal authorities as well as the company know what was happening. Ricci links up with the former DEA agent that has helped him on two previous occasions, helping save a kidnapped young woman whose father is a Mexican cartel leader while starting a friendship with Julia Gordian.

Unlike the previous book in the series, the three subplots that were not only worth their print on paper but came together to create a satisfying whole. The first and only prologue in the series that showed the creation of the centuries-old partnership between the families of a French nobleman and an English pirate that had their descendants coming up with this oil smuggling scheme that is found out. While the character development was sparse for returning characters, one-off characters had development put into them—especially Jarvis. If this was written to be a quick page turner it succeeded but given the scattered shot subplots not only in this book but the previous one the well of ideas had run out for the series.

Wild Card is the final book of the Power Plays series, the ending of which was written in a way so that Jerome Preisler could either continue it or not depending on the publisher. While a drastic improvement over the previous book in the series, this book showed that the series did not have enough legs to continue.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Wild Card by Jerome Preisler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Joan of Arc by Mark Twain

64mattries37315
Editado: Jun 25, 2020, 2:59 pm

Joan of Arc by Mark Twain

She was an unschooled country peasant that lifted the fortunes of her uncrowned King and nation on her shoulders, but when she needed them was abandoned. Joan of Arc stands alone among Mark Twain’s bibliography as a historical novel about the one person in history he admires above all others.

Twain’s account of Joan of Arc’s life is written from the perspective of a fictional version of Joan’s former secretary and page Sieur Louis de Conte written at the end of his life to his great-nephews and nieces. The first part of the book focuses on her life in the village of Domremy, essentially where all but the last two years of her life occurred, and the beginning of her visions then quest to fulfill the commission she received. The second part is her successful meeting with the King, formal acknowledgement of the Church that she wasn’t a witch, then her year-long military campaign—with numerous breaks due to political interference and foot dragging by Charles VII—that saw her mission completed, and finally her capture by the Burgundians. The final part of the book was of her year in captivity and the long grueling “legal” process that the English-paid French clergy put her through to murder her as a heretic. The final chapter is of Conte giving a brief account of the feckless Charles VII waiting over two decades to Rehabilitate his benefactor after allowing her to be murdered by not paying her ransom all those years before.

This was a labor of love for Twain to write and it was easy to tell given how professionally researched it was in every detail. While many 20th-Century critics and other Twain admirers don’t like this book because it’s not “classic” Twain because of his praise of Joan given that she’s French, Catholic, and a martyr when he disliked or hated all three; they didn’t seem to understand his hero worship of this teenage girl who put a nation on her shoulders to resurrect its existence. Yet, while this was a straight historical novel there are touches of Twain especially in Conte’s “relating” the adventures of the Domremy boys when they were not in Joan’s presence, especially Paladin.

Joan of Arc is not the typical Mark Twain work, but that doesn’t mean one can not appreciate it for well, if not professionally, researched historical novel that it is.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Shock Wave by Clive Cussler

65clamairy
Jun 17, 2020, 7:33 pm

>64 mattries37315: I've always been very curious about this work. Twain is one of my personal heroes, and like every little Catholic girl I wanted to be Joan when I was small. (Without the flaming stake, if at all possible.) I'm happy to hear you got some enjoyment from this one. I'm 99% sure I own a trade paperback copy, but it's not showing up in my LT catalog.

66mattries37315
Jun 18, 2020, 6:17 pm

>65 clamairy: I wanted to read a book by Twain, but never felt the desire to read about Tom or Huck then I saw Joan of Arc with Twain as the author in my local used book store and was instantly intrigued.

67mattries37315
Jun 25, 2020, 2:59 pm

Shock Wave by Clive Cussler

Around the Pacific Ocean zones of death are springing up with animals and humans the victims with NUMA racing to find out what is responsible and learns it is greed. Shock Wave is the thirteenth book of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series, the titular character races from islands off the coast of Antarctic in the South Atlantic to various points across the Pacific to stop a greedy businessman who aims to destroy the diamond market at whatever cost.

While investigating the deaths of a large number of marine animals in the Antarctic Ocean, Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino encounter a group of stranded tourists lead by guide Maeve Fletcher on Seymour Island. Their Australian cruise ship—the Polar Queen—disappeared after a mysterious "disease" three of the tourist group. After the tourists are ferried to NUMA research vessel Ice Hunter, Pitt and Giordino find the Polar Queen going in circles while the current is moving it on a collision course with a group of jagged islands. Pitt is able to board the ship manages to narrowly avoid the crash then explores the floating coffin as the crew and passengers are lying dead across the ship until he finds only one survivor on board Deirdre Dorsett, one of Maeve’s estranged sisters. After a skeleton crew from the Ice Hunter takes over the Polar Queen, Pitt and Al uncover evidence that suggests extremely high-powered soundwaves were the cause of the deaths. This is latter backed up by more outbreaks of mass deaths on a cargo ship, a Chinese junk, and a Russian whaling fleet. Spotting leaving one of the scenes is a futuristic yacht belonging to Dorsett Consolidated Mining Company, a gemstone mining company head by the ruthless Arthur Dorsett. He is also the father of Maeve—who took the name of a great-great grandmother when she cut ties with her family—and Deirdre as well as their older sister Boudicca. Due to her leaving the family and giving birth to twin sons out of wedlock with a young man Dorsett disapproved of, Maeve was set up to die on Seymour Island by her family only for the fact she was in a cave at the time of the attack did she survive. Based on the yacht and borrowing the US Navy’s sonar net in the Pacific, NUMA discovers that the acoustic plague is caused by a convergence of soundwaves from four sources around the Pacific all owned by Dorsett Consolidated including the family’s privately owned Gladiator Island near Australia. Pitt is sent to investigate the Dorsett mine off the coast of British Columbia, enlisting the help of Mason Broadmoor, a local First Nations fisherman. Broadmoor and others from his tribe, help smuggle Pitt onto the island and is given a tour of the mine by a disgruntled employee which includes the revolutionary mining method that uses soundwaves to dig through the clay to find diamonds. As he attempts to leave the island, he is discovered by Boudicca and learns Maeve’s sons are being held hostage in return for her to spy on NUMA and mislead them if necessary. Broadmoor rescues Pitt and the two use jet skis to escape the island. Pitt, Al, and Maeve travel to Wellington to another NUMA vessel with the plan to infiltrate Gladiator Island to save Maeve’s sons. However, Dorsett finds out and his security team is able to capture the trio after a chase around the docks. The next day, the three are abandoned in the southwest Pacific Ocean in a small craft away from the shipping lanes in the path of a tropical cyclone. Through, luck and deciding not to die without a fight they make it to a small island that has a wrecked sailboat. Using material from both craft, they construct a new ship and head to Gladiator Island. Upon arrival they infiltrate the island, discovering Maeve’s twins are in the main house they break in. While Maeve and Al get the boys, Pitt encounters Dorsett and kills him. Before Boudicca can kill him, Al bursts in and the two fight before Al kills Boudicca who turns out to be Maeve’s brother not sister. Unknown to the trio, NUMA discovered a future kill zone right off the coast of Honolulu and through blood, sweat, and guile are able to obtain a giant reflector from a government agency, dismantle it, load it on the famous deep-sea recovery ship Glomar Explorer, and take it to the convergence zone. Just in time, NUMA gets the reflector into the sea and send the soundwaves to Gladiator Island with the knowledge it’ll set off the two volcanos on the island. Just after the successful operation, Sandecker gets a call from Pitt and tells him to evacuate. Pitt’s group races towards the Dorsett yacht and the helicopter on it, once onboard Deirdre shots Maeve, mortally wounding her, as well as Pitt who is wounded but snaps Deirdre’s spine. Al takes the twins in the helicopter while Pitt launches the yacht and gets far enough away to survive the pyroclastic ash cloud. Pitt is later found by Al and Sandecker on the derelict yacht, taken to a hospital to mend, and returns to D.C. sad that he lost Maeve.

Like Inca Gold before it, this book’s main plot has stuck with me for over twenty years since I listened to the audiobook. Overall, the book has held up well in fact the megalomaniac Arthur Dorsett who cares only for profit even at the expense of family—in fact willing to kill some members if they aren’t with him—comes off as really believable especially today. Cussler’s writing of Dirk was mostly good but there were times were he came off as “too good to be true” in abilities that while not stretching believability giving it a lot of tension. Maeve as the “lead” female character was alright for the most part, but in general the descriptions of actions, physical characteristics, and thoughts of female characters were stereotypes and caricatures in an effort to paint Boudicca as different for the reveal near the end of the book. Unlike the previous book, the subplots didn’t tie in very well with the main plot of the book the main culprit was the knockoff Trilateral Commission group aiming for a “One Economic Government”, it felt like Cussler was unsuccessfully tapping into conspiracy theories in the mid-90s for a little boost when he could have just had it be the DeBeers-led diamond monopoly group be the subplot and tie in better with the rest of the novel.

Shock Wave was a very good follow up installment in the series, while not at the level of Inca Gold it still showed that Clive Cussler was creating quality stuff on a consistent basis and looked like he would be for a while.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Shock Wave by Clive Cussler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Dark Zone by Jeff Rovin & George Galdorisi

68mattries37315
Jun 28, 2020, 7:07 pm

Dark Zone by Jeff Rovin and George Galdorisi

The Crimea has become one of the most dangerous places on the planet as it could spark a war that no one really wants, but for some that is exactly what they’re counting on. Dark Zone is the fourth book of the Op-Center reboot as original series author Jeff Rovin joins George Galdorisi as Op-Center is faced with rogue elements in Ukraine looking to start a war with Russia that will force NATO to join.

A female Ukrainian agent meets with the former U.S. ambassador in New York to get information about Russian military movements and is murdered by a Russian assassin then her fellow agent apart of the Ukrainian embassy is also murdered by the same assassin. The U.S. ambassador learning of his friend’s murder gets in contact with Op-Center about his conversation with her and that her apparent murderer keeps calling him with her phone. Director Williams sends a two-man team to meet the ambassador only for them to save his life from the assassin and his accomplice. Meanwhile in Russia, Putin appoints an ambitious yet cautious general to command an enlarged military base to project so much power against Ukraine that they will simply be defeated mentally. Unbeknownst to Russia is that a famous Ukrainian tank commander has set a trap for them which included the appearance online of a VR program of their huge military base which led to the murders in New York. Williams and Op-Center after finding the VR program come to the conclusion that a rogue faction in the Ukrainian military is planning to start a war between Russian and NATO with an attack on the base that will cause Russia to attack Ukraine. The Special Forces team is sent to the region to observe but in route they find the team that is to attack the base and send the force to intercept them. The Ukrainian commander leads a large assembly of tanks—out of nowhere—towards the border and the Russian commander response by leading his tanks to the border, leaving the base open for attack through the Op-Center Special Forces team is able to stop them just outside the Russian base though the Ukrainian team leader is killed by a sniper which causes a grenade explosion. The Russian commander is ordered back to the base, already relieved of command due to failing to secure his base; the retreat of the Russians from the border is a victory for the Ukrainian commander even though the attack on the base didn’t happen as his goal was to embarrass the big bad bear. Williams and Op-Center are happy to prevent a war, but they decide to prevent the next Russian assassin to take up station in New York by outing him to the NYPD who threaten to leave or die as a terrorist.

This was a great military-political thriller for anything connected with Ukraine and Russia, but Op-Center and their Special Forces team are just around. Honestly if this book did not have anything connected with Op-Center written in it this would have been a great exciting read, but because of the Op-Center stuff in it this is a middling book. Everything connected with Op-Center just felt like it was put in there because this was an Op-Center book, not that anything was particularly bad but as I got further into the book I cared less about what was happening in and around Op-Center or what they were going to do and see if the Ukrainian plan would work in anyway. I guess Rovin and Galdorisi were showing that sometimes Op-Center is blind to the realities on the ground and can sometimes only do little things to protect U.S. interests but that would effectively undermine the organization from a reader’s viewpoint so, I’m just confused as to the structure of this book.

Dark Zone is a mishmash book with one great story element and one that was just meh, unfortunately it was the series titular organization and their personnel that were the meh story element not that they were bad but because they weren’t interesting. Jeff Rovin in his return to the Op-Center series and George Galdorisi is what appears to be his last effort created a Ukrainian-Russian mini-conflict but totally failed to be relevance to Op-Center existence in a book in its own series.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Dark Zone by Jeff Rovin and George Galdorisi, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 by William Manchester

69mattries37315
Jul 22, 2020, 12:19 pm

S.N. Haskell: Adventist Pioneer, Evangelist, Missionary, and Editor by Gerald Wheeler

A scion of New England culture who join a new faith born from the same location, his influence upon the Seventh-day Adventist church has been profoundly positive though in his zeal to defend it has had some negative consequences. S.N. Haskell: Adventist Pioneer, Evangelist, Missionary, and Editor is Gerald Wheeler’s second book of the Adventist Pioneer series as he follows the life of Ellen White’s most ardent defender and the impact he had on the church as well as how the times he grew up and lived in influenced him.

Wheeler begins his biography of Haskell by how he married his first wife Mary who was over two decades older than he was before describing the upbringing in the small New England town that made Haskell agree to this marriage even though he was about to become a preacher. After beginning preaching, Haskell interacted with Seventh-day Adventists and investigated the Sabbath then began keeping it though it was a visit by Joseph Bates that truly converted he and his wife. Once an Adventist, Haskell through himself into everything he could within the denomination from preacher to eventually administration—serving as president of three conferences at the same time across the country at one point—as well as writing articles from various publications. Though at first opposed to the Whites, because of his own dictatorial attitude but once confronted by Ellen through of her testimonies to him that opposition changed to become Ellen’s greatest defender. Wheeler relates Haskell’s career and its impact his first marriage in which his wife stayed at home and how things changed during his second marriage to Hetty who traveled with him around the world. Wheeler also goes into Haskell’s writing, marketing, organizational, and missionary endeavors throughout the book in which like many Adventist pioneers they were jacks-of-all-trades for the denomination. Throughout the last third of the book, Wheeler relates Haskell’s defending of Ellen White’s ministry in various ways but most particularly with the “daily” controversy and W.W. Prescott whom he did not trust, but his arguments in defense of White’s ministry injected elements of Fundamentalism into the denomination that would causes issues within the denomination at the end of this life and long afterwards.

Throughout the book Wheeler emphasizes the cultural background of various regions of the United States as well as the historical events happening in the nation and other nations that Haskell did missionary service in that influenced his time there. In the chapter end notes Wheeler would list numerous books that would further inform the reader about the cultural and historical trends that not only influenced Haskell but the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a whole. While Wheeler does discuss Haskell’s distrust of W.W. Prescott and his role in the “daily” controversy as well as the implications of his arguments in opposing Prescott because he believed Prescott was undermining Ellen White, but Wheeler seemed to avoid Haskell’s character assassination of Prescott to Ellen White as written seen in Gilbert M. Valentine’s biography of Prescott.

S.N. Haskell: Adventist Pioneer, Evangelist, Missionary, and Editor not only follows a pioneer of the Adventist denomination but also the times he lived in and the social trends before and during his life that affected him and the denomination. Gerald Wheeler’s scholarship and writing style makes this another great biography in the Adventist Pioneer series that anyone interested in the history of the denomination would want to read.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of S.N. Haskell: Adventist Pioneer, Evangelist, Missionary, and Editor by Gerald Wheeler, feel free to comment here or there.

70mattries37315
Jul 26, 2020, 6:32 pm

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 by William Manchester

Before he became the face of the dogged determination in World War II and the voice of inspiration for the British people, Winston Churchill was a scion of a noble family looking to make his mark and coming close on many occasions. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 is the first volume of William Manchester’s biographical trilogy which deals with Churchill’s early life and his adventurous political career until he was shunned by power and entered the political wilderness.

A scion of the ducal Marlborough family, Winston Spencer-Churchill was the eldest son of a second son and his American wife. Before even getting to Winston’s birth and life, Manchester paints the social, cultural, and political landscape he would be born into, be indoctrinated to believe in, and defend his entire life. Throughout his life, Winston would use the connections of his parent’s friends and acquaintances to advance himself early in his career while a boon to his military and early political careers it hardly made up for the fact that both his parents were aloof to his existence even for the times of the British upper class. Manchester relates Winston’s school misadventures and horrible academic record for the classical education expected off one of his station, but while he failed to understand Greek or Latin his “remedial” studies of English year after year would serve him the rest of his life as a journalist, author, and speaking in Parliament. While he served in wars in the frontier of the Empire, first in India then in Sudan, and afterwards in South Africa he initially went there as a “journalist” but used his military rank to join battles or was recruited by the commander on the spot to lead men. Upon the completion of the Boer War, during which he was taken prisoner and escaped, Winston entered politics in his eyes to take up his late father’s torch. Once on the floor of the House, Winston’s speeches were events to be listened to and to be written about in the papers. His familial connections got him in touch with the high circles of the Conservative party, but the issue of Free Trade and his own “radical” views on issues made him become a Liberal and soon found him apart of the new government the party form and would be until after the events connected with Gallipoli during the First World War resulted in him taking to the trenches on the Western Front. After a return to a position in the Government, Winston soon found him edging away from the Liberal Party that was dying in the face for the rise of the Labour Party and soon returned the Conservatives to be among their new Government. Yet the same tensions that made Winston leave the Party in the first place were still there but with more animosity but it was the issue of India sent Winston still a Conservative into the political wilderness that many of his political adversaries believed him to be finished, especially at his age.

In nearly 900 pages of text, Manchester not only details the first 58 years of Winston’s life but also the times he lived in while slowly setting things up for the final volume for the events in which he is most well-known to the public today. There seems to be a bias by Manchester towards Winston that does make it through to the page instead of a little more balanced writing in places, however Manchester does not shy away that Winston’s views and words around the India issue essentially were racist even though at the time it was common thought by many in Britain. Manchester gives balanced view of Winston’s relations with the working class while at the same time revealing why Labour and the press said he was against them. The account of the Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaign that is always blamed on Winston is given fully fleshed out including what actions Winston were accountable for and those he was not and why it was he that the failure was attached to.

Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 reveals the times and environment in which Winston Churchill was brought up and how they shaped him as he entered politics and attempted to rise to power. William Manchester gives a full picture of a young then middle-aged politician whose life was a roller coaster that influenced the British Empire its domestic and foreign affairs, but never held ultimate power and seemed never to. If one wants to know Churchill this book is a great place to start.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932 by William Manchester, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

71mattries37315
Jul 30, 2020, 7:33 pm

Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch

The Gentlemen Bastards are excellent con artists on the land, but then unforeseen events send them onto the waves to become pirates. Red Seas Under Red Skies is the second book of Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards sequences as Locke and Jean find their plans upset by politics, the one type of con they tend to avoid.

Locke and Jean are working a two-year con of the owner of the grandest casino in Tal Verrar, the Sinspire, when their plans are upended by the Bondmagi threatening revenge. They decide to get start their endgame with Locke admitting to the owner he and Jean have been cheating other gamblers to set things up only to be abducted by the secret police of Tal Verrar’s military commander-in-chief. The Archon poisons the duo to force them to work for him to become pirates and get allies from the Ghostwind Islands to attack shipping around Tal Verrar so the archon can get money to strengthen the navy from the city’s merchant council as well as gain the political upper hand, but promises them temporary antidotes. Suddenly in the archon’s service, the duo use this new wrinkle as part of their Sinspire con as the owner is an “ally” of the merchants whose wealth is in his vault. After a six-week crash course in sailing, the duo and a ship’s master spring prisoners from a military prison and take an outfitted ship provided by the archon towards with Locke as the charismatic captain. Things go well until the ship master dies just before their first storm and it become obvious that Locke and Jean are not sailors and there is a mutiny with Locke and Jean left on a little boat in the ocean. Two hours later, a real pirate takes their former ship and the duo are rescued through the pirate captain finds their cover story fishy but allows them to stay alive. Locke and Jean prove themselves on the ship and in the raiding another ship thus becoming full-fledge crewmen then reveal to the captain everything. After arriving at the Ghostwind Islands, the pirate captain tells the other major captains of the archon’s plan and her plan to end it by “playing” along until they get a shot at killing the archon, the other captain’s agree either wholeheartedly or begrudgingly. Weeks later, Locke and Jean report to the archon about their adventures and that they convinced a captain to hit the waters around Tal Verrar as well as continue their Sinspire con. The pirates begin doing small time ship raids and mount a massive assault on a town to the northwest where peasants let themselves be put through cruel and humiliating games by nobles for money. The archon isn’t pleased and demands a proper raid or never see him again, but then another pirate captain appears and attacks their ship believing his previous decision to approve the plan unwise. Locke, Jean, and their pirate allies are victorious but at a personal cost to Jean and they decide to end things in Tal Verrar across the board. Locke and Jean enlist the aid of the merchants against the archon then finish their Sinspire job by stealing the owner’s paintings then getting captured by the secret police who are waylaid and killed by the merchant’s operatives who take their masks and then proceed to the archon who attempts to kill them when the false secret police stage their coup though during the confrontation the chemist of the poison is killed and only one vile of antidote is available for Locke and Jean. The two give the former archon to their pirate allies to do with as they please and go to sell the paintings only to find their replicas, getting only a fraction of what they were expecting. Locke secretly gives the antidote to Jean and the duo sail off to the unknown.

While the overall book a good, after the halfway point it felt like there was a series of “add-ons” where people were introduced or events would happen that would be the next narrative turn of events with the set up for the pirate ship-to-ship battle the biggest example. In contrast, the flashback intrudes to the events after the previous book up and during their set up for the Sinspire con not only gave the reader how Locke and Jean got to where they were at the start of this book but also foreshadowed things that you were looking forward to play out in the narrative flow. The further developments of Locke and Jean were excellently written, and the major secondary characters were fun as well which compensated for the narrative “add-ons”.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is a nice follow up to the first Gentleman Bastards book, but also felt like a let down as well. While Scott Lynch continued to develop Locke and Jean as well as creating some good secondary characters, the narrative flow felt off and as the book went along it was telling. Overall a nice book with an ending that makes a reader curious about what will happen next.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch, feel free to comment here or there.

72mattries37315
Ago 6, 2020, 7:20 pm

Finding Bigfoot: Everything You Need to Know by Martha Brockenbrough

Over the course of nine seasons and 100 episodes, for intrepid individuals searched numerous locations to find evidence related to Bigfoot and become one of the top rated shows in the history of Animal Planet. Finding Bigfoot: Everything You Need to Know by Martha Brockenbrough is a tie-in book aimed at young children to provide information related to the subject of an undiscovered North American ape.

This book is geared towards younger readers and fans of the Animal Planet tv series of the same name with the aim to giving information on the mysterious upright walking ape that might be stalking the wilderness of North America. Investigating such questions as “Does Bigfoot Exist?” as well as investigating the evidence supporting that they do, not only in North America but around the world, but also looking into the various hoaxes and misidentifications that many skeptics bring up this book treats it’s target audience with respect and aims to promote critical thinking. For the readers that believe bigfoot exists there is a “how to” guide about bigfooting and how to collect possible evidence of the creature when found. And throughout are eyewitness accounts from the first four seasons of the show with comments from one of the Finding Bigfoot team members.

While roughly 140 pages, this is an oversized book filled with pictures and easy to read text size. Though intended for children, adults will find this informative as its for general audiences of both believers and skeptics. Brockenbrough’s prose is engaging towards a younger audience without being insulting while keeping adults reading as well. The introduction by Finding Bigfoot star Cliff Barackman, a former teacher, starts the book off right with telling how he came to accept the existence of Bigfoot after growing up as a kid enjoying learning about “monsters”.

Finding Bigfoot: Everything You Need to Know is an easy-to-read and informative look into the subject of an undiscovered North American ape whether you’re a child or a child at heart.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Finding Bigfoot: Everything You Need to Know by Martha Brockenbrough, feel free to comment here or there.

73MrsLee
Ago 8, 2020, 11:29 am

>72 mattries37315: I live near Bigfoot "territory." I have a cousin who firmly believes and for awhile spent time looking, but has not found them yet.

74mattries37315
Ago 16, 2020, 7:14 pm

Parallel Lives by Plutarch

Roughly 1800 years ago, a biographer and historian decided to compare the great men of Greece and Rome to one another to give his readers inspiration to follow their example or what to avoid. Parallel Lives by Plutarch chronicles the lives of the greatest men of the ancient world and the times they lived in.

To show the influence of character—good or bad—of the great men of more remote past of Greece and the more recent past of Rome was Plutarch’s main aim in his biographies of these great men especially when he compared them to one another. Yet throughout his writing he shows the times these great men lived to the benefit of readers today that might know the overall history, but not the remarkably interesting details or events that general history readers might never know about. The usual important suspects like Alexander, Julius Caesar, and their like but it was those individuals that one never heard of today especially those Greeks between the end of the Peloponnesian War and its takeover by Rome save Alexander. This revised edition of the John Dryden translation contains both volumes in one book resulting in almost 1300 pages of text thanks to the fact that they added four lives that Plutarch wrote independent of his parallel pairs which included a Persian monarch, yet this printing is of poor quality as there are missing letters throughout which does slow reading down for a moment.

Parallel Lives is a fascinating series of biographies of individuals that in the second century AD were the greatest men in history to those living at the time, a few of which have continued to our time. Plutarch’s prose brings these men to life as well as the times they live in and influenced which history readers would appreciate a lot.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Parallel Lives by Plutarch, feel free to comment here or there.

75haydninvienna
Ago 17, 2020, 2:41 am

>74 mattries37315: Is your edition of Parallel Lives a print-on-demand? If so, it probably uses the Project Gutenberg text, which is scanned and proofread from an actual copy of the book, but the proofreading isn't always up to snuff. If there are errors in the text, it might be worth while dropping an email to the Project. I know they revise the texts from time to time.

76mattries37315
Ago 17, 2020, 3:09 pm

>75 haydninvienna: It was printed in the late 70s and apparently other people who have the edition (Amazon is a great resource) noted the same thing.

77mattries37315
Ago 19, 2020, 2:06 pm

The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck

Soldiers loyally following their Leader act on the advice of a small coal mining town’s traitor to take it over for the benefit of their ongoing war. The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck is wartime novella about a how occupying soldiers learn that peaceful townspeople do not like being told what to do.

Taken by surprise, a small coastal town is overrun by an invading army with little resistance. The town is important because it is a port that serves a large coal mine. Colonel Lanser, the head of the invading battalion, along with his staff establishes their HQ in the house of Orden, the democratically elected and popular Mayor. As the reality of occupation sinks in and the weather turns bleak, with the snows beginning earlier than usual, the townspeople are getting angry and confused. Lanser, a veteran of many wars, tries to operate under a veil of civility and law, but knows that amongst those whose freedom has been taken away by force there are no peaceful people. A miner quits and when kills an officer who orders him back to work in the mine. After a summary trial, the man is executed by a firing squad, but the incident catalyzes the people of the town to begin resisting. Transportation and communication lines are taken out, mine machinery breaks down often, and whenever soldiers get comfortable, they are killed including a young lieutenant infatuated with the widow of the miner who stabs him to death before escaping to the hills. The cold weather and the constant fear destroy the occupying force’s morale, many of whom wish the war to end so that they can return home. Members of the resistance escape to England and ask the English for explosives so that the townspeople can intensify their efforts. English planes parachute-drop small packages containing dynamite sticks and chocolates all around the town. In a state of panic, Lanser takes the Mayor and his friend Dr. Winter, the town doctor and historian, hostage and lets it be known that any guerilla action will lead to their execution. Mayor Orden knows his people will not stop active resistance and accept his imminent death. Knowing that the townspeople will use the dynamite any moment, Orden and Winter discuss Socrates in front of a stunned Lanser until the first explosion. Orden calmly walks out the door before Lanser can verbally order his execution.

Published in the spring of 1942, Steinbeck wrote this obvious propagandist novella to inspire the Allied war effort and through clandestine publishing in occupied Europe to inspire resistance fighters against their German occupiers as well as collaborators. While the town and country are unnamed, it was not hard to tell it was Norway given the clues Steinbeck sprinkled throughout the text.

The Moon Is Down is also a wonder example of John Steinbeck’s writing that is a quick read for anyone deciding if they want to read his more famous works to learn his style. While written for more political than literary purposes that does not diminish the impact of the narrative nor does Steinbeck not put in his best work.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Flood Tide by Clive Cussler

78clamairy
Ago 19, 2020, 2:27 pm

>77 mattries37315: Okay, this Steinbeck is going on my TBR. Thank you.

79mattries37315
Ago 19, 2020, 6:51 pm

>78 clamairy: You're welcome. I hope you like it as much as I did.

80mattries37315
Ago 19, 2020, 7:00 pm

>73 MrsLee: So far the Patterson-Gimlin film is the reason I allow for the possibility. Bob Gimlin has never deviated from this witness account and given the materials at the time it was impossible to create a suit that good especially compared to what Hollywood created for Planet of the Apes.

81MrsLee
Editado: Ago 20, 2020, 10:18 am

>80 mattries37315: I live in hope. I also rather hope we never know for sure, because if we did find any, I'm sure their fate would not fare well given mankind's history of how we study/hunt/expose rare finds to death. Oops, my pessimism is showing.

>77 mattries37315: I think I have a first edition of that. I love its cover, and apparently I loved the book, gave it five stars, but I have no memory of the story except the outline you gave in your review above.

82mattries37315
Ago 26, 2020, 11:45 am

Flood Tide by Clive Cussler

A ship goes down in unknown waters leaving only two survivors that know where a vast amount of Chinese heritage is located, a ship that a human trafficking Chinese businessman would do anything to find. Flood Tide is the fourteenth book of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt with the titular character attempting to stop a human trafficking ring to the U.S. and preventing a massive economic and human disaster in Louisiana.

A ship taken by the retreating Nationalist government is loaded the national treasures of China before Mao’s Communists can get them in 1948, but before it reaches it’s destination it sinks in a violent storm with only the ship’s engineer and his girlfriend surviving on a freezing shore. In 2000 Dirk Pitt is vacationing and recovering from his injuries in Australia at Orion Lake when he realizes the cabin he borrowed has been search by the security of a Chinese businessman’s estate at the other end of the lake. Intrigued Pitt investigates only to find the mansion is a holding prison for illegal Chinese immigrants while the bottom of the lake is littered with dead bodies. Pitt saves new victims from drowning including an undercover INS agent and wrecks to the estate’s docking area before escaping down the Orion River to the Pacific from the security force. The INS raid the estate and the businessman Qin Shang begins damage control, including sending feelers to the White House and the President who he has given money to for his reelection campaign. Pitt teams up with Al Giordino to investigate a cruise ship in Hong Kong that Shang had bought and was refitting believing it’s to continue his illegal human trafficking ring, but find it empty except for automated guidance equipment that then navigates the ship across the Pacific without a crew. The pair return to the U.S. and Pitt along with the INS agent survive a car chase against Shang’s henchmen, but NUMA and the INS have a spat leading to them not working together anymore. Pitt and Giordino head to the Louisiana to investigate Shang’s shipping port that is in the middle of no where from the Mississippi when the duo figure out how his human trafficking network works in the area and again save the INS agent that Pitt keeps running into. Shang’s automated cruise ship arrives on the Mississippi River, but Pitt figured out Shang’s plan to redirect the flow of the Mississippi bypassing New Orleans and going to his out-of-the way port by blowing a levee and scuttling the cruise ship across the river. Pitt and Giordino takeover the ship and guide it into the levee’s breech to prevent a massive disaster. Shang flees to China where the Communist government will protect him while as there is battle in the U.S. between those he bribed against those who want him charged with terrorism. After learning everything to know about Shang including his search for the ship carrying his nation’s treasures, Pitt and NUMA discover the location of the wreck in Lake Michigan after talking with the survivor of the ship and his wife. NUMA, the Navy, and a Canadian salvage vessel recover everything before they leak the location into Shang’s channels. His massive ego leads Shang to arrive in Canada to border his own salvage vessel and goes down first only to find the ship empty with Pitt and Giordino springing a trap that send Shang to the bottom to die like all those at the bottom of Orion Lake. Admiral Sandecker and the head of the INS threaten the President to keep their own jobs with his own political future in the balance.

Having previously listened to the audiobook edition, I had completely forgotten about the Chinese treasure ship or Shang bribing of U.S. politicians but do remember the human trafficking and diverting the Mississippi plot points. That was because the human trafficking and Mississippi diversion plots were the good parts of the book while the other two were forgettable. Pitt comes off as superhuman given what he went through in Shock Wave while the INS agent Julia Marie Lee could have been a good character if not for becoming a multiple time damsel-in-distress character. Qin Shang could have been an interesting antagonist if not for some the trope material that Cussler saddled him especially at the end of the book. In fact, Cussler’s politics are heavy handed throughout the book and his “not-Clinton” but totally Clinton President were a little too much for my tastes.

Shock Wave is a okay book at best and felt a like downgrade in quality from Clive Cussler’s previous installments of his bestselling series. While not as bad as some of the early books in the series, this book was a disappointment given the good elements that were undermined by the bad.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Flood Tide by Clive Cussler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein

83mattries37315
Set 16, 2020, 6:57 am

Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes

Modern philosophy began in the Netherlands by a French mathematician inspired by the events of the Thirty-Years War in Germany. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy are the first two treatise by French mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes that would that would not only start modern philosophy but also the use of reason which lead to the development of natural sciences both of which impact the world in the 21st Century.

The “founding” document of Cartesian philosophical and scientific method is “Discourse on Method” in which Rene Descartes tackles the problem of skepticism while also acknowledging that a truth can be found incontrovertible. Descartes started his line of reasoning, and thus his “method”, by doubting everything so to assess everything from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions. To test his new method, he uses it on itself which leads to the famous quote of the work, “I think, therefore I am”. Descartes second work, “Meditations on First Philosophy”, expands upon his philosophical system introduced in “Discourse” and presents Descartes metaphysical system at its most detailed level. Within this series of meditations, Descartes sets further the arguments for the three substances that all existence consisted of which formed the basis of Cartesian ontology—matter, mind, and God.

Rene Descartes significance to modern philosophy and the development of the natural science means this two-treatise collection is important in the history of the development of both philosophy and the scientific method. Yet this book is simply the two treatises without an introduction or explanation to the uninitiated about the importance of the works or the author. Also a significant element of “Meditations of First Philosophy” was missing at least from Descartes perspective, particular the objections from scholars around Europe that he submitted the unpublished manuscript to and his replies that were printed when he officially published the work. Though the book comes in at 130 pages without the two features, it hurts the overall product.

Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy are the first two treatise of Cartesian philosophy that Rene Descartes and many after developed and refined over the course of the seventeenth century. While the treatise themselves are five-star worthy, without context or adherence to authorial intent the way they are presented in this book lessens their impact.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes, feel free to comment here or there.

84mattries37315
Set 17, 2020, 4:50 pm

Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein

Reaganland ends Rick Perlstein’s four volume history on the rise of modern conservatism in American politics with looking at how the former actor and governor became the embodiment of the 1980s. Beginning with how Ronald Reagan might or might not have failed to help President Gerald Ford in the 1976 then how he became the four-year front-runner to challenge President Jimmy Carter as the economic, cultural, and political landscape shifted under the feet of the Establishment without them noticing.

Perlstein sticks to the trademark of this series with interconnecting cultural, entertainment, and societal issues with politics and history as nothing happens within a vacuum. The women’s rights, gay rights, and abortion rights developments of the early part of the 1970s, brought “organized discontent” from “moral” individuals who brought the “culture wars” that the country has lived with for the past 40 years into the mainstream of politics. Conservative background powerbrokers and boardroom Jacobins latched onto these “moral” crusades as well as the groundswell of taxpayer discontent and manipulated campaigns against consumerism to better their political fortunes and corporate profits. Then there was the continuing economic issues from inflation, energy, and unemployment all interrelated during the late 1970s that ultimately undermined the Carter Presidency than anything else beyond the borders of the nation. Finally, all the factors above that combined to make the 1980 Presidential campaign, not only one of a monumental shift in the political landscape but also historically misunderstood as to why Reagan won and Carter lost.

Unlike previous books, Perlstein didn’t need to give biographies of the major political figures of the era as they had already been covered though he did give minibiographies of individuals of lesser stature but who’s unknown impact would last for years. As I mention in my review of the previous book, Perlstein just goes after Carter and the major figures in his Administration but Reagan and his entire campaign doesn’t escape savaging as well throughout the book especially during the Presidential campaign. Perlstein doesn’t have to manipulate the facts to make the Christian Right, aka Moral Majority, come across as unchristian and unconstitutional in their portrayal in the book as what was covered in this five year period could be copied and pasted from anytime up until 2020.

The 1980s is seen as the decade of Ronald Reagan thus this book title, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980, perfectly encapsulates how that came to be. Rick Perlstein’s final volume of how modern conservatism took over the Republican Party and changed the political landscape as well as the political Establishment completes a 22-year story yet also feels historically hollow, which is the book’s major drawback. Without analysis of how the trends of 1958-1980 influenced the next four decades, the volume’s end was both sudden and underwhelming for a reader that had spent their time reading it.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Reaganland: America's Right Turn 1976-1980 by Rick Perlstein, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Op-Center: For Honor by Jeff Rovin.

85mattries37315
Set 22, 2020, 8:51 pm

For Honor by Jeff Rovin

A Cold War secret for almost 60 years suddenly becomes relevant as Russia looks to gain an ally in the Middle East by secretly giving it nuclear weapons, but a defector and Op-Center’s Geek Tank shines a spotlight on the covert affair. For Honor is the fifth book of the Op-Center reboot as original series author Jeff Rovin full takes over the series as Op-Center attempts to stop a potentially deadly epilogue of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Operation Anadyr was not only the plan to put nuclear ICBMs in Cuba, but outside a remote village in the Artic Circle without the U.S. knowing. A former Soviet officer who became an arms dealer is contacted by his estranged son who is a part of the GRU—the KGB in all but name—to the little village and takes him to were the missiles are stored. Chase Williams and Op-Center help interview a defecting Iranian general, who is a Christian but allowed to rise in ranks to be used a decoy later, when they learn his “imprisoned” daughter is a nuclear physicist who attended a conference that also had Russians and a elderly Cuban who was Castro’s point-woman during Operation Anadyr. Op-Center’s Geek Tank then has alerts about the travels of the Russian arms dealer and his GRU employed son arriving in the same little Russian town, Anadyr. Williams dispatches someone down to Cuba and learns from the anti-Russian scientist that missiles were stored near the town. Op-Center’s Special Forces Team sinks an Iranian undercover naval ship in international waters, but the President and the National Security Advisor are not happy with the incident while the Iranian’s plan for revenge.

For the second straight book, Op-Center felt like it was only featured in the book because it was an Op-Center book. Everything that was interesting happened outside the organization’s building and did not include any character that related to it. Then there were the chronological issues with the Presidential administration that went from being in their first term in the previous book to almost finished with their second even though only one month had passed from the events of Dark Zone. Frankly all these issues have one thing in common, Jeff Rovin, and the foreshadowing of where he plans to take the series means their confused book and undermining of everything that was laid down in the first books of the relaunch means that things will just continue to be confusing and bad.

For Honor sees the full-time return of Jeff Rovin to the Op-Center series, which given the quality of this and the previous book means the rebooted series will have the same quality issues that the original series will. If you’re a fan of Rovin then by all means continue the series, if you’ve never read Rovin before then don’t waste your time.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Op-Center: For Honor by Jeff Rovin, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester.

86mattries37315
Out 11, 2020, 6:09 pm

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester

An eloquent voicing crying out in the wilderness a warning of war and dismissed until vindicated when that war begins, the nation and the world towards him as the last shining hope of the war. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 is the second volume of William Manchester’s biographical trilogy which deals with Churchill’s life during his political “wilderness” years as Europe slid towards war.

From the outset Manchester indicates that a biography is not just about a person, but also the times that individual lived in. It was a subtle hint that the “wilderness” years of Winston Spencer-Churchill’s political life wouldn’t follow one man be an examination about how the 1930s saw the rise of darkness on the continent and the willingness of the British upper class to do everything possible to acquiesce with it in the name of never going to war again. With the rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Churchill found his nemesis and began signaling the danger to the British Empire and the peace of Europe to an empty House of Commons for years while challenging the government on preparedness of the armed forces in comparison to Germany, only to be lied to in response and knowing it due to his “spy network” amongst the civil servants and military officers that saw the dangers of the Nazi. During these years, Churchill would write columns and articles in various British media and around the world warning the dangers of the Nazis only to be labeled a warmonger until Hitler set his eyes on territorial expansion and many around the continent looked to him to plead for them in front of the British public while the Nazis would always attack him in their propaganda newspapers and complain to the appeaser British ambassador. In 1936 it seemed that Churchill’s call to action had caught the national mood when suddenly his support of Edward VIII as a person if not his decisions made him the scapegoat to the national anger of the constitutional crisis by the King’s desire to marry Wallis Simpson, thus with the public angry at Churchill the national leadership dismissed his calls for action even as Hitler moved his eyes towards Austria and Czechoslovakia. With the rise of Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister the enabling of Hitler through appeasement and undermining of their alliance with France while discouraging the German military from overthrowing Hitler which would have precluded the start of another war. Once war seemed inevitable as 1939 continued, Churchill’s outsider status for the previous decade and call for preparedness had the public calling for him to in the cabinet something Chamberlain didn’t want to do until he finally had to form a War Cabinet after declaring war. Once again First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill literally led the British war effort as it was the Royal Navy was instantly was fighting the Germans not the Army or Air Force until the Norway and the invasion of the Low Countries in 1940 at which time the Conservative backbenchers and Labour forced Chamberlain to surrender his office and nominating Churchill to George VI.

Covering eight years of a person’s life would not normally take almost 700 pages, but as Manchester implied at the beginning of this book this is more a history of the times almost as much as it was a biography. Though Churchill is the focus throughout, the lives and actions of Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, and many others are covered especially in their reactions to and from Churchill. Manchester’s bias against “the Men of Munich” is overwhelmingly apparent though as an individual who fought in the war—admittedly in the Pacific—it shouldn’t surprise the reader that a veteran would not shine a good light on someone who kowtowed to Hitler’s wishes instead of having a spine. The political drama surrounding Chamberlain’s loss of support in the House and the rise of Churchill even in the shadow of the German invasion of the Low Countries is literally the best part of the book even though the reader knows the outcomes, how the two were both independent of one another though both played off one another.

Alone, 1932-1940 portrays the low ebb of Winston Churchill’s political and real life as all his eloquence falls not on deaf years but those who simply do not care until it is too late. William Manchester not only follows Churchill’s life during these eight years, but also the nation and the world he was living in and those in power that allowed Europe to go to war twenty years after the last one. Today we think it was inevitable that Churchill would rise to become Prime Minister, but to even Churchill during these years it wasn’t and this book explains why.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-1940 by William Manchester, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

87mattries37315
Out 23, 2020, 3:08 pm

The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems translated by Henry Adams Bellows

The second half of the 20th Century has seen a rise in popularity of Norse mythology through various pop culture entities even though the number of sources were few and knowledge of them not widespread. The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems is half of a collection of anonymously written poems arranged soon after the Christianization of Scandinavia that focuses on the Norse pantheon and translated in the early 20th Century by Henry Adam Bellows.

The mythological poems range from the creation of the world to the twilight of the gods to everything in between about the Norse gods most notably Odin, Thor, and Loki. The opening poem “Voluspo” gives a timeline of Norse cosmology that many with barely a hint of Norse beliefs will guess. The cosmology of the Norse was further expounded in “Vafthruthnismol”, “Grimnismol”, and “Alvissmol” through various devices. One of the surprising poems is how much Thor is made fun of by everyone via insult like in “Harbarthsljoth” or put in hilarious situations like in “Thyrmskvitha” which features Thor in drag before getting his revenge, though Thor isn’t a complete fool as will be found in the aforementioned “Alvissmol”. Loki is one of the prime characters in “Thyrmskvitha” and “Lokasenna” though he plays a significant part at the end of the Norse cosmology with himself and his children.

Unfortunately, how much Christianization creeped into these poems by the time they were written down or changed as they were written down is unknown and thus 100% authenticity is not known. Bellows’ translation reads very well, and his footnotes are excellent, the only thing that a 21st Century reader might have an issue with is that instead of spelling Odin as we do now Bellows spells it Othin and there are other words where it seems this is the case as well.

Overall, this is a fantastic translated collection of mythological poems that gives the reader a very good overview of Norse cosmology.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Poetic Edda: The Mythological Poems translated by Henry Adams Bellows, feel free to comment here or there.

88Majel-Susan
Out 23, 2020, 5:05 pm

>87 mattries37315: I had been leaning towards reading Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology to get familiar with the stuff, but now The Poetic Edda also sounds like a promising overview.

89-pilgrim-
Editado: Out 23, 2020, 5:36 pm

>87 mattries37315: I think the spelling issue is this: Old English had a hard "th" and a soft "th"; the former was spelt with the letter thorn (þ) and the latter with the letter Eth (ð) . Icelandic still has those letters.

I believe the name you are discussing is Oðin. Bellows comes from an era when Old English was routinely taught in university English courses. He would have automatically known how to pronounce Oðin, so he transliterates it into the modern English alphabet. But ð looks rather like a cursive "d", so once the above stopped being common knowledge, people tended to write Oðin as "Odin".

90-pilgrim-
Editado: Out 23, 2020, 5:45 pm

>88 Majel-Susan: Personally, I have never seen the point of Neil Gaiman's version (which I DNFed).

In the Introduction, he admits that he was "inspired" by Roger Lancelyn Green's version - Myths of the Norsemen. That was the version that I read as a child, and it includes all the episodes Matt has mentioned, so I think it is a perfectly adequate introductory coverage, and I found his storytelling more compelling than Gaiman's - although that is simply a personal preference.

The Prose Edda itself, however, has been lurking on my TBR pile for a while (unfortunately my copy and I are currently far apart).

91mattries37315
Out 23, 2020, 7:19 pm

>89 -pilgrim-: thanks for the info.

92Majel-Susan
Out 23, 2020, 9:12 pm

>90 -pilgrim-: I didn't know that, but I do like the sound of Myths of the Norsemen. Thanks, I'll be keeping that one in mind when I next look the subject up.

93mattries37315
Nov 11, 2020, 11:54 am

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The balance between tradition and reform, of the long influence of French culture and simmering Russian nationalism through the course of the Napoleonic Wars is seen through the eyes of numerous noble Russians from 1805 to the end of the French invasion in 1812. War and Peace is considered Leo Tolstoy’s greatest work as it follows the lives of youthful and idealistic Russian nobles as they attempt to find their way in society and the world during times that would be defined by one man who spanned across Europe to their doorsteps.

The saga begins in the Russian Empire in 1805. When Pierre Bezuknov, Natasha Rostov, and Andrei Bolkonsky are first introduced with all their youthful ambition, despite their privileged circumstances, is to find meaning in their lives. Kind-hearted but awkward Pierre, the illegitimate son of Russia's richest man, wants to change the world for the better. The spirited Natasha is searching for true love, while handsome and gallant Andrei, frustrated with the superficiality of society, seeks a higher purpose. At the same time, the French army under Napoleon edges ever closer to Russia's borders. Natasha's older brother Nikolai joins the Imperial Russian Army immediately and matures during the war against Napoleon. Like Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei, he also experiences romantic vicissitudes: despite his childhood love for his cousin Sonya, his impoverished parents insist he marry a rich bride like the superficial Julie Karagina or the religious Marya Bolkonskaya. Having begun with Napoleon's military campaign against Russia and Austria in 1805, the story concludes in 1812 after Napoleon's invasion of Russia has failed and he has retreated and withdrawn from Russian territory. The families at the center of the saga have undergone major changes and lost members, but those remaining have experienced a transformation and a new life, with new growth and new families started.

The sprawling narrative that Tolstoy constructs around his characters and locations varying from Moscow, St. Petersburg, various Russian estates, and battlefields spanning Austria, Poland, and Russia is wonderful. Unfortunately it is marred by Tolstoy’s decision to lecture the reader on his view of history as opposed to other interpretations not only took me out of the book—even though half my reading is history—but allowed me to think about the characters and the narrative he was having them go through resulting me quickly finding them fools and idiots who essentially deserve all the bad things that happen to them, except Sonya who is Tolstoy’s emotional whipping horse. The introduction by Pat Conroy and the afterword by John Hockenberry in the Signet Classics edition are completely worthless and if you get this edition ignore them.

War and Peace is a great book if not for Tolstoy’s narrative disrupting historical lecturing that takes your attention away from large tapestry that he created thus exposing foolishness of his characters.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reviewing William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker by Ian Doescher

94BrokenTune
Nov 11, 2020, 2:48 pm

>93 mattries37315: WooHoo! You did it! How long did it take you overall?

95mattries37315
Nov 11, 2020, 4:09 pm

>94 BrokenTune: Technically I read it from October 4 to November 3, however the week of my vacation I really didn't open it up.

It took me over a week to figure out how to summarize the book, luckily I found the synopsis of the 2016 tv miniseries on Wikipedia and basically used that.

96Sakerfalcon
Nov 12, 2020, 6:54 am

War and peace is a great read, but I agree about wishing Tolstoy had skipped the history lectures. However, I do know some people who enjoyed those bits .... One day I will reread it.

97BrokenTune
Nov 12, 2020, 2:29 pm

>96 Sakerfalcon: "One day I will reread it." - That's what I am telling myself, too.

>95 mattries37315: That is really good going. It took me three months to finish it.

98mattries37315
Nov 18, 2020, 12:10 pm

William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker by Ian Doescher

The First Order appears triumphant and the Resistance on it’s last legs when sudden the voice of a dead man echoes across the stars sending everyone to the Unknown Regions to either inaugurated or stop the execution of the Final Order. Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s The Merry Rise of Skywalker concludes his adaptation of the Star Wars franchise the style of the Bard while dealing with the complete catastrophe that is the sequel trilogy.

After the difficult task of adapting Jedi the Last into a coherent play, Doescher had the less difficult though challenging task of adapting the official retconning of sections of the previous film into a Shakespearean play. With better written characters and somewhat better dialogue to adapt—though that’s not saying much—Doescher was able to stick with iambic pentameter throughout the play except for those special characters like Yoda whose speech patterns are different throughout the entire franchise. To challenge himself, Doescher once again infused the play with easter eggs and secret messages (Rey’s soliloquys) along with adding special dialogues for characters that didn’t have lines in the film but were portrayed by long-time contributors to the franchise. And the illustrations of characters in Elizabethan stage attire is a delightful addition to Doescher’s words.

The Merry Rise of Skywalker is based on a film that had to repair the damage of its predecessor and Ian Doescher was able to make a very good stage adaptation with what he was given though not as difficult as before. The rating of his book is based not on the original material, but Doescher’s hard work in adapting the films for the Elizabethan stage.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of William Shakespeare's The Merry Rise of Skywalker by Ian Doescher, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reviewing Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler

99mattries37315
Nov 26, 2020, 11:54 am

Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler

Dangers from the ancient past and the 20th Centuries come together to bring humanity on the verge of doomsday. Atlantis Found is the fifteenth book of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt series that finds Dirk and his friends and associates at NUMA stumbling upon a 60-year old plan inspired by hatred and an ancient catastrophe just months from challenging the world.

In 7120 BC, a comet hit North America, abruptly ending an advanced civilization. In AD 1858, a whaling vessel discovers a 1770s merchant ship frozen in Antarctic ice; included on this ship is a polished obsidian skull. In the present (2001), a group of U.S. scientists discover a mysterious underground chamber in a Colorado mine, including a polished obsidian skull. They are attacked with a deliberate avalanche and cave-in resulting in the mine flooding, but Dirk Pitt arrives from diving in another mine as part of an emergency rescue though the group is almost killed again by the saboteurs. Pitt obtains the Antarctic skull from a descendant of the whaling ship’s captain along with a copy of the merchant’s logbook. The information amassed and analyzed by NUMA leads Pitt to Antarctica to look for the merchant ship in the ice while Al Giordino and Rudi Gunn head to a remote island where the merchant ship found the skull. Both expeditions succeed—Giordino and Gunn finding a chamber and well-preserved mummies—only for each to be attacked by the same group that attacked the scientists in Colorado as Pitt’s group narrowly escapes being destroyed by a German U-boat missing since 1945 while Al and Rudi take out a commando team. Diving into the U-boat, Pitt finds a female officer and brings her to the surface. Upon Pitt’s return to Washington D.C., he stumbles upon a report from Admiral Sandecker’s office and is able to apprehend the woman who appears to be identical to the sub officer Pitt recovered, but is later genetically proven to be a cousin though modified and mostly inbred though known as members of the Nazi escapee Wolf family that owns the Argentinean corporation, Destiny Enterprises a legal front for the Fourth Empire Holdings from Nazi Germany. After examining the skulls, inscriptions from them and the chambers which they work to translate, and various artifacts that show a different geographical look to the Earth the NUMA results are startling. The chambers turn out to be the work of a civilization calling themselves the Amenes, a nation of seafarers and wise men who discovered and traded with most of the world. The comet from the beginning of the book caused a worldwide disaster that wiped out most of their civilization. It also had a twin, which returned to space. The few Amenes that survived built the chambers to pass on information of the twin comets return and the catastrophe. This information is given to an observatory to be checked but it turns out to be incorrect but the Wolfs appear to either be planning it or took inspiration from the catastrophe to bring about a re-creating of civilization in the Nazi image. Pitt and Giordino infiltrate a Destiny Enterprises facility that harbors four superships not only to scout but rescue one of the scientists from Colorado. They then meet Destiny CEO Karl Wolf who implies that the disaster will happen in days, which makes NUMA and the military scramble to figure out how when they realize that Destiny has a sea mining facility in Antarctica next to the Ross Ice Shelf that uses nanotechnology. Computer projections show that if the Shelf breaks off it will unbalance the planet—as the comet did—wiping out nearly all of humanity that is unprepared. The U.S. military task force of special forces from all branches attack the facility, but it’s Pitt and Giordino’s unplanned intervention that is able to turn the tide in battle resulting in the holding off of doomsday and the deaths of Karl and his relatives.

Unlike Flood Tide, the whole treasure story arc and main story arc were intertwined throughout the book allowing both to be settled in the final pages instead at two different points. Yet, it felt that Cussler was mixing and matching previous plot elements from earlier installments in creating this particular book with a family running a underground criminal empire with tentacles in governments around the world (Treasure and Inca Gold) being the most prominent. One of the biggest narrative miscues was the sole reliance of a special forces assault in Antarctica to stop the Wolf’s designs when an airstrike against the four superships should have been done as well—regardless of the risk to women and children due to the fact that Wolf wanted to kill 7 billion people that included women and children—thus forcing the Wolfs into a zero-sum game. Dirk was a little less superhuman in this book unlike the previous installment and while interested in the main female lead this book, got stunned in the end when she suddenly hooked up with Al out of nowhere but somewhat forced Dirk to consider once against marriage to his on-and-off girlfriend Loren Smith. The inclusion of the comet strike and the catastrophic tectonic plate shifts as the result are among the first “fringe” theories that Cussler would include in his book, although the comet/asteroid strike theory in Canada during the last Ice Age now does have more evidence backing it up in reality it had the opposite affect of prolonging the Ice Age instead of ending it like in the book while the global tectonic plate shift as a result of the comet and or the Ross Ice Shelf unbalancing the Earth are too farfetched for even some daring geologists to accept.

Atlantis Found is a good book narratively that has some unfortunately underwhelming supporting features that downgrades its quality. While one of the better books of the series, some of the choices Clive Cussler are a bit worrying for future installments.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 by William Manchester & Paul Reid

100mattries37315
Nov 29, 2020, 4:58 pm

The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems translated by Henry Adam Bellows

While Norse mythology has seen an increase of interest in the past half century, not so it’s heroic sagas though as seen in this book there is a reason for that. The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems is half of a collection of anonymously written poems from across the Norse world and translated in the early 20th Century by Henry Adam Bellows.

The heroic poems are divided into three lays or cycles: Helgi, Niflung, and Jormunrekkr. The first three poems feature the early Danish hero, Helgi, through all of them cover some of the same events. The overwhelming number of poems are a part of the Niflung cycle which is a Norse rendition of the German heroic epics connected with Siegfried—of Wagner operatic fame. The final two poems are about the revenge against Jormunrekkr by two brothers of the wife he killed as incited by their mother Guthrun from the Niflung cycle.

While some individual poems are good, “Atlamol en Gronlenzku” being one example, many more are pieced together and or cover the same events though written by different writers. Once you have read several poems in a row about the same events or one explicit event, all the poems are lessened in quality. After a while, one is looking to see how different writers create different ways to cover the same thing but grow quickly unimpressed especially when Bellows explains in introductions or footnotes that some lines are probably from a different poem.

Overall, this is a very well translated collection of poems, some of which are very good, however do to the fact many of the cover the same things over and over the overall collection because burdensome to read.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Poetic Edda: The Heroic Poems translated by Henry Adams Bellows, feel free to comment here or there.

101mattries37315
Dez 9, 2020, 12:01 pm

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 by William Manchester and Paul Reid

After a lifetime striving to obtain the greatest political office one can achieve, you are faced with one of the greatest military threats your nation as ever had to deal with. The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 is the final volume William Manchester’s biographical trilogy that was finished by Paul Reid that covers the five years that define Churchill to the world.

While title of the book indicates that it will cover the last quarter-century of Churchill’s life—and it does—almost 90% covers his tenure in 10 Downing Street from his ascension to Prime Minister through V-E Day almost 5 years to the day. Reid using Manchester’s established research and interviews as well as adding his own follows the path Winston Churchill had to tread both militarily as Britain’s war leader to defend the Home Islands from invasion as well as the outlying possessions that sustained the Home Islands in food and material while getting whatever assistance he can from the United States over the course a year until the German invasion of the Soviet Union followed later by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Now with powerful allies, though now with another war on the other side of the world, Churchill’s problems were not solved but only multiplied as different strategic and post-war visions from the Soviet Union and the United States as well as their contributions to the overall war effort soon eclipsed that of the British not only in the war but in the eventual peace. The last tenth of the book dealt most with Churchill’s time as leader of the opposition to Attlee’s Labour government that came to power after the July 1945 election while also being considered the greatest statesmen in the world at the same. But once he achieved his goal of obtaining 10 Downing through the ballot box, but ill-health and that change in American and Soviet leaderships sent the rapidly freezing Cold War out of his hands diplomatically while his long-time loyal supporters looked ease him out but not in a way that would cause massive public dissatisfaction of backstabbing him. The last ten years of his life after his resignation are covered in about as many pages with a sadness of the inevitable but how he remained himself until the end.

While the first two volumes of this biographical trilogy gave showcased Churchill’s path towards his “date with destiny”, this was the volume anyone interested in Churchill was interested in. Looking from an American point-of-view at Churchill’s leadership role along with his various decisions and reactions that saw the war from British point-of-view gave a greater scope to the vast conflict, especially in the overall European theater. The personal and political relationships between Churchill to both Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin on one level to various British and American military commanders on another while also being a political leader on the home front showed the numerous plates that he had to spin, many times without success when it came to various strategic plans especially in Italy and the Balkans the latter of which would shape the early Cold War. Reid and Manchester, from an American point-of-view, took on the myth of Churchill’s opposition to D-Day that Eisenhower and other propagated especially when facts bore out that Churchill’s insistence that Montgomery review the initial plans that resulted in the Overlord plan that took place on June 6 in which Churchill wholeheartedly supported. The surprising fact that the “warmonger” Churchill attempted throughout his second premiership to organize a summit early in the hardening Cold War with the threat of atomic then nuclear war—one with only losers and no winners—beginning to loom large was a surprise and often overlooked.

Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 portrays the Churchill of 1940 when Britain stood alone in which he is remember by history then follows the rest of his war years in detail, especially how the greatest empire in history at the beginning of the war would be the distant third major war power at the end of it. The research of both William Manchester and Paul Reid brings into focus for the reader the short-term and long-term military decisions Churchill dealt with as well as numerous political realities he had to either fight or acquiesce to throughout the war years and later upon his post-war premiership.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965 by William Manchester & Paul Reid, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading The Prose Edda: Tales from Norse Mythology by Snorri Sturluson

102-pilgrim-
Editado: Dez 10, 2020, 3:07 pm

>100 mattries37315: Were the poems translated into poetry or prose?

103mattries37315
Dez 10, 2020, 6:57 pm

104-pilgrim-
Editado: Dez 12, 2020, 10:52 am

>103 mattries37315: All by the same translator? Would you say he was a skilled enough poet to vary register along with his source material? Or did they all end up using the source material, but in his own poetic style?

Edited as AutoCorrect mangled my typing into incomprehensibility in places..

105mattries37315
Dez 11, 2020, 7:41 pm

>104 -pilgrim-: Yes by the same translator. He was more of an Old Norse scholar, but knew the rules of Skaldic poetry so as to translate them into English but in the meaning and rhythm of the original language.

106-pilgrim-
Dez 12, 2020, 10:53 am

>105 mattries37315: Oh, that does sound a tempting version.

107mattries37315
Dez 12, 2020, 6:48 pm

>106 -pilgrim-: The editions I read were first published a century ago and these are republished by Dover 10-15 years ago. There could be new translations that might be available from equally qualified scholars.

108-pilgrim-
Dez 12, 2020, 10:20 pm

>107 mattries37315: The problem with translating poetry is that one needs to be not only a scholar, but also a poet. That was why I was so interested that you felt that he had got the knack.

I have The Poetic Edda in, I think, the Larrington translation, but with poetry it is always worth comparing different versions, to be able to discern what aspects of style come from the translator, and what from the original.

109mattries37315
Dez 13, 2020, 6:41 pm

The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson

The Norse mythology that has come down to us, is primarily thanks to one Icelandic scholar and politician. The Prose Edda is Snorri Sturluson’s attempt to compile the myths of the Northern world and save the knowledge of how skaldic poetry is composed.

The book is essentially divided into two parts, the first is strictly concerned with mythology and the second is a mix of mythology and learning the rules of skaldic poetry. While Snorri follows the examples of Virgil and Geoffrey of Monmouth of connecting the Norse gods to originally being refugees of Troy that uncivilized tribes were awed by and made into gods, his prose retelling of the Norse myths seen in The Poetic Edda is not only exceptionally good but was most well-known versions for centuries. In fact, Snorri includes more myths than what appears in The Prose Edda including more that relate to Loki and Sif and others. The second half which features Snorri telling the rules of skaldic poetry by using mythic and saga verses is an easy, quick read that those not really interested will not find daunting in finishing the book but adds to the overall knowledge of skaldic tradition if one reads The Poetic Edda after Snorri’s book.

Unlike The Poetic Edda in which readers are not really sure how much Christianization has leaked into the versions written in, the reader knows from the beginning that Snorri is threading the edge of being a Christian and attempting to preserve his cultures pagan heritage. Brodeur’s translation not only reads well with occasional footnotes when giving meanings to words, but the spellings that the 21st Century reader knows of the various god’s names are the same.

The Prose Edda is the primary source of the vast majority of what we know today of Norse mythology and that alone recommends this book to those interested in mythology of any type.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reviewing The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson

110mattries37315
Dez 15, 2020, 8:55 pm

The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson

The future of an empire rests in the hands of a heretical magic user who is tasked with restoring the Emperor or else. The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson is a novella set on the same world as his first novel Elantris, but far away from that magical city in the capital of the Rose Empire.

Shai is a thief and practitioner of magical forgery who has been arrested and sentenced to death. The Emperor's corrupt advisors offer to free her if she agrees to forge a new soul for the Emperor, who has been left brain dead by an assassination attempt. She agrees but plans to escape. She is given 100 days to forge the soul, given only official histories, the Emperor's diary, and Gaotona, the only non-corrupt advisor, a task even she deems impossible. As they research the Emperor's past, Gaotona learns more about forgery, a generally detested practice, and the two develop a grudging respect for each other. During this task, Shai realizes the Emperor had once been idealistic, but a life of leisure resulted in his recent indulgence and resolves to create and tweak the soul as her masterpiece, setting him on a better path. Though many opportunities present themselves, Shai puts off escaping until the work is done, whereupon Gaotona helps her win her freedom against his colleagues' treachery. The Emperor, with the forged soul, resumes his rule.

At approximately 175 pages, this novella is a very quick not only thanks to Sanderson’s writing style but also because Shai is an interesting character that the reader wants to follow. The subplot of Gaotona’s relationship to the Emperor and his view of “art” is a nice addition that adds to the novella without attempting to stuff too much in too little space.

The Emperor’s Soul is a quick reading novella following an interesting character set in the same world as Brandon Sanderson’s first novel but in no way connected to the events of that book.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reviewing The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

111mattries37315
Dez 16, 2020, 11:20 am

The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss

A young mentally broken woman explores a vast underground below a magical university, who’s only friend is about to make one of his visits. The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss follows a week in the life of the mysterious and tragic Auri.

Over the course of around 150 pages, we follow the daily life and adventures of Auri throughout the Underthing as she prepares for a visit from Kvothe. This untraditional story without a clear beginning, middle, or end may not be for everyone whether one is a fan of Rothfuss’ work or not but is essentially a fantasy version stream of consciousness yet actually readable as we follow the broken former student of the University. While there are highlights of Auri venturing out of the Underthing to a local farm, most of the novella follows her doing everyday tasks like making candles which is where some readers will quickly get bored due to the non-traditional nature of the story. However, for those that do complete the book we learn little world building hints connected to alchemy and naming.

The Slow Regard of Silent Things isn’t for everyone, including fans of Patrick Rothfuss’ writing, because it is not a traditional story and it’s stream of consciousness style. Yet not everyone likes traditional stories and for those I recommend this book.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading John Byington by Brian E. Strayer

112mattries37315
Dez 20, 2020, 6:53 pm

John Byington: First General Conference President, Circuit-Riding Preacher, and Radical Reformer by Brian E. Strayer

Arriving at the first General Conference session, John Byington wasn’t planning on becoming the denomination’s first president when he left, he was. John Byington: First General Conference President, Circuit-Riding Preacher, and Radical Reformer by Bryan Strayer shows not only the life of the relatively unknown Adventist pioneer but his family as well.

Strayer begins with a very impressive family history from its origins in Ireland and Yorkshire, but also its history during the Colonial period before arriving to Byington’s father Justus whose patriot zeal and Methodist faith rubbed off on his sons. After spending time at sea after going out on his own, Byington married and went to live in northern New York where he would live until moving to the Battle Creek area. Over 30 years, Byington raised a family, being a circuit-ring Methodist minister, and a noted area reformer for temperance and abolition. Once Byington was presented with the seventh-day Sabbath and studied it before he along with a considerable part of his family joined the fledging denomination. Once among the Adventists, he continued to be a circuit-riding preacher who from time to time shared messaged in Adventist periodicals. His presence leading various churches made the White ask him to come to Michigan were various troubles were hampering the denomination. While packing up from his very profitable farm he built up and starting new at his age could have been a breaking point, Byington saw the call from God and with a significant portion of his own family but extended family settled in Michigan where he continued his circuit-riding preaching when not farming. His surprising election and time as first General Conference president did not change his way of life as at the time, the administration of such a small denomination was not as daunting as it would become. After his tenure ended, Byington just kept on circuit-riding and running his farm until six years before his death when he and his wife moved to Battle Creek due to their age, though that did not stop Byington from doing a small circuit around the growing city up until the year before his death. Throughout the book, Strayer would give background to various elements of Byington’s world like the history of St. Lawrence county in New York where Byington was a Methodist then Adventist circuit-rider, or how Adventists were portrayed in local Battle Creek newspapers, and finally the lives of Byington’s children and descendants to show his long legacy in Adventism.

The biography of John Byington would simply have been too short if Strayer had not spent time describing the Byington family history before and after John’s life. The addition of the local newspaper coverage of Adventist was an interesting inclusion but added some context that had not been covered in previous biographies and histories of Adventism in Battle Creek that I have read. Strayer’s examination in the claim that Byington was a conductor in the Underground Railroad was well done and while not proving he was, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming in favor. Over the course of the book, Strayer continually went over Byington’s circuit-riding itinerary that as the book went on it felt a lot like padding. What would have been welcomed was Strayer figuring out why Byington was chosen when James White refused becoming president, it might not have been ironclad historical but postulating a historical argument would have been acceptable.

The life of John Byington was both simple and complicated, but what Bryan Strayer brings to the fore was that he was Christ-center simple preacher that led many to Christ and sustained the faith of many in New York and Michigan. If you’ve ever wondered who the first General Conference president was, this book will definitely inform you.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of John Byington by Brian E. Strayer, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading Signing Their Lives Away by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese

113mattries37315
Dez 23, 2020, 6:13 pm

Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese

Who were the men who decided to stick it King George’s eye in July 1776 and vote for independence? Signing Their Lives Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the Declaration of Independence by married writers Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese gives readers a crash course on each signer’s lives up to and after that momentous day.

In June and July 1776, the men in the Second Continental Congress debated if the Colonies should declare independence from Great Britain. Then on the 2nd of July they took the step to do so and, on the 4th, approved the Declaration written by Thomas Jefferson and edited by the Congress. Finally, on August 2nd the 56 Congressmen from all thirteen states signed the Declaration that we see today in the National Archives. After giving this brief timeline of the creation of the Declaration of Independence, Kiernan and D’Agnese give brief biographical sketches of the 56 men—separated by state—whose signatures adorn the document filled with their life details as several anecdotes from who signed the document even though he voted against independence, who died in a duel, and how many of the men represented states they were not born in. All the signers’ biographies have an illustrated portrait to give a face to those not well known by the average American. While each biography is informative, the authors’ choice of off-handed remarks and other stylistic choices are at time annoying and off-putting which as it went on for almost 300 pages resulted in the rating this book received.

Overall, this is a good overview of all the men who essentially signed their own death warrant if events had turned out differently.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Signing Their Lives Away by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reviewing Signing Their Rights Away by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese

114mattries37315
Dez 24, 2020, 9:38 pm

Signing Their Rights Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the United States Constitution by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese

They fought against the idea of a strong central government based in London but decided that a strong central government was needed in the United States. Signing Their Rights Away: The Fame and Misfortune of the Men Who Signed the United States Constitution by married writers Denise Kiernan and Joseph D’Agnese gives readers a crash course on each signer’s lives up to and after the Constitutional Convention.

Throughout the Summer of 1787 men from 12—not Rhode Island—of the 13 States met in the same building that independence was declared to create a new government before the new nation burned down due to the failures of the Articles of Confederation. Over the course of the hot Philadelphia months, 55 men would participate in what became known as the Constitutional Convention but of those only 39 would sign the document that was sent to the States for ratification and is today in the National Archives. Kiernan and D’Agnese give brief biographical sketches of the 39 men—separated by state—whose signatures adorn the document filled with their life details as several anecdotes from the man who signed twice and who technically did not but is included, who died in a duel but did not get a Broadway bio play created for them, and who is so mysterious that we do not have any clue what he looked like. A illustrated portrait is included with 38 of the biographies to give faces to the signers especially those lesser known by the average American. While each biography is informative, the authors’ choice of off-handed remarks and other stylistic choices are at time annoying and off-putting which as it went on for almost 300 pages resulted in the rating this book received.

Overall, this is a good overview of all the men who created the system of government that we still use today at least if we can keep it.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Signing Their Rights Away by Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese, feel free to comment here or there.

I'll next be reading America 1844 by John Bicknell

115mattries37315
Dez 29, 2020, 9:35 pm

Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science by Jeff Meldrum

The Almasty, Orang Pendek, Yeti, and numerous other names around the world that describe upright walking apes that indigenous cultures including one right in America’s backyard. Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science by Dr. Jeff Meldrum explores if there is scientific merit to investigating “Bigfoot” by looking at all the available evidence.

Meldrum begins the book by recounting how he actively started exploring the possibility of the upright walking ape in North America from his background as an anatomist and anthropologist. Following this up he goes into the history of looking for unknown animals from the 1700s to the present, including how the Abominable Snowman and Yeti entered the western lexicon. The 1950s beginnings of “Bigfoot” are discussed followed by the hoax claims of various individuals before Meldrum introduces the Native American view of Sasquatch. From this point on “legend” faded to the background as Meldrum begin scientifically looking at the evidence brought forth over the past 60 years including castings of body prinks and footprints, hairs, and the Patterson-Gimlin film from 1967 including analysis from numerous experts in their fields. In his conclusion Meldrum states while the available evidence does not prove the existence of a bipedal North American ape but does warrant the larger scientific community to realize that what is being found cannot be explained as men in costumes with wooden cutout feet or misidentifications of known animals.

The book’s larger than normal dimensions provide for numerous photographs and illustrations that add to the text they share on the page, but also help the scientifically jargoned impaired understand what Meldrum explaining. Yet Meldrum’s analysis of the Patterson-Gimlin film and his knowledge of foot anatomy in discussing purported foot tracks are the sections of the book that stand out the most, the former because it literally still is the best evidence for the existence of Sasquatch while also standing up to measurable scientific scrutiny and the latter because its evidence that Meldrum is professionally expert on that has him putting his reputation on the line.

Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science looks at the question of if a bipedal ape is roaming the North American wilderness. Dr. Meldrum does not claim at any point that there is indeed an actual animal, but the persuasive circumstantial evidence in his view warrants inquiry from the scientific community. If you’ve ever wonder if there is something to “Bigfoot” then I recommend reading this book.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science by Jeff Meldrum, feel free to comment here or there.

116mattries37315
Dez 30, 2020, 12:00 pm

America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation by John Bicknell

Every four years the course of American history can be changed along with the political landscape being upended, but sometimes those years are not just about politics. America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion, and the Presidential Election that Transformed the Nation by John Bicknell follows the various strands of events that were independent of one another yet influenced each other with long term consequences.

In the United States the year of 1844 was already going to be important due to the upcoming Presidential Election, yet the political maneuvering by the President without a party John Tyler would entirely change the upcoming campaign. Through attempts to put potential rivals on the Supreme Court to kickstarting the issue of the annexation of Texas, Tyler’s actions aided by southern slave-owning politicians upended the Presidential campaign as little-known Tennessean James K. Polk took the Democratic nomination to face off with longstanding Whig stalwart Henry Clay whose self-imposed wounds would help cost him the White House and change American history. Another politically costly mistake for Clay and the Whigs was cozying up to nativists whose mob violence against Catholics particularly in Philadelphia not only sent the Catholic vote to the Democrats but also future Irish Catholic immigrants to New York and Boston. A candidate for President that many today did not know ran was the founder of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Joseph Smith, who to protect his followers ran to bring their constitutional rights to the fore only for an anti-Mormon mob to storm the jail he was housed in and kill him. The resulting succession crisis led to Brigham Young’s ascension to leadership and later his decision to head to the Great Salt Lake. Young’s decision was based on the pamphlets written by John C. Fremont explored the uncharted western portions of the North American continent along with numerous emigres journeying from the East to the West for a better more prosperous future. And yet some Americans believed a better future was not on Earth but in Heaven as they eagerly anticipated the Second Coming based on the teachings of William Miller and his associates, while confused after the passing of Miller’s belief it would occur in the spring of that year the news that Miller had been off by seven months ignited hope throughout the extended Millerite community only for the Great Disappointment of October 22 to bring confusion to their beliefs. By the end of the year the course of America’s future would be set, the expansion westward would cause war with Mexican and later Civil War that would uproot slavery while allowing the two largest indigenous American founded religions to grow and expand in the Church of Latter-Day Saints and the Seventh-day Adventist church, the largest successor of the Millerite movement.

Bicknell covers all the above in almost 260 pages, attempting—for the most part successfully—to give cover the year chronologically through separating themes in each chapter. The overall history is generally correct and the addition of journeys of western pioneers gives the book more “life” then the sometimes stall retellings of political maneuverings back in the 19th Century. There are some little nitpick items related to the Millerites’ “spring disappointment”, but nothing that is majorly erroneous.

America 1844 is a concise look at 366 days in the life of the United States that saw its political and religious life changed dramatically with significant influence on the future, not only immediately but long term.

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The link above goes to my Wordpress page that has my review of America 1844 by John Bicknell, feel free to comment here or there.

This is my last book of 2020, look for my 2021 reading thread showing up sometime on January 1.