# Cheer and Jeer THC as he reads 80 books in 2013! Doorstoppers included!



## The Hooded Claw

Last year I had mission accomplished, and completed my 80 books goal with several weeks to spare! I'm going to do something similar in 2013, but I do want to make a minor change. I read 80 books with room to spare last year, so this year I am going to keep my goal at 80 books, but I'm going to put in a requirement that 8 of the books, and at least one every two months, be a doorstopper. For my purposes, doorstopper is defined as a book with 500 or more pages. I'm not going to sweat it if I read a nonfiction book of 500 pages with a section of footnotes at the back taking up some of the 500 pages. It will still count as a doorstopper, I'm not going to get that technical. I already have a few doorstoppers in mind.



This was marked down to under five bucks a few weeks ago and I grabbed it. Churchill is one of my favorite figures from history, and I will probably eventually read all three volumes of this unless I die of old age first!



As the creator of Sherlock Holmes, one of my (imaginary) heroes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gets secondary hero perks. And he appears to have had some actual adventures, including serving as ship's doctor on a whaling ship and nearly dying. I have already bought this, and I will move it out of TBR status and onto my Kindle.



I've been in Custer's former house at Fort Riley, KS, so clearly I need to learn more about him and Crazy Horse.



I've found the history of exploration in general and Columbus in particular to be fascinating for years, and I read this years ago while I was unemployed after leaving the Army. Time to read it again. But I won't be shelling out $70 for the hardback! (for some reason the link maker won't let me link to the less expensive paperback)

There will be other books doorstoppers and more normal-sized. Several of them will deal with Italy and Roman history, as next Fall I am going to Italy on a trip which will include seeing Venice (Been there once) and Rome, which I've never seen before!

BOOKS READ:

1. What the Butler Winked At: The Adventures of Eric Horne, Butler, by Eric Horne
2. The War of the Worlds Murder, by Max Allan Collins
XX. Convair B-36 Peacemaker: A Photo Chronicle, by Meyer Jacobsen 
3. _ The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle, by Russell Miller_
4. The Dance of Time, by Michael Judge
5. Assignment in Eternity, by Robert Heinlein
6. Right Ho, Jeeves!, by P. G. Wodehouse
7. Armed Robbers in Action: Stickups in Street Culture, by Robert T. Wright and Scott H. Decker
8. Time Travelers, Strictly Cash, by Spider Robinson
9. The Chinese Maze Murders, by Robert van Gulik
10. The Anatomy of Motive, by John E. Douglas
11. A Time to Stand: The Epic of the Alamo, by Walter Lord
12. Kill Your Darlings, by Max Allan Collins
13. Groundhog Day, by Don Yoder
14. The London Blitz Murders, by Max Allan Collins
15. The Tunguska Mystery, by Vladimir Rubtsov
16. The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
17. The Pope Who Quit, by Jon M. Sweeney
18. The Far Traveler, by A. Bertram Chandler
19. The Truth About Cruise Ships, by Jay Herring
20. The Lusitania Murders, by Max Allan Collins
21. _Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the US Air Force, 1947-2007, by Walter J. Boyne_
22. A Fall of Moondust, by Arthur C. Clarke
23. Vital Circuits: On Pumps, Pipes, and the Workings of Circulatory Systems, by Steven Vogel
XX. Rice Farming: Complete With Methods to Increase Rice Yield, by Julian Bradbrook
24. Ancient Images, by Colin Ramsay
25. Star Courier, by A. Bertram Chandler
26. Vesuvius, by Gillian Darley
27. The Hindenburg Murders, by Max Allan Collins
28. Lost at Sea: The Truth Behind Eight of History's Most Mysterious Ship Disasters, by A. A. Hoehling
29. In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature, by Christopher Woodward
30. The Case of the Little Green Men, by Mack Reynolds
31. Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande
32. Memoirs of a Mangy Lover, by Groucho Marx
33. Magnus Ridolph, by Jack Vance
XX. Cigars of the Pharaoh, by Herge
34. Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating, by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig
35. St. Peter's, by Keith Miller
XX. The Urine Dance of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico, by John Bourke
36. To Keep the Ship, by A. Bertram Chandler
37._ On the Border With Crook, by John G. Bourke_
38. Ancient Rome in So Many Words, by Christopher Francese
39. To Keep the Ship, by A. Bertram Chandler
40. Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask, by Anton Treuer
41. The Haunting of America: From The Salem Witch Trials to Harry Houdini, by William J. Bimes and Joel Martin
42. How Do Private Eyes do That?, by Colleen Collins
43. The Pearl Harbor Murders, by Max Allan Collins
44. Methusaleh's Children, by Robert Heinlein
45. Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Kim Newman
46. Thank You, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse
47. Bat Bomb, by Jack Couffer
48. _Wicked Bronze Ambition, by Glen Cook_
49. City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas, by Roger Crowley
50. The Story of the Pony Express, by Glenn D. Bradley
51. The Last of the Legions, and Other Tales of Long Ago, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
52. Fossils: A Very Short Introduction, by Keith Thomson
53. Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy, by Mark P. Witton
54. The Transylvania Flying Squad of Detectives, by M. L. Dunn
55. No Cure for Death, by Max Allan Collins
56. A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome, by Angela K. Nickerson
57. Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions, by Tony Hallam
58. Sharpe's Rifles, by Bernard Cornwell
59. Ancient Rome, Rise and Fall of an Empire, by Simon Baker
60. Matilda's Stepchildren, by A. Bertram Chandler
61. Tales of Terror and Mystery, by Arthur Conan Doyle
62. How to be Interesting (in 10 simple steps), by Jessica Hagy
63. Storm Front (A Novel of the Dresdent Files), by Jim Butcher
64. The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, by H. Keith Melton
65. When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time, by Michael J. Benton
66. Murder at La Fenice, by Donna Leon
67. Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy, by Viktor Suvorov
68. Star Loot, by A. Bertram Chandler
69. Retail Undercover, by Mark E. Douglas
70. Ninety Percent of Everything, by Rosé George
71. Venice: A New History, by Thomas F. Madden
72. Napoleon's Pyramids, by William Dietrich
73. The Anarch Lords, by A. Bertram Chandler
74. The Sixteenth Rail, by Adam J. Schrager
75. Death's Door, by James R. Benn
76. Dangerous Instincts: Use an FBI Profiler's Tactics to Avoid Unsafe Situations, by Mary Ellen O'Toole
77. Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher
78. Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia, by Gregory S. Aldrett
XX. The Swerve, How The World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt (abandoned)
79. Myth Conceptions, by Robert Asprin
80. Alpha Beta: How Twenty-Six Letters Shaped the Western World, by John Man
81. Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend, by Mark Collins Jenkins
82. Foreign Planes in the Service of the Luftwaffe, by Jean-Louis Roba
83. Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture, by Marvin Harris
84. Death in a Strange Country, by Donna Leon
85. Nice Weekend for a Murder, by Max Allan Collins
86. Fellowship of Fear, by Aaron Elkins
87. Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization, by Lars Brownsworth
XX Burmese Daze: Myanmar in 28 Photos, by Elizabeth Sowerbutts
88. The Dark Place, by Aaron Elkins 
89. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, edited by Joseph Riley-Smith
90. George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America, by Robert Dalzell
91. The Photographer's guide to Washington, DC, by Lee Jones
92. The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain
93. Turkey: Culture Smart!, by Charlotte McPherson
94. Transylvania's Most Wanted, by M. L. Dunn
95. The Ho Ho Ho Mystery, by Bob Burke
96. Neutrino, by Frank Close
97. Hercule Poirot's Christmas, by Agatha Christie
98. The Time Traders, by Andre Norton
99. Battle of Britain 1917, by Jonathan Sutherland
100.The Honest Truth About Dishonesty, by Dan Ariely
101.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
102.Armored Thunderbolt: The US Army Sherman in World War II, by Stephen Zaloga
103.The Titanic Murders, by Max Allan Collins
(Italicized books are doorstoppers)


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## The Hooded Claw

What the Butler Winked At, by Eric Horne

I've finished the first book of 2013. As I've mentioned before, I am fond of reading about people who have interesting jobs, so when I learned about this book I wanted to read it despite the mixed reviews it has received at Amazon. The book is a memoir by a man who was a servant in England from roughly 1870 until he retired on little money when things fell apart for the nobility in England after World War I. He started at the lowest level, and aspired to be the Butler for the King of England. He never had that job, but he did serve as butler to a Princess and a (unrelated) Prince, both foreign potentates living in England. The book has some problems, but I really liked it.

This book was written after the author had suffered through several years of struggling for employment and suffered a personal tragedy, and that definitely affected his outbook. The book begins with a great deal of venting of spleen at nearly everyone, but especially at inconsiderate employers. Fortunately, this is brief, and he shifts to recollections of his boyhood, then describes his career as a servant.

The book apparently never suffered the attentions of an editor--The spelling is quaint and the style is extremely rambling. "Horne" (apparently a pseudonym) will stop in the middle of an account to interject a joke he heard or to tell some brief story that came to his mind. Keeping in mind what the book was, I didn't find this bothersome. But if you have low tolerance for such things, you'll be unhappy with the book.

The book consistently held my interest, and I read it straight through spread over two evenings. There was never anything that just bowled me over with awesomeness, and some of the references and stories baffle me--I suppose this is an unavoidable consequence of reading an extremely personal book by a from over a century ago. Those things didn't deter me from liking the book, it feels very authentic, as if we are given a look into the man's innermost thoughts and at what he thought was important or interesting.

There are lots of tidbits from the book, I will post some tomorrow. But now, as it is after Midnight, I'm off to bed. But before I go, I'll give What the Butler Winked At three and a half stars, very close to four.


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## Seleya

I love these threads of yours, would you mind if I started one of my own? Just keeping count is boring...


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## The Hooded Claw

Seleya said:


> I love these threads of yours, would you mind if I started one of my own? Just keeping count is boring...


Go for it! I forgot to file for a patent on the idea, so it is in the public domain.... . As I mentioned at the end of last year's thread, I think I get more out of my reading this way.

Did you read the book on Cambodia yet?

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2


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## Seleya

, I'm looking forward to the exchange of opinions and ideas.

No I didn't yet, it's in my list for this year. You know, I wonder wether he really misunderstood some of the points you mention in your review or he was trying to explain things to his superiors using a frame of reference they were familiar with...Were I to guess I'd say some of both. I'm really looking forward to reading it.


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## Sam Kates

HC - only recently discovered last year's thread and read it with great interest. I shall follow this one closely. 

Yours, too, Seleya if you decide to start one.


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## Seleya

Thank you, Sam. 
I've just started, it's a  rather light first post (I guess I must find my voice), but discussion and comments are definitely welcome.


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## The Hooded Claw

Back to "What the Butler Winked At"...

As you can probably tell from my comments earlier, I found that I really liked this book, and was interested in the author. I found myself wondering what happened to him after he wrote the book. I felt this way even though I never had my socks knocked off by anything wonderful in the book, and at times the book departs from the matter-of-fact and upbeat tone and becomes a bit melancholy (I won't give away details except to see that the author had had a hideous couple of years before writing it). He explicitly says that he views himself as having wasted his life. I don't think he'd have said that through most of his career.

I've highlighted too many things to list here, but here are a few:

Horne had come of age in mid-Victorian times, and seems to accept telephones, but sincerely hated loud automobiles and their stinking fumes!  He compares their use unfavorably with the pageantry of a coach with matched footmen who would leave the stopped carriage, march in unison to the door they were visiting, knock both knockers in unison if it was a double door (as at the best places), march back to the carriage, let down the steps, and hand down the ladies. On a more practical note, he explains that motor cars were bad for the chauffeur. Horses had to be rested after a time, but the car could go and go and go, and many employers were inconsiderate of their drivers.

Horne began his "gentleman's service" career as a footman. This was before electric lights, and each morning before breakfast, he and one other footman had to gather 73 oil lamps from throughout the house, clean them and trim the wicks, and return them to their places. They had to do this before breakfast. Horne points out some things that had to be learned, both as general skills, and knowledge of a particular house. When one is carrying a large butler's tray in front of one, the stairs are out of sight as you climb or worse yet, descend them. If you think you are at the bottom of the stairs when there is another step to go, disaster is likely.

Horne moved to a better position, and he described the livery worn by male servants at the new place:

_...Our livery was very smart. Scarlet breeches and waistcoat, blue coat with scarlet collar and cuffs, trimed with inch wide silver lace, and one epaulet on the left shoulder, white stockings, and buckles._

With some employers, servants were required to powder their hair.

One family had a wine cooler, a huge piece of solid silver that took four men to carry it. And of course, it had to be polished. I was surprised to learn that it was usually male servants who were assigned to polish silver.

It was common for Horne's employers to have a house in Scotland to spend some time at. At one of these, he reports that the Earl who employed him required bagpipes to come and play in the corridor outside his bedroom each morning at 8 AM to wake him. The racket of the bagpipes reverberating off of stone walls was hideous (in his opinion!) . At some places in Scotland, a group of pipers would march around the outside of the house or castle each morning.

When an heir to the family line was born, one family brewed up a thousand-gallon tun of ale to be broached when he attained the age of 21. Sadly, the young man was killed in World War I.

I'm a lover of the Jeeves stories, but Horne was no Jeeves. When he was personal valet to a young man (just as Jeeves was!) he knew his bos (that's the way he spells it!) was sweet on a daughter of a family whose home they visited. Horne saw his bos exit a room where he'd been alone with the young lady with a crestfallen air. Horne thinks he popped the question, and was turned down. Horne liked this employer, but later the man married a woman described as a Tartar, and as a spitfire. Horne "could not stand her at any price" and handed in his resignation. Jeeves would have salvaged the first woman's refusal (if she'd been a good match) and definitely would have figured out a way to block the marriage to a tartar!

Horne had some adventures with the old-fashioned bicycles with a tall front wheel. He describes helping his boss to learn to ride one with a front wheel 52 inches in diameter! Horne himself had a serious accident on one, when he was flung from the bike into a stone wall and knocked out.

Once Horne was sent ahead of the family to a country house he'd never been to before, with instructions to begin preparing it for habitation before the family and other servants arrived. This was an old place like a maze internally with lots of doors, and Horne went about to the rooms putting candles, pens, paper, and other stuff for the occupants. Because of the unchanging nature of the small short passageways and doors, he couldn't find the way he'd come in! He started dropping an envelope in front of his entry door, so he could identify it.

Horne worked for one family who did not run a happy house, and were constantly having changes in servants at their country home. When a servant left, he would get a rail ticket back to London. The family had developed a system of sending the departing servants to a different station and line than their replacements were coming in on. This minimized the chance that the embittered servants who were leaving could warn the arriving servants!

One bos was big in raising race horses. When important races were held near his home, he would be host to several owners of competing race horses. The coachman wanted to get inside information about a particular race, so after dinner on one of these racing occasions, when the ladies and servants would leave the room to the gentlemen, the coachman got an ally to pull him up in the dumbwaiter where he could listen in on the horsey conversation. The coachman shared his information with the other servants, and everyone had a very profitable day the next day, for he had correctly spied out the winning horse!

Horne was handicapped in rising to work for the very highest families, because he was five feet, nine inches tall, and it was considered desirable to have servants, especially the head butler, who were six feet tall or taller! He seems to be resigned to this, and even he falls prey to the prejudice against shorter male servants. He left one family in an unhappy way, when his bos died and an heir who he did not respect took over. Horne describes how a few months later, he passed the home in London while the new heir was entertaining, and figuratively sneers as he describes how the two footmen out front were only five feet, two inches tall!

In 19th Century London there were no emails from Nigerian princes, but there were other scams, some aimed squarely at the serving class. A common trick was to place an ad in the paper describing a highly desirable position at a good salary, directing applicants to a storefront. When the eager job applicant would apply, they'd be told that the advertised position had just been filled. But, a similar position was sure to open up soon, and the applicant would be offered an opportunity to get on the firms books for only a half-crown booking fee. Of course, there never were any of these highly desirable jobs at the agency.

I've posted an excessive amount of this stuff, but for some reason I found it very interesting, and grew to like the author. I hope Eric Horne had a happy life after he wrote the book!


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## The Hooded Claw

The War of the Worlds Murders, by Max Allan Collins

This is moving along nicely, and I completed my second book of the year last night. There were a bunch of books by Max Allan Collins recently released on Kindle and available in the KOLL, so I borrowed this one for January. The other books I've covered in these threads were mostly from the Nate Heller series, though the most recent one was from the Mallory series. This is from another series yet, what Collins calls the Disaster Series. Somehow I never got around to reading these, even in paper, but in addition to being set amidst disasters, they share that a famous mystery writer is the protagonist in each one. For this one, the hero is Walter Gibson. You probably don't recognize his name, but you're aware of his work, and can quote at least one line...Gibson was the creator of The Shadow.

This book is centered around the infamous Orson Welles broadcast of The War of the Worlds that scared the pants off of America in 1938. Gibson is there because he has been called in by Welles to work on a special project. When a murder is discovered, Gibson is the one who seeks to solve the mystery for us. For me, the highlight of the book wasn't so much the mystery as it was learning about Orson Welles (I know little of him) and learning more about the famous radio show. The book takes us to a number of locations in New York City in the late 1930s, including the famous Cotton Club, where Cab Calloway performs this famous number:






I was inspired to look the above up on Youtube, and I'm glad I did. I'd seen a much older and less athletic Calloway perform this same number in The Blues Brothers movie, but he was an amazing showman earlier (and apparently the Youtube clip is from 1958, twenty years later than the scene in the book). Calloway was awesome, and the closeup done at the two and a half minute mark in the clip above is amazing!

Lots of interesting historical detail in the book--As always, Collins relentlessly researches his history before writing.

At the time of the War of the Worlds broadcast, Welles was struggling to get his show noticed--He had about four percent of the radio audience, while competing against another show that starred Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy that got 35% <!> of the audience. Welles show, The Mercury Theater on the Air, was beloved by critics, but didn't hae much audience and most importantly, had no sponsor. The stunt with the Mars invasion worked, soon afterwards, the Campbell Soup Company became the sponsor of Welles' show!

In the book, Welles states that a similar stunt with fake news reports on a BBC radio broadcast about riots and unrest by unemployed mobs in London created a similar panic. I'd never heard of this, since Collins has such good research, I'm assuming it is true. I'm going to do a little research.

Gypsy Rose Lee gets a passing mention as performing at a theater, but doesn't make an appearance in the book.

The book reports that the real H. G. Wells complained about the liberties taken with his material, and expressed concern that his work would be used "to cause distress and alarm throughout the United States." Though later Wells and Welles had a very cordial meeting in person.

Remember when I mentioned that Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist's dummy were whooping up on Welles in the ratings department? Orson Welles later displayed a cable that supposedly came from President Roosevelt telling Welles that "...the intelligent people were all listening to the dummy, and all the dummies were listening to you!"

Howard E. Koch was the principal writer for the War of the Worlds show. You probably don't recognize that name, but again you know and can quote at least one line from his work....Four years later, he was one of three scriptwriters who co-wrote the movie Casablanca!

I enjoyed the book, more because of Welles and the show than because of the mystery, which is fine as a mystery (and has a nice surprise in it) but gets overwhelmed by the interesting setting. three and half stars from me. But now I'm going to have to find a book about the 1938 broadcast and read it!


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## Sam Kates

I've not heard of the London incident either. Will be interesting to see what your research uncovers.


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## The Hooded Claw

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048091/BBC-1926-radio-bulletin-Bolsheviks-attacking-Palace-Big-Ben-destroyed.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/the_riot_that_never_was.shtml

I forgot to mention above that the fictional Welles account said the broadcast was in 1926, but it appears that it is a real story! Very interesting bit of trivia I hadn't known about. Especially odd that it was initiated by a Catholic priest!!! Who'd a thunk it?!


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## Sam Kates

Ah, those danged Bolsheviks! Fascinating. Thanks for sharing.


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## The Hooded Claw

Not really a "reading" book, but I completed this a couple of days ago:



Convair B-36 Peacemaker: A Photo Chronicle, by Meyers K. Jacobsen

(editorial aside--When searching for this with the KB "link maker", I entered "B-36 photo chronicle". I got two items to choose from, one the correct book I was looking for, and the other a book by C. S. Lewis called "The Horse and His Boy." How the Lewis book meets the search terms is a mystery I'll probably never solve....)

I have a longtime interest in aircraft and in military history, so of course history involving airplanes is particularly interesting. I also have a fondness for the unusual (as readers of these threads have surely noticed) and the B-36 is a favorite of mine as one of the more unusual planes ever mass-produced! It was huge, the largest mass-produced piston engine aircraft ever, and had the longest wingspan of any combat aircraft ever. The B-29 from World War II was a large plane, big enough to carry the first atomic bomb, but the B-36 dwarfed the B-29. Check out this comparative photo of the two planes:










(note that this is one of the early B-36s with only six propeller engines, the four jets were added later)

Because of the great size, the B-36 was sometimes called the "aluminum overcast". It was big enough that the crew could use tunnels inside the wings to get to the engines during flight. For several years, it was the only aircraft that could carry the then-new hydrogen bomb, and the only bomber that could fly from the USA to the USSR without aerial refueling. Fortunately for us all, that flight was never necessary, and the B-36 has another unusual distinction that it was the front line of our defense for almost a decade, but was never used in combat.

The B-36 also had ten engines, very unusual to begin with, and the engines were a mix of propeller and jet, with the propellers being "pusher" propellers. With so many engines in such an unusual configuration, it wasn't unusual to have engine trouble. Enthusiastic flight engineers would report to the pilot that they had "Six turning and four burning" when all was well with the jet and propeller engines. More jaded and cynical types would announce: "Two turning, two burning, two smoking, two joking, with two engines not accounted for, Sir!"

Because of the size of the plane, most airfields where it was stationed had no hangars that could hold it. So maintenance had to be carried out in the open, or at best under a canvas temporary enclosure. Each of the six propeller engines had fifty-six <!> spark plugs to be changed. This was not fun in the Summer in New Mexico or Texas, or in the Winter in South Dakota or Alaska!

For various reasons, there were experiments with a tracked landing gear for the B-36. This actually flew, though only once. If you don't believe me, here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDCgMlomhvM

(embedding is disabled for this video, you'll have to click the link)
Fortunately, this freak of aeronautical engineering only flew once.

This book begins with a few pages of text about the history and development of the bomber, then it goes to photographs only (except for brief but useful captions). The selection of photos is excellent, and covers a variety of subjects besides the expected aircraft in flight and on the ground. It is in a nice large format that allows a great look at the photographs, and the quality of the photo printing is very good. If the airplane interests you, this book is well worth the ten bucks. Five stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

I said in the initial post of this thread that my portfolio this year would include some big doorstopper books, and I've started. I'm now reading this:



The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography, by Russell Miller

Yep, a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of my hero, Sherlock Holmes! And it is a respectable, though not mammoth, doorstopper--541 pages long. I'm now 19% of the way through the book. This is indeed an exhaustive look at his life. Before ACD himself gets on the scene, Miller spends numerous pages describing the history of his mother's and father's ancestral lines. There's also a surprising coverage of his boyhood. Apparently ACD and/or his mother were compulsive archivers, and Doyle was very close to his mother, writing detailed letters to her regularly throughout her life, even though Doyle went away to boarding school quite young, and lived far away from her through the first parts of his career.

The author explains at the beginning of the book that he benefited compared with previous biographies because he had full access to some of Doyle's papers that hadn't been released to the public, and have been locked up by a lawsuit for several decades. I don't have independent knowledge, and am taking him at his word about this. But whatever papers he had access to, he has made good use of them and produced an interesting and readable book. I'm very pleased with it so far, though I am only in the early days of his medical career, and he has had only a few stories published, and Sherlock hasn't been thought of yet.

The book notes that Doyle is unaviodably linked with Holmes in the public mind, even though Holmes is only a small part of Doyle's literary output. At the site of the (demolished) home where Doyle was born in Edinburgh, is a statue of....Sherlock Holmes! I haven't got to details yet, but the opening confirms the stories that Doyle resented Holmes, and and viewed Holmes as doing great damage to Doyle's literary reputation.

The book has a partial list of places and products that have featured Holmes, besides the famous Tube station in London:

_"...cigarette cards, tea towels, board games, dinner services, postage stamps, beer bottles, chewing gum, mouthwashes, computer games, Beecham's Pills, and packets of Kellogg's Crunchy Nut corn flakes."_

Apparently there has been a Sherlock Holmes ballet<!>.

ACD's uncle, Dick Doyle, was a favored illustrator for Punch magazine, one of Uncle Dick's most telling topics was pointing out that in the early 1840s, Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert had an annual allowance from the taxpayers of thirty thousand pounds, while the total budget for educating the poor in all of England was only ten thousand pounds. In 1848, Dick produced almost a third of the cartoons in the magazine, and soon after he designed a front cover illustration that was used on the magazine for over a century.

Pope Pius IX has appeared in several of the books I've read in the last year and has been mentioned in these threads (he was the pontiff who chewed out his American envoy because the just-assassinated President Lincoln had gone to the theater on Good Friday). He even makes it into this book, Punch and Arthur's uncle Dick pushed a harsh campaign against Pius when Pius sought to expand the number of archbishops and bishops in England.

If you review manuscripts from aspiring writers, you may want to take note of the technique Doyle used many years after his childhood, when an eager young author sent Doyle a volume of poems and essays that were awful, and insisted on an evaluation of the contents. Doyle told the newcomer "You are equally at home in prose and in verse."

Doyle's family had extreme financial trouble because his father was a hardcore alcoholic, and though apparently not violent, was totally unhelpful as a provider, and ended up being institutionalized. In spite of this, money and aid was found to send young Doyle away to boarding school at a young age, and he grew up mostly seeing his family only on holidays.

I'd heard of Joseph Bell, one of Doyle's instructors in medical school, who had an uncanny ability to deduce the background and illnesses of patients by observing them. He's regarded as the inspiration for Holmes. The book has some stories that illustrate this ability to do things such as distinguish between the calluses of a carpenter and a stonemason. Arthur respected Bell's inspiration enough to dedicate The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes to Bell, and wrote privately to Bell giving him credit for inspiration. Another of Doyle's professors was thought to be the inspiration for Professor Challenger, an important, but less well-known Doyle character. I have read and enjoyed the Professor Challenger stories, but this was new to me!

A fellow-student while Doyle was at the University of Edinburgh was J. M. Barrie, who later created Peter Pan. The book doesn't give any indication that they knew each other well, however.

Doyle was strapped for funds, and worked filling prescriptions to make money. He sometimes filled 100 prescriptions in one evening, and this was on top of attending class! Eventually he took a break from medical school to serve as ship's doctor on a whaling ship that made an arctic voyage. He fell into the frigid water several times while walking on ice floes and nearly drowned. The ship's captain nicknamed him "The Great Northern Diver." Once he fell in while by himself, barely managed to get out of the water, and walked to the ship with his clothes frozen solid like a suit of armor, crackling as he walked. Doyle loved the Arctic trip, but when he signed up on a ship going to several ports in Africa, the trip was miserable, and he grew gravely ill. A big fire on the ship came very close to igniting highly flammable palm oil cargo that might have created an explosion that could destroy the ship. These experiences cured him of the idea of a career at sea. By this time he was writing stories and getting published in magazines, and he did have the thrill of finding a magazine with one of his stories in it while visiting a British expatriate's house in Africa!

Doyle's family were staunch Catholics, and he disappointed them bitterly when they offered to pull strings to get him a job in a Catholic hospital. Doyle insisted he couldn't accept such a position, because he didn't believe in Catholic doctrine. Doyle tried to work jointly in a medical practice with a classmate who was apparently brilliant, but had some strange notions--The friend believed that the best way to impress patients was to yell at them, and make them feel lucky they were seeing such a skilled doctor! The friend also spent time working on crackpot inventions. One involved towing huge magnets on barges behind warships. The magnets were supposed to attract enemy shot away from the ship towing them! He had done test experiments using a revolver with steel bullets and smaller magnets, and invited Doyle to take a shot at his wife's head with a magnet nearby to pull away the shot. Doyle had the good sense to decline. The partnership didn't last long!

Doyle moved to a practice by himself, and was extremely short of money, having to skip meals sometimes. He had a fine brass placard announcing his practice outside his door, but he would wait till the dark of night to go out and shine it--He didn't want the neighbors to know that he couldn't afford a domestic servant to do the job! Income from writing helped keep Dr. Doyle afloat during this time.

When Doyle filled out his tax return for the year 1882, Doyle reported a total income of only 154 pounds, which meant he owed no tax. The auditor returned the form to Doyle with the notation, "Most unsatisfactory". Doyle returned it with his own notation below, "I entirely agree." He was eventually able to convince the Revenue folks that he actually was doing that poorly!

I'm still early in Doyle's life, Holmes doesn't even seem to be a glimmer in Doyle's eye yet, so there will be more to come!


----------



## telracs

have you gotten conan doyle out of med school yet?


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## The Hooded Claw

tipsy telstar said:


> have you gotten conan doyle out of med school yet?


Yep, he took the voyage to Africa as his first job out of med school, spent some time job hunting unsuccessfully, spent a few months trying to share a practice with the nutty friend, and he now has completed his first year in his own medical practice in Portsmouth. Poor guy had a tough time building up a clientele!


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## Brownskins

Claw, I enjoy your reading your reviews.  Congrats on last year's journey.  Your interests align with that of my Dad, and if only he were a KB'er, you and him would probably be able to exchange thoughts on the same books.  I've resigned myself to just reading your posts since I doubt if I will have time to read those lengthy books and the historical ones.  I just fill up my time on the train with "shallow"   reads - but my resolve this year is to pick up more biographies and business books, and just cycle in between the easy fiction reads.  There is always room for growth, and I may eventually work my way up to yours and telracs' diversified literary picks.


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## The Hooded Claw

tx dartrider said:


> Claw, I enjoy your reading your reviews. Congrats on last year's journey. Your interests align with that of my Dad, and if only he were a KB'er, you and him would probably be able to exchange thoughts on the same books. I've resigned myself to just reading your posts since I doubt if I will have time to read those lengthy books and the historical ones. I just fill up my time on the train with "shallow"  reads - but my resolve this year is to pick up more biographies and business books, and just cycle in between the easy fiction reads. There is always room for growth, and I may eventually work my way up to yours and telracs' diversified literary picks.


Hello, Dartrider....You shouldn't "have" to read anything you don't enjoy (I'm leaving out school and work assignments, heh) but if you have stuff you want to read that is a little tougher, just fold some in as you describe. Say hi to your dad for me!


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## The Hooded Claw

I have great progress to report on my reading, and need to catch up on my reporting here. I've now finished two additional books, including my first doorstopper of the year! The Arthur Conan Doyle book is done, and I enjoyed it and recommend it. Since not every phase of a person's life is awesome, I had been afraid I might have to struggle with keeping going on all 550 pages of this book, but that never happened. In a tribute to the author, he held my interest all the way. Of course, ACD also deserves part of the credit, which he earned by living a very interesting life!

I was amused to find that Doyle sometimes struggled with some of the same issues that I see our authors here on KB dealing with. Doyle analyzed how best to keep the interest of readers when publishing periodic outputs over time, and he decided that a tightly-linked serial story, such as Dickens had often used, wasn't the best choice for repeated publication in a magazine. Too much risk that you'll lose readers if they miss an installment! He decided that it was best to have a series of interlinked stories, with each story standing alone. This will generate interest in reading the next installment, even if a previous independent installment was missed. In his personal papers, he agonized over whether he could successfully make the transition from writing short stories to writing novel-length fiction..."I know I can write small stories in a taking way, but am I equal to a prolonged effort--Can I extend a plot without weakening it--Can I preserve the identity of a character throughout..." When publishers rejected one of his early historical novels because "it had next to no attraction for female readers" and because "it is hardly sensational enough", he wrote groveling letters trying to change their mind, and offering to allow it to be published for free in exchange for a portion of the profits. His files contain repeated letters to some editors asking about the status of manuscripts he submitted over a year before!

Doyle considered several names for the character who became Sherlock Holmes. Had he chosen differently, we might today read about Sheridan Hope, Sherringford Holmes, or Ormond Sacker. All names he seriously considered!

The original Holmes story was not seen favorably by editors, and eventually was accepted for publication in "Beeton's Christmas Annual", an obscure publication that was filled with ads for products like "Steiner's Vermin Paste, A sure and certain destroyer of rats, cockroaches, mice, and black beetles!" Fortunately, the first story, A Study in Scarlet, was widely noticed and well-received by the public. Unfortunately, it was accepted too late to be in the next issue, so had to sit in obscurity for a year before being published the following year!

From the beginning of his success with Holmes, Doyle worried that Holmes would overshadow what he considered his more serious work. As early as four years after the initial appearance Doyle wrote to his mother that he was thinking of killing Holmes off (this would have been after only twelve stories!). Fortunately for Holmes fans, his mother pointed out that Holmes was a very reliable source of income, and should not be killed off. The publisher of The Strand magazine, which originally published most of the Holmes stories, estimated that having Doyle's name on the cover boosted circulation of an issue by over 100,000 copies.

After the first series of twelve Holmes stories was over, Doyle wanted to concentrate on "serious" work, but his publisher was eager for more Holmes. To put the publisher off, Doyle insisted on a fee of one thousand pounds for a series of twelve additional stories, which he considered a ridiculous demand, and then was surprised to find the offer eagerly accepted!

While working on a story, Doyle had an output of about 3,000 words per day, working from breakfast until lunch in the morning, then from five to eight in the evening. Once he'd written the initial version of a story, he had no interest in revisions, and did no review of his work. He kept an Ideas Book with handwritten notes on ideas for the future, and marked them off when used. The lack of revision helps explain some of the awful howlers in the stories, such as Watson's migrating war wound, and mention of him buying a dog that never appears again. Doyle wasn't bothered by this. "In short stories....as long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little," he wrote. On the other hand for his beloved historical novels, he maintained detailed notebooks with descriptive and consistent detail and did everything he could to painstakingly maintain accuracy and consistency.

Doyle believed that he had learned to speak Norwegian, and showed off his ability to his friends on a trip to a ski resort in Norway by having a lengthy conversation with a Norwegian military officer at a rest-house. He was a bit vague in explaining what this delightful conversation was about, and admitted he hadn't quite caught it all. He later learned that he had offered to let the man take his personal horse and carriage, which the man did! He stopped trying to speak Norwegian after that!

Doyle's first wife got consumption and was an invalid for several years. Doyle cared for her, and relocated the family several times in an effort to get her in the most healthful environment as understood at the time. But...He also took up with a much younger woman who often followed Doyle to new cities, and over time, even his first wife's mother was aware of this. Supposedly his first wife never knew about this being anymore than a family friend, but a report from Doyle's daughter suggests she was aware of it and accepted that Doyle would marry this woman after she was gone.

When Doyle did kill off Holmes, there was outrage. The Strand magazine lost 20,000 subscribers. The Strand published an editorial indicating that they had pleaded with Doyle for Holmes' life, but been rejected. Doyle observed that he buried his bank account along with Holmes. Doyle said that he'd once eaten too much pate de foie gras, and got a sickening feeling when confronted with it even years later. He said Holmes gave him the same feeling, and he wasn't going back.

Doyle was an avid sportsman, not only at cricket and rugby, but he was one of the first people outside Scandinavia to take up snow skiing, and wrote an article illustrated with photographs that is considered to have played a big role in popularizing the sport. The residents of Davos, a Swiss ski resort, erected a commemorative plaque to Doyle, not for his Holmes stories, but for "bringing this new sport, and the attraction of the Swiss Alps in Winter to the attention of the world."

Doyle was a mixed bag in his attitudes about women. He wrote a short story in which a male doctor encounters a female physician, shocking enough to the character, but has to learn to accept that the woman is a better doctor than he is! Very modern for the day, and Doyle also campaigned avidly for reforming divorce laws that were very unfair to women. On the other hand, he was always against giving women the right to vote, even as late as the 1920s!

I was pleased to learn that when visiting Egypt, Doyle had stayed at the same hotel I stayed at when I visited Egypt a Century later!

Another commonality between Doyle and many of our current authors....Doyle worked out that many reviews in different magazines were written by the same person writing under different names! He was outraged by this, especially when one of these powerful reviewers attacked some of his work. Doyle engaged in a big publicity campaign to end this practice, and was frustrated because few other writers would come out and support him.

Holmes was put on the stage several times, even during Doyle's life. In a 1905 revival, a very young Charlie Chaplin played Billy, the page boy at Baker Street.

Doyle tried to volunteer for active military service several times, and did succeed in being sent to South Africa as a military physician during the Boer War. He was more effective as a propagandist on behalf of the Empire during war, and did enthusiastic pamphleteering and writing during and after the Boer War and especially during World War I. Remember my discussion of "Invasion Literature" last year when describing The Swoop? Doyle had his own contribution. Before World War I, he wrote a story in which eight submarines of an imaginary nation blockaded and starved England into submission because the Royal Navy had no effective anti-submarine tactics. Though an effective propagandist, and a great writer, Doyle did not get political suppport from the English public. He ran for Parliament twice, and lost both times.

Unlike butler Eric Horne, Doyle willingly adopted new inventions (it just now occurs to me that they grew up at roughly the same time). Doyle not only bought a motor car, but avidly participated in long-distance motor rallies. In 1902 he took a lengthy balloon ride and came down twenty-five miles away from his launch point. We know about this because he was interviewed about it by a young journalist named P. G. Wodehouse! Doyle said the ride wasn't frightening till he got up high and realized that a wicker basket was the only thing between him and falling to his doom!

Doyle undertook a major publicity campaign for the release of an unjustly imprisoned Asian-English man that achieved success after several years. The local chief constable was initially flattered that the creator of Sherlock Holmes would be reviewing his work, but then was outraged when Doyle made him look the fool. Doyle had a second successful campaign to help an unjustly-accused German Jew. Though he did good work in those efforts, Doyle was the most naive and easily-fooled "pigeon" possible for fake spirit mediums, and he marred his public image in the last third of his life by avidly publicly campaigning to raise acceptance seances and spiritualism. The rumor mill claimed that Doyle (who had already been knighted) would have been offered a peerage if he hadn't embarrassed himself by his campaigning for "spooks". I'd read about this before, and had the impression that it was a reaction to the loss of Doyle's son and brother from World War I (ironically, neither was actually killed in combat). But there are hints that he was looking at it much earlier than this. He didn't go "all the way" and go public until after World War I, however.

During one seance, the spirit of Charles Dickens appeared, and expressed regret that The Mystery of Edwin Drood had been left unfinished. "Dickens" suggested that Doyle have a go at finishing it, and Doyle apparently seriously considered it.

When Doyle visited a professional magician's group, he astounded them by showing them movies of what appeared to be dinosaurs alive and moving about. The magicians were flabbergasted! They wondered if this was something created with his spiritualism connections. He then revealed that this was test footage for one of the early moving picture adaptations of "The Lost World"!

Speaking of film, Doyle is on film at least once:






This is worth watching. It is interesting that Doyle talks about Holmes first, and spends almost the exact same amount of time talking about Holmes, then about spiritualism. I suspect they made him promise to talk about Holmes first, as that would be what interested viewers.

Adventures of ACD is highly recommended, it held my interest all the way through. Five stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Dance of Time, by Michael Judge

I bought this book thinking it was a history of the development of the calendar, though the reviews clearly indicate it is intended to be more than that. And about the first third of the book actually is a straight history of how the calendar has changed over the millenia. But the book then shifts to a calendar-like list of the months, with segments on the background of special days in each month. We're talking special days from the perspective of primitive farmers in Europe, and in some cases, early Christians, not any old public holiday. There's not a mention of President's Day or Bastille Day here, but New Year's Day and the Equinoxes (for instance) are well-covered. The author wants us to understand how the rhythms of life in the old days, especially those of agriculture, are tied into important calendar days. There's also good coverage of how some religious dates became important days, and a rather cynical view of the old Catholic church appropriating pagan holidays that became important by announcing that that pagan holiday just happened to be an important day in Christ's life, and it was totally acceptable to celebrate that part of Christ's life by doing whatever the pagans had been used to doing on that day--As long as everyone understood they were doing these things for Jesus now!

The book is interesting and worth reading, but I am not keen on the editing. I believe a few of the facts are sloppy, and even I spotted two problems with use of possessives in the book. There are probably more that I missed. And once the author explicitly refers to an AD date when he means the BC year. The author tries to wax a little bit too lyrical in some of the descriptions. Still a good book for someone who wants to understand how the calendar and various holidays came out of the rhythms of the sky and agriculture.

The original Roman calendar had sixty nameless days tacked on after December and before the start of their new year in March. These days were reserved for the unhappy dead, Winter was their time, and the Romans would take no chances of offending them, and certainly not of summoning them up by attaching their names to anything! Eventually, this was fixed, and the new calendar improved matters, but still only accounted for 355 days in the year. This meant that not only was their calendar off, but it got ten days further off each year! By 50 BC, the Vernal Equinox, which should occur around March 20, fell on May 15!

Fortunately, Julius Caesar fixed things before Brutus bumped him off. And except for a minor adjustment in the Middle Ages, the basic structure of his calendar still serves us over 2000 years later. To fix things, sixty-seven days were added to one year, so the year 44 BC lasted for 432 days! I'd be interested to know how they referred to the extra days, but the book doesn't tell us that. Being born during that period must have been a real pain when planning for later birthday parties!

Most of us are aware of the key solar dates in the calendar--The equinoxes and solstices. But thanks to the Celts, we have two other "special" days. November 1st and May 1st. The traditional four dates are most important for farmers who harvest crops, and the two special days are key for someone raising pasture animals in northern Europe. May 1st is the appropriate time to put cattle out to pasture, and November 1st is a good typical time to bring them in for the winter. May 1st isn't as key to us, being mostly a worker's holiday now, but November 1 survives in the observance of the night before, which is Halloween for us. Halloween survives with its pagan roots mostly intact, and is the oldest continually-celebrated holiday in the Western World.

The calendar decreed by Julius was off by only a bit, but it lasted long enough that the errors creeped up, and by 1530, the calendar was a full nine days off again! So the Gregorian calendar corrected things. Since it was announced by Pope Gregory, how soon you adopted this was determined by how Catholic or anti-Catholic your country was. So Protestant England didn't adopt it till after George Washington was born two hundred years later, and Orthodox Russia didn't switch till the Communists came to power in the Twentieth Century! Instead of adding days, this made days disappear from the calendar, for those countries that made the initial switch in 1580, nine days had to disappear from the calendar.

There are really three important sources for different calendar days. The oldest strain started in the Middle East, and flowed through Greece and Rome. It was mostly focused on the four key solar days I mentioned. A second stream had a German and Celtic influence and blended into the Roman calendar. Eventually the Romans became Christian, and some Christian days were added to the calendar, and many of the existing special days were recast in a Christian form.

Interestingly, there is no agreement on where the custom of April Fool's Day came from. It is possible that it is very very old and goes back to prehistory, but also possible it started as late as the 1500s!

I'm wondering if this statement in the book is an April Fools--It certainly seems improbable to me: "The Italians believe that the bagpipe...was the favorite instrument of the Virgin, and that the original shepherds who came to worship at the feet of baby Jesus played their bagpipes for him." This blows my mind, and I haven't attempted to confirm or disprove it. Maybe Seleya can tell us!

The book points out that Santa Claus is arguably the last full-blown mythical figure that is still a going concern (if only for little kids in the West or who are Western-influenced).

Three stars out of five from me. Recommended only if the subject interests you.

This is my fourth book for the year (I'm not counting the B-36 book in my 80 books, it was mostly pictures). I still have read another book that I have to write up. I'll try and get it tomorrow morning.


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## Sam Kates

Ooh, you're doing a Heinlein book next that I haven't read. I'm currently reading _Farnham's Freehold_.


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## The Hooded Claw

Assignment in Eternity, by Robert Heinlein

This is a book by a favored author, but one I hadn't read for many years. I've done that a couple of times since I started these threads, once with a Fred Saberhagen "Dracula" novel, and once with an A. Bertram Chandler John Grimes novel, and both were unhappy experiences. I've reached the conclusion my judgement about not re-reading certain books is usually pretty good. Fortunately, Assignment in Eternity didn't make as far a drop as the other two books. I found it okay, though not great, and certainly not up to Heinlein's other work.

This isn't a novel, and not really a typical collection of short stories. The book contains two novellas and two short stories. They don't really fit into the flow of the "Future History" series that contains most of Heinlein's work, though there is a connection between one of the novellas and the novel Friday from late in Heinlein's career. The two novellas have a similar theme, in both of them a secret organization develops superhuman powers in its members. The short stories are more diverse, one is a sort of travelogue of the adventures of the students of a professor who lets them try out his method of hopping into parallel universes, and one is a human rights story about a rich woman who takes pity on the lot of a genetically engineered creature.

These are set close enough to the present that I found myself indulging in the fool's game of seeing how Heinlein had been successful or not in predicting the actual development of technology and world events. Of course that is seldom if ever the actual goal of most science fiction writers, but sometimes I can't help myself! Heinlein has a spy carrying and mailing rolls of microfilm as a way to store and access information--This is in the open, and not merely a clever way to hide information. In the background of one of the stories, it is implied that communism dominated the world for awhile, but was overthrown. One character explicitly refers to since "...we beheaded the last commissar." Videophones are in common use, and one character explicitly refers to "left my pocketphone in my other suit!" Something trivial that made me laugh is that a minor character is named Juan Valdez....I kept wanting him to stride into the scene pulling his burro behind him and offering coffee beans!

One of these stories was originally published under a pseudonym in a magazine issue that also contained the final 1/3 of Methuselah's Children, AND Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall." What company!

Assignment in Eternity is an okay read, but nothing special. I give it three stars. If you haven't tried Robert Heinlein, and want to start reading him, this is not the place. Die-hard Heinlein fans (such as me) will welcome it, though may wonder why they are reading this instead of re-reading Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, or The Number of the Beast.


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## The Hooded Claw

Right Ho, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse

I recently pre-ordered a Jeeves book that will be published on Kindle next Summer, and it occurred to me that I hadn't had any Jeeves in my life for awhile. So I pulled this out of the backlist and re-read it! This isn't the best Jeeves around, but it is very good Jeeves, and for free, it is an amazing bargain!

As usual with Jeeves, the story revolves around the romantic troubles of Bertie Wooster's friends. Unfortunately for them, in this novel Bertie is unwilling to let Jeeves step in and restore the situation, but insists on solving their troubles himself. There's the added complication that because of an unfortunate miscommunication, Bertie himself has somehow become engaged to a girl who "thinks the stars are God's daisy-chain" and "Talks openly about fairies being born because stars blew their noses, or whatever it was." He considers this a fate worse than death, but is just too nice and proper a guy to withdraw. As usual, hilarity ensues, and as usual, Wodehouse has a brilliant way of writing things that is as entertaining as the story. I'm just going to throw out a few quotes from the story and otherwise quit blowing hard about the book:

"A man's brain whizzes along for years exceeding the speed limit, and something suddenly goes wrong with the steering gear and it skids and comes a smeller in the ditch."

"In moments of discomfort....he wears a mask, preserving throughout the quiet stolidity of a stuffed moose."

"As for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight."

"The exquisite code of politeness of the Woosters prevented me from clipping her one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able to do it."

"Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won't forget him in the general distribution."

Five stars out of five, and an amazing value for free.


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## crebel

I have this waiting to be read on my kindle (probably on your recommendation to begin with), I think I will move it to my next read.  How can you go wrong with a character named Gussie Fink-Nottle?  I think you should suggest it to a certain board member that frequently likes to change to unusual names...


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## telracs

crebel said:


> I have this waiting to be read on my kindle (probably on your recommendation to begin with), I think I will move it to my next read. How can you go wrong with a character named Gussie Fink-Nottle? I think you should suggest it to a certain board member that frequently likes to change to unusual names...


unfortunately, gussie is a BOY!


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## The Hooded Claw

crebel said:


> I have this waiting to be read on my kindle (probably on your recommendation to begin with), I think I will move it to my next read. How can you go wrong with a character named Gussie Fink-Nottle?


I have a soft spot for old Gussie, because his great passion in life is studying newts. Fortunately for Wodehouse's best-seller status, most of his newt studies take place outside the narration of the book! Jeeves has quite a fan club, I predict you'll enjoy the book.


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## crebel

Abraham DeLacey Giusseppe Casey Thomas O'Malley said:


> unfortunately, gussie is a BOY!


Coming from Abraham Giusseppe Thomas, I didn't think it mattered.


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## telracs

crebel said:


> Coming from Abraham Giusseppe Thomas, I didn't think it mattered.


i was waiting for that.....


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## The Hooded Claw

Armed Robbers in Action by Richard T. Wright and Scott H. Decker

Last year I read a book called Burglars on the Job and reported on it in the 2012 thread. This book is by some of the same coauthors of that book, and tries to give the same treatment to armed robbers. The authors focused on interviewing self-identified armed robbers they were introduced to through intermediaries with connections in the criminal world. Overall the book is shorter and less interesting than the burglary book, and I suspect the authors deliberately cut things a bit short, since interviewing burglars is dangerous enough, but meeting practicing armed robbers privately is arguably nuts!

The book has five chapters, Chapter 1 describes how they conducted the study, including some of the risks and problems they had to deal with; Chapter 2 focuses on how robbers decide to commit a robbery; chapter 3 focuses on choosing a target; Chapter 4 on actually committing the offense, and Chapter 5 on lessons learned that can be applied to a strategy of reducing robberies.

In many ways, the chapter on research methods was the most interesting in the book, different from the notoriously boring detail common to most descriptions of how research was conducted. The authors began their research by being introduced to robbers through a thief who had retired after being paralyzed in a gangland shooting, but was still well-respected. This was the same contact they'd used in the burglary book. They tried to get further referrals from the people they interviewed, but continued to use their main paralyzed fieldworker to help establish their bona fides. They continued to pay the paralyzed man for each contact, giving him an interest in their continued success, but ran into a problem partway through the study when he seemed to lose interest for awhile, and brought them no new contacts for over a month. They began to use another criminal who had come to their attention in the study, paying him. This incurred the resentment of the original fieldworker, who became active again, but complicated things because they now had to keep these two men apart. They encountered further problems when one of their interviewees expressed interest in the project and introducing them to further contacts, but then was arrested literally hours after they first talked to him! The researchers had put a lot of effort into establishing that this project was not a police sting, and even had a letter from the Chief of Police in the area asking his officers not to interfere with the researchers. But none of this was a help when many criminals concluded that clearly this was a sting, and the researchers were to be avoided. They report in the book that the arrested criminal still believes that they had a hand in his arrest.

Another problem emerged as a result of their policy of taking some interviewees to the site of a recent robbery, and asking him to reconstruct the crime for them on site. They took a robber to a site where he had robbed some drug dealers, and the drug dealers were there, "working" at their trade. Their interviewee was literally frightened for his life, hiding in the back seat of the car and begging them to drive away at once because all of them were in deadly danger if the dealers spotted the man who had robbed them! Another time they scheduled to meet two interviewees at the same time and place, and discovered on arrival that one of them had recently robbed the other! They managed to hustle the two off to separate locations before things turned violent.

The motivations of the robbers were similar to those of the burglars. Street life is dominated by the desire to endlessly party, and their robberies were generally done when the robber was forced to do so to gain funds to continue their street lifestyle. Occasionally this need was driven by mundane concerns like paying rent or buying food, but more often it was driven by the desire to buy drugs or alcohol, gamble, or to buy status symbols such as clothes or watches. The authors referred to this lifestyle as "desperate partying," which seems like a pretty good name. If a more routine bill was driving their motivation, it was usually not a matter of the bill being due, but because they were threatened with power being cut off or being evicted from their home if they didn't come up with some money. So the robbers are usually under severe pressure to come up with money immediately. The robbers seemed to regard robbery as safer and more certain of successfully gaining cash than other illegal activities such as drug dealing or burglary, and even dealing drugs usually involves a cash stake to get the initial merchandise. Many robbers also like the feeling of dominance and control they got during a robbery.

I found it interesting that most of the robbers were poor and black (not surprising) but they mostly preferred to rob other poor people, not more upscale people. The robbers generally felt that middle or upper class victims were less likely to be carrying large amounts of cash, and more likely to have only credit cards that would promptly be canceled after a robbery. The robbers also felt they could more reliably predict when low-income people were likely to have cash (on the days when welfare checks were due, and when the victims were leaving ATMs and check cashing locations). Also, most robbers prefer to stay in places they are familiar with, and where their appearance will be less suspicious, which means that they usually aren't willing to commit crimes in areas where higher-income victims are likely to be. Drug dealers are an EXTREMELY popular choice of victim, as they will not only have cash, but will have drugs, which the robbers also view as valuable for their own use. People flashing valuable jewelry were also an attractive target. The researchers were able to interview some robbers who would attack businesses such as convenience stores or gas stations, but most of their subjects robbed individuals on the street. In addition to ATMs and check cashing locations, the parking lots of malls and supermarkets were attractive locations. The robbers reported that whites were generally preferred to blacks as robbery targets, because they viewed whites as less likely to resist, but white victims were generally rare in the areas where they could be active, so most robbers primarily robbed black victims. Women, especially elderly women, were favored targets again because of a perception of less chance of resistance.

Behavior during the robbery was focused on terrorizing the victim into submission. A favored announcement was "This is a robbery, don't make it a murder!" Unsurprisingly, they focused on gaining surprise, especially by coming from behind, and some robbers favored beginning their contact by striking the victim on the head from behind. About half the robbers simply accepted the wallet or valuable items handed to them, while about half would frisk or otherwise search the victim themselves. Most robbers were male, but some were women. Women tended to gain victims by pretending to be prostitutes, and doing the robbery after the victims had accompanied them to a private place.

As for preventing robbery, the authors had few recommendations that will be surprising. Avoiding ATMs and check cashing stores that aren't in well-secured areas is pretty obvious. This research was done in the mid 1990s, and the authors suggested substituting welfare payments in check form with debit-style cards, and I understand this has been done to some extent. For the gambling and illegal activities many robbers are trying to support, only cash will do, so debit cards are much less useful to them.

Overall the book was interesting, but not as interesting as the burglar book. Recommended only if you're seriously interested in reading this sort of stuff. I give it three stars out of five.


----------



## crebel

The Hooded Claw said:


> I have a soft spot for old Gussie, because his great passion in life is studying newts. Fortunately for Wodehouse's best-seller status, most of his newt studies take place outside the narration of the book! Jeeves has quite a fan club, I predict you'll enjoy the book.


Jeeves and Bertie are a hoot! I am enjoying it very much and don't know how I have missed reading any of them before. So many one-liners... Thanks, Claw!


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## The Hooded Claw

Time Travelers, Strictly Cash, by Spider Robinson

In the thread last year I described reading Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, by Spider Robinson. This collection of short pieces is partly a sequel to that book, and partly a few other short writings by Spider. There are eleven pieces here, and four of them are short stories about Callahan's Place. The Amazon description of the Kindle book is pretty upfront about this division, but the front and back cover blurbs of my paperback copy of the original publication (which I re-read this time) doesn't give a clue that the book is anything but another collection of Callahan's Place stories! Shows how the publisher felt about the relative popularity of Callahan versus the other material.

I was surprised how much of this material I'd forgotten. Even of the Callahan's Place stories, I had a detailed and complete memory of just one of the stories (what happens when a real talking dog comes to Callahan's Place?), and had completely forgotten the plots and story hooks of the other three. Though I did remember nearly every one of the puns and shaggy dog stories that were incorporated into these stories, and I have used many of 'em myself on a regular basis since I read these stories when originally published. Overall, the stories are okay, but not exceptional.

As for the non-Callahan's Place material, some is short stories, but one of the pieces is a book review from back when Spider was the book reviewer for Galaxy magazine, and another is a rip-roaring defense of Robert Heinlein and his works. I still remember reading both of these when originally published, but found both to be worthy rereads. And it is a tribute to Spider's writing skill that I could enjoy re-reading a book review column from over thirty years ago! I still think "Spider vs. The Hax of Sol III" is absolutely the best name for a science fiction book review column that was ever invented!

I didn't really care for the other short stories--There was one that was a pretty good exploration of a concept, I'd give it four stars, perhaps four and a half on its own. The others are forgettable. The concept story explored the idea of "what would happen if you had cryogenics coexisting with reincarnation?" It's pretty interesting, but just one short story in the whole book.

Not a great book, but it did keep me reading, and I finished it in one evening. Three and a half stars, but that half star is just barely earned.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Chinese Maze Murders, by Robert van Gulik

Pity poor Judge Dee! He has just arrived at his new assignment as Magistrate of the frontier town of Lan-Fang. Lan-Fang is a backwater since the trade route shifted away to the North. But his predecessor departed without explanation before he arrived, so there is no one to greet him and instead of the extensive experienced local staff he would expect to have, he finds only one local staff member, who the Judge feels compelled to throw in jail immediately. The newly-arrived Magistrate Dee quickly finds three major cases before him, a locked room mystery, a dispute over an estate that hangs on resolving a maddening picture puzzle, and a missing person case that is almost certainly a kidnapping. Solving these is a matter of duty, but he has another problem--An upstart warlord has seized power in the area. The warlord has many experienced troops and Judge Dee has only a handful of henchmen he brought with him. this means dealing with this quickly is not only a matter of duty, but of survival! And this is just the start of the book. Life sure is complicated in this place that was supposed to be quiet....

There is an afterword that explains the story behind this book, and most of it was unknown to me (this is my first Judge Dee book). There was quite a tradition of Chinese mysteries for hundreds of years, and author van Gulik drew heavily on these for material he used in his extensive series of Judge Dee books. Apparently the details of the story are quite authentic. This is a very different legal system than we are used to, there actually does seem to be a requirement for search warrants, but the law is authorized to torture suspected criminals, and the whole system seems set up to make the legal system rather scary to deal with, so that citizens will avoid it unless absolutely necessary. There are beheadings in the book (not gratuitously described, but not glossed over, either). Although there are clues, and evidence and suspects to question, this is not a cozy mystery! Apparently Judge Dee was a real historical person, though the author has moved him to a different era of Chinese history for the novels.









A Criminal Confesses His Nefarious Schemes
(an illustration from the book)

Briefly at the start of the book I wondered if I was going to like it, but that feeling passed quickly, and I enjoyed the book. There are numerous illustrations in what is apparently an authentic style for that period and place that show up very well on an eInk Kindle. One minor glitch is that there are more typos and errors in the Kindle edition than usual, though this doesn't reach the error-on-every-page level of two books I complained about late last year. A solid four out of five stars, and I will be reading others in the series. Many of the Judge Dee Kindle books have been marked down to just a few bucks, I've gone ahead and grabbed the inexpensive ones. If you like audio books, Audible has a short story collection, The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, for only 95 cents member price (Not sure how the price will be for non-members). For an eight hour audio book, this is quite a deal!
http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_2?asin=B002V8MRH8&qid=1359165878&sr=1-2

The audiobook is back to full price now, alas!


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

Claw, I see this book is lendable.  Would you lend it to me?

Betsy


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## The Hooded Claw

Send me a PM with your email address.


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## Betsy the Quilter

Thanks, I'll send it to you in a few days; have a book to finish first.

Betsy


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## Seleya

Glad you liked it that much, this series is one of my favorite historicals. 

Yes, Van Gulik was a very interesting guy and quite knowledgeable about China. Judge Dee was a real-life magistrate of the Tang dinasty (he lived in the 7th century http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Di_Renjie).

It is rather common for Chinese novels and tales to fictionalize earlier historical figures inserting in the plot or the background elements of later times (often the Ming dinasty since that's when most of China's popular novels where written).

Must check what's available and see if there's any judge Dee novel I'm still missing.


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## Avis Black

The Hooded Claw said:


> The Chinese Maze Murders, by Robert van Gulik


I read all the Judge Dee mysteries back in the day, and they're minimalist in the manner of Georges Simenon's Maigret books, but likeable. I also enjoyed Robinson's Callahan stories when I first read them in my teens. I haven't reread the latter in years, so I don't know how they hold up to adult eyes.


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## The Hooded Claw

Avis Black said:


> I read all the Judge Dee mysteries back in the day, and they're minimalist in the manner of Georges Simenon's Maigret books, but likeable. I also enjoyed Robinson's Callahan stories when I first read them in my teens. I haven't reread the latter in years, so I don't know how they hold up to adult eyes.


Callahan doesn't hold up as well as I hoped, but is still good. I also read the stories in my teens, and thought they were awesome and magical at the time. Now I think they're good, but not awesome!

I've started this:



The Anatomy of Motive, by John E. Douglas

Serious stuff here. Written by one of the FBI's early criminal profilers, it is fascinating, but grisly in some places. I'm about 1/3 through it now.


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## The Hooded Claw

Anatomy of Motive is interesting to read even though much of the material is repetitive.  A series of chapters describes various types of criminals, and what makes each type tick.  For illustrative purposes, actual cases are described.  The categories of criminals are all major crimes, with perhaps the "lowest" being arsonists, but moving on to poisoners, bombers, seemingly normal people who suddenly snap, and other categories.  Many of the real cases are ones that Douglas worked on, but many are just well-known crimes, and some not-so-well-known, going all the way back to the 1950s in at least two cases. The cases were nearly always interesting, oddly the one that probably interested me the most was the scare over adulterated Tylenol capsules back in the 1980s.  The case was interesting because I'd never read a detailed account of it before, and also because the author was involved in advising the investigation, and he goes into considerable detail about some of the things that were done to use the media to try to influence the bomber (nobody was ever convicted, and the case is still open to this day).  Another case that was interesting, even though I remembered quite a bit about it from news coverage, was the famous Unabomber case.  Some of the cases I'd not heard of before were interesting, some were genuinely scarey when seemingly normal people killed their own family members for no obvious reason.  Motivations and behaviors of all sorts of criminals are covered.  I was surprised how many criminals really do "return to the scene of the crime" or keep scrapbooks of their criminal "accomplishments".  Usually the criminal behavior is a reaction to the lack of success, control, or recognition that the criminal feels in their own life.  The stereotype of this is a life-long loser, of course.  But I was surprised to find that in the cases where seemingly normal and successful people "snap", it seems to occur sometimes when a successful person decides that he isn't going to actually achieve the high level of success that has been expected, and his life isn't going to get better than it is now.  Though the overall psychological analysis was interesting, probably the most interesting thing in the book was the extensive coverage of various crimes, and detailed descriptions of how profilers tried to analyze the bad guy, and in some cases, manipulate events to create a situation where the criminal would reveal himself.  The book ends with detailed reports on some fictitious crimes, and you are invited to analyze the crimes and make recommendations to the investigators.  Douglas gives his recommendations, so you can see how yours compare with his.

I found the book interesting and it kept me reading, but it didn't dazzle me.  I'd give it four stars.


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## The Hooded Claw

A Time to Stand: The Epic of the Alamo, by Walter Lord

When I was in high school I read several of Walter Lord's books, and always really liked them. Lord focused very much on the immediate individual experiences around some historic event. For instance his book on the Titanic disaster begins with the lookout shouting that there is an iceberg ahead, and moves forward with little or no backstory provided. I picked up several of his enKindled books on a Deal of the Day a few months ago, and I was wondering how Lord would do the Alamo, since most of the people involved in the story on the Texan side were killed at the end. There are some unavoidable gaps in his story, but mostly they aren't notable till the very end, the climactic Mexican assault. For the assault we know a few things, like how the Mexicans seized some of Texan cannons and turned them on the defenders, and we do know the fate of Colonel Travis, but there is no positive information on the fate of most of the defenders, especially the well known Jim Bowie and David Crockett. One thing that I appreciated in the book is that it includes extensive notes on sources at the end of the book. That's even more important in a poorly-documented event like this than in other events.

I went into the book with high hopes, and didn't quite get my hopes met. The book is quite good, but it never had me feeling "glued to my Kindle". My overall rating is three and a half stars. Positives are that the book is quite well-written (which we expect from Lord, he was an expert at his craft), and the events are interesting. The only negative is that somehow I was never caught up in the events. The book never gripped me. And with something as dramatic as the Alamo as the subject, that disappointed me.

One thing that surprised me is how slowly word spread in the days before telegraph lines. New York learned of the famous letter from Colonel Travis to "all Americans in the world" on March 30, and got word of the bloody end of the siege on April 11. It was all over by that time...Santa Ana's assault took place in the early morning of March 6!

Something I hadn't known was one of the reasons so many Americans were drawn to settle in Mexico (Texas). The part of the country seen as suitable for settlement was filling up. Several of the Alamo defenders had come there after settling in Missouri for awhile, and in New Orleans, the newspaper lamented that the city was glutted with lawyers, doctors, and accountants.

On the other hand, San Antonio de Bexar (that's San Antonio to you and me) had been shrinking. It had been an important local center under Spanish rule, but after Mexican independence in 1821, it not only stagnated, but moved backwards. In ten years half the population left.

Jim Bowie had a well-deserved reputation as a rough and tough fighter, but he also had a romantic side. He adored his Spanish aristocrat wife, and the admiration was mutual. She ended all her letters to him with "Receive thou the heart of thy wife." Tragically, she died of cholera in 1833, three years before the Alamo.

Colonel Travis was a lawyer as his primary occupation, and he always kept one eye on it. As he was at the Alamo, waiting for Santa Ana to arrive, he took time from writing desperate appeals for reinforcements to take out advertisements for his legal practice! Despite being a Colonel in the improvised Texan army, he was only twenty-six years old.

As Santa Ana approached San Antonio through South Texas, the weather seemed to fight on Texas' side. On February 13, his advancing army was hit by a howling blizzard! Everyone was blinded by snow, many of the draft animals died from exposure, and especially miserable were some of his drafted troops from the tropical jungles of Yucatan. Things were made worse because Santa Ana hadn't felt it necessary to organize and bring along a medical contingent for his army. When he became sick along the way, he hired a poorly-trained local doctor.

Like his men, Colonel Travis was a brave and determined man, but he omitted some preparations that would be elementary for an experienced soldier. Though he'd heard reports from travelers that it was coming, he had no scouts out looking for the Mexican army. This nearly caused disaster. The night before Santa Ana arrived at San Antonio, a delegation of pro-government civilians from the town showed approached him, and informed him that that very evening there would be a fandango away from the Alamo, and most of the Alamo defenders were expected to attend. It was the perfect opportunity to catch his enemies unarmed and away from their defensive position, and Santa Ana mobilized his cavalry for a night raid, but the Texas defenders were saved by a sudden blinding storm that caused a river to rise up and flood, keeping the cavalry from crossing it. If this storm hadn't happened, the story of the Alamo would have been very different. Shortly before the Mexican army did arrive, local Mexicans who had been warned were grabbing their valuables and fleeing San Antonio. They were obvious enough that even the oblivious Travis investigated, but none of them would tell him what was going on. Despite energetic questioning, and forbidding anyone else to leave, it took him hours to learn that the Exodus was because the Mexican army was nearby and was expected that day! Incredibly, Travis still didn't send out scouts to find out what was going on, though he did alert his lookouts.

When a lookout finally warned that he could see the Mexican army from his high perch, several other men raced to join him at the observation post and could see nothing. The lookout insisted the Mexicans were there, and had moved behind a thicket. He wasn't believed, and everyone cried that it was a false alarm. Fortunately, two men were sent on horseback to investigate. They would get word of what they saw back by the simplest of possible methods....When they returned, if they were riding hell-for-leather and driving their horses like madmen, they had seen the Mexicans; if they came back at a walk, trot, or any lesser pace, there was nothing there. They rode out and spotted 1,500 Mexicans, about 1/4 of the force that would totally arrive, and the lookout must have felt vindicated when he announced that he could see the two riders racing back for all they were worth!

Believe it or not, there were bagpipes at the Alamo! Defender John McGregor was an avid bagpiper, and played regularly. At slow points during the siege, he and Jim Bowie held musical duels to entertain the garrison, with McGregor on bagpipes and Jim Bowie playing a fiddle he'd found.

One Alamo defender named Dolphin Floyd observed (but presumably didn't celebrate) his 21st birthday on March 6th, same day as the Mexicans made their final assault and slaughtered the garrison.

Sadly, Colonel Travis died by a shot to the head in the opening minutes of the final assault.

Of the various people in the Alamo, Lord reports that fourteen are known to have survived. Three of them were Americans (the wife of one of the soldiers, her daughter, and a slave belonging to Colonel Travis). The soldier's wife, Mrs. Dickinson, lived almost fifty years after the battle, spending the rest of her life in Texas. At least ten Mexican women and children survived, and probably more. One Mexican soldier among the defenders is reported to have survived. Brigido Guerrero managed to convince the victorious Mexican Army soldiers that he had been a prisoner and was really for Santa Ana (and good for him for saving his life from a pointless end after the battle was lost).

I was critical of Colonel Travis above, but despite his inexperience and mistakes, he got results. We know how the Alamo ended up. The defenders held up the Army for a thirteen-day siege, and about 1/3 of the Mexican attackers were killed or wounded. Not far away at Goliad, a larger body of troops served under James Fannin, who at least had some formal military experience (he had attended West Point for a couple of years before resigning) and did most of the right things, despite some clear errors due to indecision, such as starting to march off to reinforce the Alamo, and giving it up when the draft animals for their cannon had problems. Before starting the book, I was unsure what happened to this group (I thought I remembered reading of the eventual outcome, but because Fannin appeared fairly competent, as I read I told myself that I must have them confused with another group of Texan soldiers). I found myself liking Fannin as I was reading this book, for all his foibles, and respecting the preparations he was making. But when the Goliad force was besieged, he surrendered after two days. Fannin and his men were massacred after their surrender. So the professional Fannin did much worse for his cause than Travis, despite all my criticisms of Travis and liking for Fannin.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

Kill Your Darlings, by Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins is one of my favorite authors, and he gets credit for being the "gateway drug" that drew me into post-Sherlock Holmes mysteries in a big way. He has at least four series of books, and when I first read his work in the '80s, the Mallory series, of which this book was a part, was my favorite part of his work. In recent years I've been more taken with his Nate Heller series (as you know if you've been following these threads!), and my Mallory paperbacks have sat on the shelf. But the Mallory series was recently enKindled and put in the KOLL, and since I prefer reading fiction on my Kindle to paper, I used my KOLL privileges last month to re-read "The Baby Blue Rip-Off", first of the Mallory books. It disappointed me, didn't live up to my memories of the Mallory series. When Kill Your Darlings was offered cheap on a Amazon Local offer, I grabbed it for a buck, even though I had a paper copy. And I started it last night late and finished it tonight, even though it is the third in the series. I enjoyed Kill Your Darlings a LOT more than the first book--Now I can better understand my old preference for the Mallory books.

Mallory is a mystery writer who gets sucked into solving murder mysteries. Collins picked a great setting for this story, Mallory is attending a Bouchercon, a convention for mystery writers and fans. These are real events, I've never been to one, but they appear similar to the science fiction conventions I've attended. This Bouchercon is special for Mallory; he's moved up enough in the mystery writer's world to be a speaker in one of the panel discussions, and his idol and writing mentor, Roscoe Kane, is going to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award. Meanwhile, the mystery world is buzzing because a previously unknown Dashiell Hammett manuscript has been found and is about to be published. Sounds like a great convention till Roscoe Kane is found dead in his hotel room. This being a Mallory book, he feels compelled to investigate...

The book mentions in passing some real mystery authors, but to my knowledge the several mystery authors who appear as characters in the book are all fabrications. The Bouchercon setting is used to the hilt, and was a fun place for a mystery novel. The mystery was interesting, and the climax still had some definite shockers, even though I'd read it years ago.

The book was written in the 80s, and some things in the book definitely date it. Of course there's not the slightest hint of the internet, and there is a discussion of how one small specialty mystery book publisher is moving up in the world, because "he is getting his books into Dalton's and Walden's!" It amused me that when the book describes looking at a spectacular cover of a classic mystery that's on sale in a book vendor's booth, I was able to look the actual book cover up on the internet and see what the author was talking about! The author talks about visiting a Chicago deep pan pizza place that I believe I visited when I was in Chicago, and I was interested to find that Yelp! still lists the location, but says it is reported closed.

Kill Your Darlings is not a deep or lengthy mystery, but it definitely held my attention and kept me reading. The final confrontation is particularly interesting and well-done. Four and a half stars from me.


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## deckard

Is it necessary to read the Mallory series or the Nate Heller series in order or can one start with any book in the series?

A while back, I read your reveiw of Blood and Thunder and have wanted to read the book. I have hesitated because some series you have to follow the books in order to really appreciate the story line.

...And I'm dying to start reading another mystery. (Pun intended)

Deckard


----------



## The Hooded Claw

deckard said:


> Is it necessary to read the Mallory series or the Nate Heller series in order or can one start with any book in the series?
> 
> A while back, I read your reveiw of Blood and Thunder and have wanted to read the book. I have hesitated because some series you have to follow the books in order to really appreciate the story line.
> 
> ...And I'm dying to start reading another mystery. (Pun intended)


Hi Deckard!

The Mallory books are all pretty independent, and based on my experience re-reading the first and third, I don't especially encourage beginning with the first one (Baby Blue Ripoff) because I think it is not a great representative of the series.

Most of the Heller books are independent, but for anyone reading the first three books, I'd read them in order. True Crime, True Detective, and The Million Dollar Wound are deliberately a trilogy. I'd recommend they be read in order. To my knowledge, all the other books can be read independently, and it is NOT necessary to read the first three before reading later books. So if Blood and Thunder especially appeals to you, dive right in!

Added later--You may have figured this out from my comments on the books, but in general the Heller books are much longer and more convoluted, and incorporate a lot of historical trivia about the subject and his times (such as Huey Long in Blood and Thunder). The Mallory books are shorter, lighter, and less intricate, but still worth reading.


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## The Hooded Claw

Groundhog Day, by Don Yoder

Despite the cover photo, this is not a novelization of the movie with Bill Murray! Don Yoder is a professor of folklore at a Pennsylvania University, and this book is an account of the history and folklore of the famous celebration. It mostly, but not entirely, focuses on Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Dutch. I picked it up when it was offered for free as a promotion for Groundhog Day, but it is back to $9.99 now. The book has an odd glitch on a few pages. Individual lines of text will be at a slight slant to the rest of the page, and often the text in a line will shift upwards or downwards a fraction of an inch in the middle of the line. This only happens on a few pages, fortunately.

The book is divided into chapters, with a chapter on the famous celebration at Punxsutawney, similar celebrations elsewhere in the world, the origins of the Groundhog Day legend, groundhog lodges (fraternal organizations of humans), and a few more chapters on relevant miscellanea, including the custom of having groundhog as an entree! I found most of the book barely this side of tedious, frankly. There are lengthy recitations of information, and some of it, especially the stuff on groundhog lodges, gets very repetitive. For the casual reader reading for entertainment, I'd give it two stars, but it does do a good job if informing as it is supposed to do, so someone who genuinely wants detailed information will love it. So I'll say an overall rating of three stars, but just barely.

Yoder reports that the mythology of Groundhog Day was brought over from Europe, and mostly survived in North America through the Pennsylvania Dutch. In Europe, there are similar legends that use the badger, and in some regions, the bear, in place of the groundhog (the groundhog is a strictly North American animal). The author talks about the Celtic year and their feast days, covering some of the same material that was in The Dance of Time book that I read a few weeks ago. An important Celtic day was February 1, and as Europe became Christianized, it gradually moved to combine with Candlemas, a festival devoted to the Virgin Mary. The Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary followed a Jewish custom of the purification of a woman 40 days after childbirth (Christmas, in this case). The Celts had lit fires on February 1, as symbolic of the returning heat of the Sun (and I imagine it was just nice to stand next to a big roaring fire and warm up!). The Catholic church shifted to the idea of fire and candles being used for symbolic purification of the Virgin Mary. Yoder quotes one writer who notes that this hardly seems consistent with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and neither Yoder nor I know the answer to that one!

The antique legend about the European badger or bear predicting the length of the coming winter blended in with Candlemas, and over the years, the Virgin Mary connection faded for those who weren't devout Catholics (I didn't have a clue about it till I read the book). When Germans came over and settled in Pennsylvania, they presumably brought the belief with them, but shifted it to the groundhog for reasons unknown. This belief probably was continuously held, but the first written record of it we have in Pennsylvania is from 1840. Eventually the Punxsatawney Phil celebration became a major celebration (the earliest record of it is from 1886 and it is probably older than that), and then became highly commercialized. There are other, rival groundhog weather predictors however; several in Pennsylvania, and at least one in Ohio and one in Georgia. The book goes into considerable detail about each.

Groundhog Day seems to have survived through the Pennsylvania Dutch, and in the 1800s, fraternal organizations devoted to preserving the Pennsylvania Dutch language sprung up. They generally meet only once a year or so, and usually incorporate groundhog-related titles and language into their roles, titles, and ceremonies. For instance the head of such a lodge may have the title "Exalted Hibernator". Here's a poster for a lodge meeting from 1936 (in "Dutch" of course):










During the meeting, English must not be spoken, and the highlight is usually a lengthy humorous speech by someone prominent locally. There is extensive description of each of the most famous of these lodges and their history in the book, this is where I frankly tired of the book because of the detail and the repetition.

The book goes on to talk about how Europeans learned about the groundhog, and a bit about its natural history. There were earlier writtten references going back as far as 1656, but one of the most complete early reports we have on the groundhog is from the John James Audubon, the famous illustrator of birds. In 1846, he published a book with the remarkable name of The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America that included descriptions and illustrations of groundhogs and other animals, and he published several color plates:










The book goes on to talk about the groundhog as a culinary item. Despite attempts by some of the people he quotes to embellish the taste, from most of the descriptions, it sounds like groundhogs are not good eating, and even in colonial times, it seems to have been regarded as a poverty food that you ate when no other meat was available. Yoder quotes several recipes, but I don't think I'll be trying any.

Overall, I don't really recommend this book unless you truly want to read great detail about the mythology of the groundhog!

This is book number thirteen for the year, plus I have read one of my eight doorstopper books for the year, so I am well ahead of schedule (knock on wood).


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## Betsy the Quilter

Wow, interesting, Claw!  (I don't feel like I need to read the book, now.  )  I had no idea the "holiday" was that old...

Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington

FWIW, you could watch the Bill Murray movie (from whence comes Betsy's quote) all day long to day on TMC or AMC or one of them.  When it was over, it just started right up again.


----------



## Betsy the Quilter

There's an irony there....


Betsy


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## Ann in Arlington

Indeed! 

I realized I'd never actually watched the whole thing all the way through before!  Just seen bits and pieces.


----------



## The Hooded Claw

I didn't watch Groundhog Day on "The Day", which is a pity, I'd like to see it again (though not with commercials if it was on AMC). Wonderful movie!

While not watching Bill Murray in the movie, I did finish this book:



The London Blitz Murders, by Max Allan Collins

Thanks to the KOLL and an Amazon Local offer, I've been reading a lot of Max Allan Collins this year. This is one of his "Disaster Series", historical whodunits where a real mystery writer is the protagonist. This novel is actually set in London in 1942, which is after the worst of the Blitz was over with. The heroine is Agatha Christie! Based on the book, and on his comments in an afterword, Collins really likes and respects Christie. In his afterword, he refers to the book as a Valentine to Agatha Christie.

A word of warning, the murders in this book were committed by The Blackout Ripper. I'd never heard of The Blackout Ripper, but something early in the book made me think that these might be real killings, so I made the mistake of Googling to find out. I found out they were real, and found out more than I wanted to--Don't do what I did if you plan to read the book, as the results list prominently features the real name of the actual Blackout Ripper. Knowing that name removed some suspense, and took a bit of the joy out of this book for me.

Christie, who prefers to be known as Mrs. Mallowan, is supporting the war effort by using her chemistry training to work in a hospital pharmacy in London. This work places her in close proximity to Sir Bernard Spillsbury, who was a famously effective coroner when not involved in his hospital duties. As a form of research, Christie/Mallowan asks him if she can accompany him on some investigations. Unfortunately for Christie, this doesn't end up as a quiet ride-along to some admittedly grisly murder sites. She too, may be under threat from The Ripper! Christie really did work as a hospital chemist in the same building as Dr. Spillsbury, so as usual Collins has based his historical fiction on real facts.

The mystery makes a great read. A madman is taking advantage of the wartime blackout to viciously murder women, especially prostitutes. Spillsbury and Christie visit each murder scene, and the mystery is a good one. The previous book I read in this series, The War of the Worlds Murders, had the mystery playing a very small role, the murder was discovered halfway through the book. That's not the case in London Blitz Murders, where the very first page is a worker discovering one of the Blackout Ripper's victims. The setting on this one is as interesting as Welles and his famous broadcast was in the previous book, and the mystery kept my attention, even though I'd unwittingly spoilered myself! I give the book a very solid four stars.

As always, Collins has done his research, and there was lots of trivia about wartime London. I had known that there was a shortage of silk for women's stockings, but was surprised to learn that many women painted their legs with a liquid product that dried to produce the look of silk stockings! Sounds like it could get uncomfortable. There's also a reference to a rubber shortage because of the war. A rubber hot water bottle was a highly valued item!

There's a fair amount of stuff where Christie worries about the changes in the mystery novel, and how the war affected her profession as a mystery writer. She confides that the grim and realistic detective stories of Chandler and Hammett put her off, but she fears they are the wave of the future, and wonders how she will stay relevant. Christie's work as a hospital chemist wasn't strictly motivated by patriotism...Wartime paper shortages affected the ability to print and sell her books, depressing her income! The book says she was actually encouraged to limit her literary output during the war. Royalty payments on her books from other countries were held up because of the disruption of the war, but naturally she was still expected to pay income taxes on this money, even though she hadn't actually received it! Part of her response was to throw herself into writing plays, which continued to be very popular during the war, and some of the events in the book revolve around the opening night performance of one of her plays.

There is a political correctness controversy over the original English title of "Ten Little Indians" that I was totally unaware of.

I learned a new word...Chorine is not a way to purify water, but is another word for "chorus girl."

Highly recommended. I found The Blackout Ripper interesting, he was totally unknown to me. I picked up a Kindleized book about him:



It's not my next book, as I've already started a science book, but it will come soon.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Tunguska Mystery, by Vladimir Rubtsov

I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately, and wanted to shift gears to something technical, so picked this book. I've had my eye on reading it soon since I picked it up in a textbook sale about a month ago. This isn't actually a textbook, but it is heavy going. I struggled sometimes. On a more positive note it was extremely interesting in many places, though I also am a bit suspicious and have problems with some of the information. This is a very thorough review of what is known about the famous Tunguska explosion over Siberia in 1908. It deserves a more thorough coverage than I would give it at 12:30 at night so I will wait till tomorrow to write it up.


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## The Hooded Claw

I really liked The Tunguska Mystery, even though it had some problems. The Tunguska event occurred in 1908. To describe it in one sentence, something came screaming in from outer space and exploded with tremendous force a few miles above a boggy forest in Siberia, starting massive forest fires. Sounds like a meteorite, and that is probably the consensus explanation among scientists, but the meteor theory has some weaknesses. Big meteorites don't generally explode in the air with the force of atomic bombs, and nobody has ever found any pieces of it on or in the ground, nor any sign of an impact crater like we see on the Moon, or out at Meteor Crater in Arizona. So scientists have been trying to figure out what it was and what happened ever since.

After a sluggish and irregular start, there has been a fair amount of scientific research done, and considerable exploration of the area. But most of it was done by Russians and their results were published in Russian. Author Rubtsov sought to write up a book summarizing everything that is known, and it has been translated into English for us. This is exactly what I wanted--I read a little one-page article about this when I was in elementary school, and have found it very interesting ever since. So I grabbed this when it was offered at a cut price during a big "textbook" sale awhile back. Alas, the author seems to be a bit of a renegade as scientists go. I had some trouble with some of his conclusions. But I still found the book very interesting, and I'm glad I read it! Four and a half stars from me. But that only applies if you're a huge fan of scientific mysteries. This book consolidates stuff from a lot of different fields of science, and I found it heavy going in some places.

Almost as interesting and scarey as the idea of a rock whizzing in out of nowhere and exploding with a force that knocks down trees for hundreds of miles is how TOUGH it was to be a Russian scientist in the Twentieth Century. Rubtsov begins with a history of scientific investigation of Tunguska, and I was amazed how many bad things happened to these guys. Several were arrested by the Czar's police for subversive activities, and World War I started just six years later and shook up more of them. One of the earliest leading scientists to investigate, had been arrested for subversion and held by the Czar's police (and apparently there was some justice to this) for several weeks, but still enlisted as an engineer soldier in World War I, was decorated for bravery, and made an officer in the Czarist army! Fortunately, the Russian government began to realize that it wasn't a good use of talented scientists to use them up in trench warfare, so he was recalled from the front to do scientific work. It was after the war was over that he got interested in the Tunguska event because of a handwritten note about it on an old calendar he saw. A different scientist was accused of being a secret monarchist because he had proposed naming a nova that had become visible in 1670 after former Russian Emperor Peter the Great. So this poor sap was sent to a labor camp in the arctic to help build a canal for two years. Many of his peers at the camp had died of starvation and overwork there. This same scientist was arrested again three years later, sent into internal exile, and died there. In the late 1940s, yet another scientist who had some novel ideas about the Tunguska explosion was accused by more tradition-bound scientists of propagating "...under cover of a popular lecture, a reactionary cosmological theory of the bourgeois astronomer Edward Arthur Milne" and of trying "to intimidate readers with horrible details of American atomic bombs." At the time, these were accusations were not a joke, and could get you imprisoned or worse. When some other scientists dared to write an article letter to a science journal in his support, the journal refused to publish it. Fortunately, he stayed out of a Gulag.

My favorite among the various scientists was a guy named Kulik. He wanted to do aerial photography of the impact area, to study the extent of destroyed trees. This was an important project, and it took three attempts before he was successful. The second attempt failed when the photo plane crashed with him on board, but he survived and pressed on. When World War II started, he volunteered for a combat engineer unit and served in the front lines. The Soviet Academy of Sciences tried to get him called back to do scientific research, but he refused to leave the front lines. His unit was encircled and captured by the Germans, and Kulik ended his days as an orderly taking care of wounded POWs. He contracted typhus and died. 

Things still weren't over for these poor guys. In the 1970s, some of the scientists doing work apparently were associated with Andrei Sakharov's dissident network of scientists, and many more were suspected of it. One of these guys suffered an unexplained death working alone in his laboratory late at night. And when the Soviet Union broke up in the 1990s, things were very chaotic for awhile, and many had to stop doing science to focus their energies on making a living. It is a wonder any Russians got any science done in the whole century!

If you want to learn more about the Tunguska event, but don't want to shell out the money and dig through a rather heavy scientific book, this article from Scientific American magazine has good information and some excellent illustrations:

http://burro.case.edu/Academics/USNA229/tunguska.pdf

The above is a pretty mainstream description of things, Rubtsov is not quite so mainstream, but carefully documents everything he says. Here are a few of the more interesting points:

For several nights before the Event, a large area of Russia and Europe was very brightly lit during the night. We're talking about the ability to read newspapers in the dark here. It was not aurora, and though we presume that it is related to the Event, why it happened isn't clear. I'd had no idea of this. After the event, there was a lot of dust and aerosols in the sky globally for several months. I hadn't heard of this, but it isn't too surprising.

When the object exploded, trees were knocked over pointing away from the explosion. The fallen trees covered almost 800 square miles. But in the area directly underneath the airburst, the trees were NOT knocked down, but all their branches and leaves were stripped off. These trees were heavily scorched by fire, and forest fires covered a large area.

There were hundreds of witnesses to the object's flight over Siberia, but few of them were interviewed in depth about what they saw for literally decades. One way of figuring the track of the object from these accounts struck me as very clever. The witnesses would be interviewed at the exact spot where they had seen the object, and one of the questions would be to point out the direction of flight of the object, in particular left to right or right to left. If you visit the villages along a river and ask people this question, you'll find a spot where everyone on one side of a point on the river says that it went from left to right, and everyone in one direction (upstream or downstream) along the river says it went from right to left. The object crossed the river in between the spots where the path changed direction. This works even if you didn't have anyone directly beneath the path who saw it fly straight overhead.

Something I hadn't known is that based on the accounts, people in one area give one path for the object, and people in another area give a a different course for it. Also the people in the two areas describe the color and appearance of the object differently. If this is correct, either the object changed course itself (difficult, but not impossible for a natural object) or else there were two objects.

One Russian scientist was bold enough to suggest in the late 1940s the possibility that the object was an alien spaceship that exploded while attempting to land! This was not well-accepted by most scientists, but the head of the Russian space program took it seriously enough during the early days of the space race that he actually provided money and resources for efforts to explore the area, in the hopes that pieces of an alien spaceship would be discovered. Eventually he concluded that this wasn't going to happen, and stopped his support!

The author makes several conclusions about what happened, but freely admits that we do not know what it was, or even have a really strong theory. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, and am suspicious of some of the interpretation of the information, but found the book a very good read for those who can stomach a heavy dose of science (not just physics, there is stuff here from biology and about every field of science) in their reading.


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## Betsy the Quilter

The Hooded Claw said:


> The London Blitz Murders, by Max Allan Collin


This one sounds good, Claw!

Betsy


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## LaRita

The Hooded Claw said:


> I used my KOLL privileges last month to re-read "The Baby Blue Rip-Off", first of the Mallory books.


I read this one years ago and just reread it as my February loan. I think I still liked it because of the Iowa river town setting. I grew up in NE Iowa, and can picture the town pretty clearly. I didn't realize there was a series featuring Mallory; I'll have to put them on my TBR list.


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## The Hooded Claw

LaRita said:


> I read this one years ago and just reread it as my February loan. I think I still liked it because of the Iowa river town setting. I grew up in NE Iowa, and can picture the town pretty clearly. I didn't realize there was a series featuring Mallory; I'll have to put them on my TBR list.


Hi LaRita! Yep, there are five books in the Mallory series, I recommend the books even though nowadays I like the Nate Heller books better. I read and liked them all back when they were published, as mentioned in recent re-reads, I really liked the third one, and merely thought the first one was okay. The whole series is available on Kindle through the KOLL.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey

Funny how much publicity being found after half a millennium can give you. A week ago I knew vaguely that some English King was thought to have murdered the two young boys in The Tower of London, but knew nothing more of it than that. With all the news coverage of the discovery of Richard III's body, I found this book highly recommended by several people here, and also by Jerry Pournelle in his blog. When I learned it was available on Kindle, I went for it on the spot, even though this is more than I'm usually willing to pay for fiction by unknown authors. I'm glad I did!

Remember Hitchcock's movie "Rear Window" with Jimmy Stewart? I hear that some money-grubbing Philistine re-made it a few years ago, but I've only seen the original version by ol' Alfred. The whole movie took place in Jimmy Stewart's apartment, with him limited to looking out his back window into a common area and sometimes peeking into people's windows at night. This book doesn't even have that much action in it! The hero is invalided into a hospital bed while a broken leg heals, and the physical action peak of the book is in one of the last chapters when he's able to get up out of bed and walk to his window!










Our hero Inspector Grant has only a passing knowledge of history, but this portrait captures his interest, and leads him to dig into the alleged murder of Richard's two nephews. The entire book consists of him reading about it, talking to visitors (including a researcher he manages to suck into his enthusiasm) about it, and thinking about it. Doesn't sound like it would be too exciting, but it kept me interested all the way through, and I highly recommend the book. I'm not going to discuss it here, both because I don't want to give things away, and because it is complicated enough that it would be a hopeless muddle if I tried to describe things. Suffice to say that I found the book very convincing that Richard III did not murder the boys. Though now I need to read a book that seeks to prove that he did in fact murder them! Unfortunately, though I haven't looked extensively, a cursory look suggested that at least the Kindleized books that are readily available are all sympathetic to Richard.

I liked this a lot. Four and a half stars from me.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

The Hooded Claw said:


> even though this is more than I'm usually willing to pay for fiction by unknown authors.


Unknown?  

Mike


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## The Hooded Claw

jmiked said:


> Unknown?


Well, unknown to me!  I'd never heard of her to my knowledge till this book was brought up after the new discoveries. She seems to have died young, which is a shame for all of us. If she'd kept writing as long as Agatha Christie, perhaps I would have known of her!


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## The Hooded Claw

Betsy the Quilter said:


> This one sounds good, Claw!


I definitely recommend it!

The Judge Dee book is still waiting, by the way....


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## The Hooded Claw

Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the US Air Force, 1947-2006, by Walter J. Boyne

I started the above (second doorstopper of the year) last week, and got about 25% through with it. I'm enjoying it, but it is rather unquestioningly admiring of many of the Air Force leaders, and I don't think the author is very critical of the Air Force. Though he is very very critical of politicians who supported anything less than absolute maximum appropriations for the Air Force! Some other problems with it, but it is still interesting. I got through the Korean War and into the mid-1950s and the message so far has been that General Hap Arnold and General Curtis LeMay were utterly, totally, awesome.

BUT....I have put this aside for a bit in light of current events.

I'd considered buying the book below last year after reading the book about the history of the Popes. I declined because of mixed reviews. But today I went ahead and snagged it:



I'll be reading it as the snow falls here tomorrow night!


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## Seleya

First thing I can say is that Pietro Angeleri (also known as Pietro da Morrone, 'Morrone' being the mountain where he lived as an hermit), wasn't _the only pope in history to abdicate the chair of St. Peter_ as the blurb states, he is just the best known.

There were also Clemens, Pontianus, Silverius, Benedict the 9th and Gregory the 12th


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## The Hooded Claw

Some of the mixed reviews I spoke of made that point. My impression is that many of the others you list quit as part of deals to resolve disputes over rival claimants when they had a Pope and an antiPope, or even several people claiming to be Pope. Unlike the Air Force history book above, I don't have enough knowledge on this subject to have an independent opinion. But I strongly suspect marketing may have figured into the strategy of the author and publisher. Much less striking to title a book "One of Half a Dozen or so Popes Who Quit" 

I may regret my purchase, I declined to buy this book last year because of this and other problems raised in the reviews! I did find the story of Celestine V in the overall Papal history last year to be very interesting. 

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2


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## Seleya

Yes, honestly it smells of a marketing ploy to me, I'm curious to read what you will think of it.

I admit to having very short patience with authors of non-fiction who rely on translated sources, it happened to me with one bio on Madame Chiang Kai-shek and another on Cleopatra (with the last one it was just an excerpt, luckily), both were painful, it wont happen again. An author that uses a nickname, _Pier da Morrone_, treating it as a full personal name (à la _da Vinci _ disaster) is another alarm bell for me.


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## Jeff

Well, I'm late to the party as usual, so please forgive me, Claw. I somehow missed this 2013 thread until today. Congratulations on your 2012 reads, if I forgot to mention that.

RE your B-36 book early in the thread - I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the N/S flight path of Kirtland Air Force Base, the home of the Strategic Air Command. We lived about a mile from the base and half of our neighbors were Air Force officers or senior NCOs. The wheels and landing gear were down and the engines were powered down when the bombers came over the house, but the B-36s still rattled (and occasionally broke) the windows. Our house was pueblo style with a flat, gravel covered roof. I used to climb up there to watch the bomber groups returning from their training missions. It never ceased to amaze me that something that big could be held up by air. 

The flights took off on the E/W runway and the sound there was indescribable. Back then you could drive right up and park within a few hundred feet of the crash barrier. We used to ride our bikes out there sometimes to watch the mission takeoffs. The fighters escorting the bombers used the same runway. It only took them a few seconds to roar off the runway in pairs and catch up to the bomber group. Watching them was a genuine thrill.

Although it was highly classified, we always knew when the flights were going to take off because the neighborhood was devoid of fathers.  

The missions usually took them over the Pole and back. Each group carried a payload big enough to wipe out half of the USSR. It's astonishing that the human race survived those days.

Please forgive the ramble.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Hooded Claw said:


> I really liked The Tunguska Mystery, even though it had some problems. The Tunguska event occurred in 1908. To describe it in one sentence, something came screaming in from outer space and exploded with tremendous force a few miles above a boggy forest in Siberia, starting massive forest fires. Sounds like a meteorite, and that is probably the consensus explanation among scientists, but the meteor theory has some weaknesses. Big meteorites don't generally explode in the air with the force of atomic bombs, and nobody has ever found any pieces of it on or in the ground, nor any sign of an impact crater like we see on the Moon, or out at Meteor Crater in Arizona. So scientists have been trying to figure out what it was and what happened ever since.
> 
> _Stuff deleted by Mike_


Wow, what a timely reading choice!

Interesting article below about the Tunguska event. They mention Kulik, who I spoke of in my posting.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/02/15/tunguska_event_eyewitness_accounts_from_the_last_time_a_heavenly_body_burned.html


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## The Hooded Claw

As everyone no doubt remembers, about a week ago after the current Pope announced his plans to abdicate, I set aside another book I'd been reading, to buy and focus on the book above. I had been intrigued by The Pope Who Quit last year after reading a survey history of the Papacy, but decided not to get the book because of some concerns raised in some of the comments; many people commented that the Pope covered here, Celestine V, was not the only Pope to quit, and other commenters complained about the research in the book. Though I'd spurned the book earlier, after the current Pope resigned, I decided to take the plunge and get this book anyway. Seleya expressed similar concerns to the others I'd read, but I have started the book even though my zeal for reading seems to have dropped off this week. I'm over a third of the way through the book, and thought I'd post a few comments here since the thread has been quiet.

The book sticks to the "marketing" claim discussed above, and in the book, the author explicitly states that Celestine would become the only man in history to walk away from the job and vacate the Papacy before he died. That's clearly not true, even I was aware from the survey history book that some other Popes had resigned. All the cases I can remember where done to settle a dispute where more than one person claimed to be Pope (this happened surprisingly often). I suspect the author would claim that those were different than someone walking away because they didn't want to do it anymore, with no negotiated successor. I'm not a scholar of this period, merely an interested reader, so I'm not sure of the facts.

The Cardinals who select the Pope had been deadlocked for over two years. The deadlock had continued for so long that one of the Cardinals had died of old age while it was underway! A hermit named Peter Morrone (Morrone was not a surname as we understand it, but was applied to him because of his preference for living high in the mountains) wrote them and predicted terrible things for the church if they didn't reach a decision. Unfortunately his letter does not survive, but it seems he predicted God's vengeance on the Church if a decision wasn't reached. The Cardinals responded to this by selecting Peter as the new Pope by inspiration. I had not known of this, but "inspiration" was an acceptable method to select a Pope. I would have called the process acclamation rather than inspiration. Inspiration was not an election with the famous paper ballots as we read about today, but more of a process where one of the Cardinals announced that Peter should be the new Pope, and other Cardinals joined in the announcement until it became unanimous. Ideally this would happen spontaneously and quickly, but there are suggestions that it actually took a day or more before everyone agreed to the acclamation. Of course, we can't truly know what happened among a body of eleven men meeting in private almost 800 years ago, all we have are the few individual accounts that survive, and EVERYONE who was there had an agenda and must be suspected of biasing their account! The eleven Cardinals were almost all aligned with one of two powerful families that hoped to claim the Papacy for one of their own and benefit accordingly. Celestine was an outsider and not part of this, or at least that's the theory (and it was probably true, at least initially). He was also quite old, over eighty, and his selection may have been seen as a way to kick the can down the road and try again for a new Pope in a few years when time took its course.

It is possible that there was an additional political player. Charles II, King of Naples (this was hundreds of years before Italy was unified into one country) was trying to regain control of Sicily, and he was trying to gain political support from whoever became Pope. There are reports that he was the one who inspired Celestine to write to the Cardinals in the first place, and it seems pretty clear that he tried to get an agent to the future Pope Celestine before anyone else could tell him of his selection.

I found it interesting that shortly before all this happened, the rules had been changed so that the members of the College of Cardinals split among themselves half of the large income of the Church. This gave the Cardinals an interest in having a weak or vacant Papacy, and may have contributed to the long deadlock. In the absence of an effective Pope, they had more opportunities to manipulate the bank books in their favor, as there was nobody else who could challenge them.

I'd read that Peter was a hermit, but he wasn't quite as unsuited to the job of Pope as I'd believed. When a young man, he had moved out of a monastery to go live by himself in a hut in the mountains, but he became well enough known that he acquired a great group of followers who sought to emulate him and his ways. He exercised leadership over them, but it still appears to have been a group of individualists, admittedly influenced by his strong example; and there never seems to have been a trace of what we'd call administration. He became annoyed at the number of people around, and after a few years moved higher up on the mountain to a harsher area where fewer people would be around. Many of his admirers followed him there, and a few years later (at about age 35), he moved to an entirely different mountain that was much higher and less pleasant, and he seems to have been very happy living there by himself for many years before being elected Pope shattered the fabric of his life. Even though not as solitary as I'd believed, he still seems to have lacked experience in the skills of leadership, administration, and negotiation that would be required of any religious leader, especially one with as many worldly responsibilities as a Medieval Pope!

It was a lengthy and difficult trip to notify Peter of his election. He was chosen on July 5, 1294, and an official party didn't even set out until July 11. It took at least ten days to make the journey, and none of the Cardinals who had elected him were in the delegation (probably forgivable as they were mostly or entirely old men). It seems pretty clear that Charles II at least made a strong effort to "get" to the future Pope first. To me it isn't clear whether he succeeded or not. But everyone agrees that when Peter was notified of his selection, he was horrified and tried to refuse. One account says that he physically ran away from the delegation.

Remember inspiration, the method used to elect Peter as Pope? It is no longer valid. In 1996, John Paul II changed the rules to eliminate it, as well as another unconventional method. The only acceptable method now is the well known system of paper ballots.

As for the reliability of details of the book, I am not an expert on the period. I've tried to check some of the facts in the book against my limited sources (mainly the early Papal history book and Wikipedia (which is far from an unimpeachable source itself). I haven't found any major factual howlers beyond the questionable claim to be the only Pope who quit, but there are some matters of interpretation of secondary facts that bug me. I'm going to finish the book, in any case.


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## The Hooded Claw

I finished The Pope Who Quit.  I was surprised to learn, in the biography of Peter/Celestine before he became Pope, that for awhile, he was a most remarkable hermit. Not only did he inspire an order of follower hermits by his example, but he had actually politicked and lobbied to get financial support for his followers, and especially protection to ensure they'd always be able to continue their practices in the rugged and undesirable mountains where they chose to exile themselves.  But decades before he became Pope, he'd given this up and moved off to live by himself.  So he wasn't quite as unprepared to be Pope as I thought--He surely understood SOMETHING of politicking, but he had minimal experience, and none of it recent. And he still knew nothing of administration.  Pope Celestine never did go to Rome. He took up residence at a castle in Naples within the territory of Charles II, who seems to have been a power behind the scenes in all this. Though elaborate living quarters suitable for a Pope were prepared for him, he did not use them, and ended up living in a primitive shack constructed inside the castle! Other than make some inappropriate decrees of favors for some ascetics similar to himself in the Church, he did little in his few weeks as Pope, and nothing at all to run the Vatican bureaucracy or promote the interests of the Church. He eventually announced he was quitting, and left!

Peter was naive in many ways, but he seems to have been shrewd enough to realize that his successor as Pope would not want him to be around. His successor, Boniface, feared that a rival might seek to use Peter as a figurehead anti-Pope, and began an immediate search for his predecessor. Peter/Celestine was on the run, and was captured in a port trying to arrange to be shipped out of Italy. The poor former Pope was thrown into a castle, and died soon afterwards. There are suggestions that he was deliberately murdered, but it seems more likely that poor Peter succumbed to old age, misery, homesickness, and generally unhealthy living conditions. While he lived, he was considered important enough that a garrison of thirty-six soldiers was kept around him, not to protect him from enemies, but to keep out anyone who might try to take him away to use for their own purposes. It is fitting that the new Pope Boniface himself had an unhappy death after a fairly short reign as Pope.

Overall, I rate the book as three stars out of five. It is very readable, but I have some minor quibbles about it, and it certainly is disingenuous at best in ignoring other Popes who stepped down, admittedly for less romantic reasons.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Far Traveler, by A. Bertram Chandler

Not available in ebook form at Amazon, by itself, but as part of an omnibus collection here:


Thanks Jmiked!

Last year I began re-reading the stories of Commander Grimes for the first time in many years for most of them. This is the next. It begins immediately after Grimes has lost his ship to a mutiny in the previous book (The Big Black Mark, which I read last year). Fortunately, Grimes is safe and welcome at the former lost colony of Botany Bay which he had made first contact with on his last voyage, but unfortunately, as a Captain who lost a ship, his former employers in the Federation Survey Service are at least interested in him. He has resigned his commission, but nonetheless there is an attempt to kidnap/arrest him and take him back for court martial. The only way out seems to be to take a job as Captain and and sole crewman of the private space yacht of an extremely bossy billionairess who is passing her time by researching lost colonies as part of her PhD thesis in anthropology. Grimes finds himself in an exceedingly unhappy situation, but it has got to be better than a court martial, right?

This book is actually a series of short stories; I remember reading a couple of them as published in science fiction magazines in the mid-1970s. There are a variety of situations,


Spoiler



finding a settlement of lotus eaters, and for a brief period being an unwilling participant, "reviving" a dead, self-aware and domineering alien warship, and my favorite, another meeting with Grimes' old adversary Drongo Kane, where Kane has a scheme to swindle ownership of an entire planet!



The book is good reading, though the short story length doesn't allow for any of the ideas to be developed in as satisfying a matter as some of them deserve. This is average Grimes, which means it is merely above average as a science fiction book. Doesn't quiiiiite make it to four stars out of five, but very very close. The paper publications of the Grimes books always seem to have been cursed with lousy covers. This one (I am showing the paperback cover above) isn't great, but at least it isn't a stinker, which is about as good as the original covers of these ever got! Hurrah for Amazon for making this available, but I'm still not crazy about the omnibus cover!


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## The Hooded Claw

The Truth About Cruise Ships, by Jay Herring

This is another of my occupational memoirs, this one by a fellow with a computer job in industry who was laid off. He decided to apply at Carnival Cruise Lines for another IT job, and was one of three people hired out of six hundred applicants. The book is a running memoir of his experiences, dominated by explanations of how different things work on a cruise ship, war stories and extensive descriptions of partying and (not graphic) sex. Most of the staff on a cruise ship are young, in good shape, and either single or with relatively open (whether they've acknowledged that with their spouse or not) marriages. Conventional recreational opportunities are limited (though often excellent when they do happen), and the result is a culture of endless extensive drinking and sex among the crew. To quote the author, "Sex is the lifeblood of the shipboard environment." The author's drinking was heavy enough that after eight months, he developed a case of gastritis, stomach irritation caused by (in his case) excessive alcohol consumption. He responded by reducing (from six to eight drinks per night to "only" three drinks per night), not stopping his alcohol consumption until the gastritis stopped, then resumed heavy drinking! In most cases, sex is not literally promiscuous, couples pair off and usually stay faithful until one of them is transferred off the ship (which is almost never more than eight months later). In general, even when a relationship goes sour, the author found it easier to wait till a routine transfer broke things up than to deal with the consequences of a breakup and being in close proximity to a possibly angry ex-lover until relieved by a transfer. The alcoholic consumption isn't limited to crewpersons, the author says that alcohol sales are more profitable for the line than the casino. Only 30% of passengers gamble significantly, but nearly every adult drinks while on a cruise. He claims sex with passengers happens, but isn't rampant. It is prohibited by the management, but the rule is selectively enforced.

The book isn't just a diary of nonstop partying, there is lots of interesting stuff about life on a cruise ship, how things work, and the difficulties of not having a permanent home anywhere--When you do manage a break of a few days at your "home port", you probably don't own a car there!

Lots of interesting war stories, including standing in a long passageway that isn't open to passengers and being able to watch the walls and ceilings flex when the ship moves normally through calm seas, being on a cruise ship caught in a hurricane, dealing with an outbreak of norovirus on a cruise ship (casino chips were disinfected by dumping them into buckets of water with a handful of denture cleaning tablets thrown in!), going on a cruise where the whole ship was rented by an organization of nudists, and more IT emergencies and relationship complexities than you can imagine.

The author lasted through two eight-month contracts of this lifestyle. He might have lasted longer except that his second contract was on a smaller ship with only one IT person (instead of two or three people). He slept in a room on the ship where he had to wear earplugs to sleep. The routine workload wasn't too bad, but being the only IT person on the ship meant that he was continually on call with a pager for eight months. This was too much, and he left cruising at the end of his contract. However he did later marry a fellow crewmember he met on his work!

The book concludes with a list of "dumb passenger questions," I will give you a few samples:

"What time is the Midnight buffet?" (he insists that at least one person asks this on every cruise)

"What do you do with the ice sculptures after they melt?"

"Do these stairs go up or down?"

"I'd like to meet Captain Stubing, please." (If the author hadn't explained that Stubing was Captain on the old show "The Love Boat", this would have gone past me)

Allegedly one passenger was very angry that the itinerary for her cruise included a stop at Grand Cayman, not at The Grand Canyon as she'd believed when she made her booking. But Herring doesn't say he heard this one himself.

Crew members who work in the lounges have their photos on the wall, labeled with their name and home country. One hostess who was from Scotland was continually asked how long she had been speaking English.

The book is basically a series of incidents and anecdotes. If you can handle that sort of thing, rather than a continual narrative, you'll probably like it if you think reading about cruising would be interesting. I was satisfied, and give the book three and a half stars out of five.


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## Avis Black

The Hooded Claw said:


> The Truth About Cruise Ships, by Jay Herring


"Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash."

It sounds like the only thing that's changed in recent decades is the last part.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Lusitania Murders, by Max Allan Collins

Thanks to the Kindle Owner's Lending Library, I've been reading a lot of Max Allan Collins the past six months. I like his work anyway, so this is no hardship. Rather than use the KOLL, I picked up this book for $2.99 as an Amazon price reduction.

This book is part of Collins' "Disaster Series", which always has an actual mystery writer as the protagonist. I'd never heard of the hero in this book. His actual name was William Huntington Wright, and he wrote under the pseudonym of S.S. Van Dine. I'd never heard of either name, and I'd never heard of his detective character Philo Vance. I still found the book interesting. Van Dine apparently was quite an intellectual and snob, the book is written in the first person where Collins has a chance to let this come through.

Van Dine is a passenger on the Lusitania, a British passenger liner sunk by a U-Boat during World War I. Van Dine is on the ship to get some interviews of rich or prominent passengers for a newspaper job, but ends up spending much of his time assisting a Pinkerton woman (yep, woman) in investigating some murders (more than one, per the title) on board. It seems that there are German agents on board the ship, but spying or sabotage might not be the only crime that is contemplated against the Lusitania and the people aboard her.

The book is a decent mystery, it kept me interested and I read it in one evening. I wasn't captivated, and I didn't get as much feeling of atmosphere as I usually get when Collins writes a book in a historical setting. Once again I used Youtube to help establish atmosphere in a book. When the ship's band struck up "Just A-Wearyin' for You," I was able to find it and listen to it even though I'd never heard of the song. Probably my favorite line in the book is when Van Dine observes about his partner, "I was beginning to suspect she was a damn suffragette."

A competent mystery, and I was satisfied, but not thrilled. Three stars out of five from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Beyond the Wild Blue: A History of the U.S. Air Force 1947-2007, by Walter J. Boyne

I started this book about three weeks ago. It is my second doorstopper (lengthy book) of the year, but even allowing for the length, I still took a long time to finish it. I had distractions when I stopped to read a couple of shorter and lighter books, but still would sometimes not read for several days, and often when I did read I would read for an hour, then do other stuff for the evening. The book has a lot of interesting (for the military history enthusiast, as I am) information, but still covers a lot of things that are dry. Nevertheless, I've finished it, and I'm glad I read it, as it covered a lot of things about the Air Force that I'd not know. But I do have some very serious concerns about the book that I'll cover later.

The book is lengthy, and though it definitely covers the histories of combat and of weapons system developments, and Washington budget battles that you'd expect, it also covers some less obvious but important parts of history, such as the struggles of the Air Force with racial integration, and how training changed over time. I'm not going to even attempt to recount the stuff in the whole book, but there are a couple of nuggets that particularly amused or interested me I will mention here:

The book covers the well-known struggles between the Army, Navy, and Air Force over who would control long-range missiles, and describes how the position of the Army was that missiles were just another form of rocket artillery, while the Air Force claimed that missiles were just pilotless airplanes. I'd read about this before, but he mentions one aspect of it that I hadn't known. As part of perpetuating the idea of rockets being pilotless airplanes, the Air Force originally referred to the Atlas intercontinental missile (here's a picture)










as the "XB-65 pilotless bomber", so that it would fall into the familiar nomenclature of B-52 and B-29 bombers! Similarly, an Air Force unit that launched the Matador guided missile was officially designated the "69th Pilotless Bomber Squadron!"

For many years in the 1950s and early 1960s, US interceptors expected to shoot down attacking Soviet bombers with an unguided air-to-air nuclear missile. To keep the fighters carrying these spread out across the country, these nuclear-armed fighters were often dispersed without special guard to civilian airports across the country.

I picked up a word that was new to me..."gasconade" means extravagant boasting. Fortunately the Kindle dictionary came through.

During the first Iraq War, back in 1991, the US Air Force was in charge of developing target assignments for planes of all the different allied countries and for the US Air Force and Navy. This was distributed electronically each day to Air Force units and those of our European allies who were used to working alongside us, but there was no way for the Air Force to communicate electronically with the Navy, so each day a floppy disk containing the plans for the next day was solemnly handed from an Air Force planner to a Navy representative!

During the 2003 invasion of Afghanistan, B-2 bombers flew missions that were 44 hours<!> long! They would take off from an airbase in Missouri, fly to Afghanistan, then fly on to an island in the Indian Ocean where a new crew would come on board and fly the bombers back to Missouri.

The author is to be commended for giving credit to the less glamorous airborne tanker planes and the transport aircraft that are so important for moving military equipment all over the globe. He regularly describes how aerial refueling was necessary to a mission, and in a summary near the end of the book, he actually states that "aerial refueling tankers [are] the most important single weapons system in the Air Force's arsenal."

The author is a former bomber crewman, and he has viewpoints and allegiances because of that, which is understandable, and he makes that background clear, which is good. But I still have some concerns about the book. There are a number of factual howlers--Incorrect facts given about things that aren't a matter of opinion, but are indisputable statistics. Some of these are minor, but are things where the author of a book like this should know better, such as incorrectly describing the armament of a well-known airplane. Others are just careless, such as stating that the first generation of Air Force spy satellites mapped 510 million nautical square miles of communist territory (that is larger than the total of the Earth's surface), when I believe he meant to say that they took photographs covering that many square miles. There are some basic editing failures such as using "eminent" when he means "imminent." As always, spotting numerous small errors like this make me wonder if there are similar errors in the parts of the book where I have no independent knowledge. Finally, there are numerous formatting errors in the Kindle edition. Thanks to these problems, I can only give it three stars out of five. Which is a shame, it is a massive effort with a lot of good information that deserves better.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

The Hooded Claw said:


> Not available in ebook form at Amazon, but ebook available from Baen Books here:
> http://www.baenebooks.com/p-715-the-far-traveler.aspx


It is available as a Kindle volume from Amazon, but as part of an omnibus which includes _Spartan Planet, The Inheritors, The Big Black Mark_ and _The Far Traveller_.

The only reason I know this is because it's in my TBR "stack".



 

Mike


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## The Hooded Claw

jmiked said:


> It is available as a Kindle volume from Amazon, but as part of an omnibus which includes _Spartan Planet, The Inheritors, The Big Black Mark_ and _The Far Traveller_.
> 
> The only reason I know this is because it's in my TBR "stack".
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Mike


Excellent news! Chandler isn't around to enjoy it, but I'm glad his books are on Amazon where they'll get more exposure! This is new, part of the agreement to sell Baen Books on Amazon. I'm still not crazy about the cover, though it is tolerable.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

The Hooded Claw said:


> Excellent news! Chandler isn't around to enjoy it, but I'm glad his books are on Amazon where they'll get more exposure! This is new, part of the agreement to sell Baen Books on Amazon. I'm still not crazy about the cover, though it is tolerable.


Yeah, the covers of Baen books are generally awful. The Flandry ones are particularly bad.

I'm glad Baen made the Amazon deal, even though it means readers paying a bit more.

Mike


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## The Hooded Claw

A Fall of Moondust, by Arthur C. Clarke

The only time I've actually seen a physical copy of this book was in the library of a junior college I attended years ago. I read the book there, and really liked it. I haven't seen a copy since, and have been actively looking for it for a couple of years...But since 2009 I've been hoping it would come out on Kindle. I'd checked just a few weeks ago and it wasn't available, but thanks to a discussion of Clarke's work in this thread: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,143745.0.html#.UT1qI1f761w I looked again and discovered it last week! I worried that the book might not live up to my memories, but I ordered it immediately, and on the just-ended cold, gray, rainy weekend I sat down on Saturday morning and read the book straight through, stopping only for lunch. So obviously the book "has still got it!"

Clarke published this book back in 1961. It was popular enough to be selected by Reader's Digest for one of their "condensed book" volumes, and to be nominated for a Hugo. Unfortunately (actually it is fortunate for the men who explored the Moon), a fact that underlies the book turned out to be completely wrong. Before we began actively exploring the moon by robot probe and later by manned landing, there was a serious belief that the large, flat dark "Maria" on the moon might be composed entirely of ultra-fine dust. The Maria are the big "seas" that are even visible with the naked eye:










There were serious concerns that lunar explorers would have to avoid these areas or be at risk of sinking into a pool of dust. This ended up to be an unnecessary worry, but it was a legitimate scientific theory, and I still remember being a precocious Clawlet who was obsessed with the Space Race just before the Moon landings and reading science books that still talked about the possibility. Clarke's book involves an accident involving a vehicle designed to float like a boat on this fine dust that gets sucked down into the dust. Think of "The Poseidon Adventure" on the Moon, or better yet, think of the rescue of those Chilean miners who were trapped deep underground a couple of years ago. The book describes what happens to the passengers on the vehicle and the strenuous efforts of people on the surface to locate and rescue the missing vehicle. Though Clarke depended on one idea that ended up to be wrong, the science in the book is detailed and accurate, and Clarke must have put a lot of effort into thinking through different things that could and would happen. Impressively, he folded these things into the story in a way that makes it a good story, and never a science lecture.

I highly recommend the book for those who like fact-based science fiction, especially if they like stories of adventure and rescue. Five stars from me.

The book contains artifacts of the period it was written. The book mentions smoking cigarettes in an enclosed vehicle on the Moon! I didn't realize till the book was over, but no scientist or person of authority in the book is female.

The book appears to take place about 2040, Clarke provides some strong hints of the date, but doesn't give it exactly. This is close enough that once again I am tempted to compare Clarke's predictions to our reality. We are more than halfway from 1961 to 2040. Clarke did not predict Kindles. When the passengers conduct a search for something they can read to pass the time while waiting for rescue, the only two books aboard are a copy of Shane<!> and a (yet-to-be-written, thank goodness) bodice ripper about Sir Isaac Newton romancing Nell Gwynn! Both are explicitly described as paper books. He also missed out on personal computers and word processing programs, but describes an Electrosecretary (apparently a trademark as he capitalized the name) that takes dictation and generates typed letters with punctuation and grammatical errors corrected. Boy, I'd like to have one of those. Apparently "Oh, vector it out!" was a popular bit of slang back in the 1990s. A favorite song from the same period (remember, almost fifty years in the past for this book) was "Spacesuit Blues." Somehow I missed those while I was doing the Macarena and watching Seinfeld.

The book explains that one of the most notorious criminals in lunar history is a man who sold gullible tourists faked pieces of early exploratory unmanned spaceships.

The book mentions the Chinese proverb "Do not stoop to tie your laces in your neighbor's melon patch," which is one of the sayings used by Charlie Chan in a Charlie Chan book I read last year.

A significant secondary character in the book is an Australian aborigine. Not a group of people who regularly show up in science fiction, particularly in 1960s science fiction. He's no grub-eating wanderer, however. He's a physicist!

Yet again,Youtube helped me out when a piece of music came up. The Rackoczy March was played as inspirational music at one point in the book, and I was able to play it and hear it while reading that part of the story.

As mentioned above, highly recommended for fans of hard science fiction.


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## The Hooded Claw

(note, link to DTB version, Kindle version curiously unavailable as I type this)

Vital Circuits: On Pumps, Pipes, and the Workings of Circulatory Systems, by Steven Vogel

Yep, a book about the workings of the human heart and circulatory system. The author specifically states that this book is not intended as a textbook, but when it was available on Kindle I noted it was available to rent as well as buy, and my experience is that most ebooks available to rent are used as textbooks. The book is moderately heavy going, and was a harder read than I expected. Nevertheless, I was satisfied, and didn't drag out reading it like I did on the last book on the history of the Air Force.

The author is a professor of physiology, but he comes at it from a fluid dynamics background rather than a biology background. This means that rather than being wedded to describing the structure of the different subjects and how they function in the body, he places a lot of emphasis on how the flow of fluids works and the rules that govern that flow. He's also very concerned with communicating and explaining how science works--In fact he chose to end the book not with a summary or overview of how things work (which is what I expected) but to talk about how basic research works, and the critical importance of basic research (which is designed to come up with new theories and new ideas) compared with applied research, which is focused on solving a particular problem and putting that solution to use). The author says near the end of the book (AFTER you've gone through all this stuff!) that the material approximates what would be in an undergraduate textbook on circulatory physiology!

I really liked this book, but it is not a light read. There isn't an equation to be seen in the book, and there's no math, but there's a lot of abstract discussion of how currents and pressures work, and he introduces many new concepts and terms in the book which he then uses extensively in succeeding chapters with minimal review. The book is really focused on understanding the theory of how the circulatory system works, and not (as I'd expected going in) discussing "here's what happens in a heart attack" or "this is what happens in high blood pressure and how it affects your body adversely." This will disappoint some potential readers, and I regretted that it wasn't covered, but I liked the unexpected things in it well enough that I am still very pleased with the book.

One thing that I liked about the author is that he has very broad interests, a man after my own heart (hee hee). He regularly compares how things work in a human circulatory system to those of other animals, going down to talk about octopi several times, and even about fluid flow in microscopic creatures. He deplores the tendency of biologists to focus on studying one particular type of creature, and he proudly points out that he has professional publications on insects, three major classes of mollusks, a red alga, sponges, mammals, and trees (and he has a book on leaves Kindleized that I might read down the road).

I'm running out of time here, but will mention some of the interesting stuff he explains are the difference between light and dark meat (as you'd see at a fried chicken restaurant!) The dark meat is dark because of a compound called myoglobin, which has some oxygen-grabbing similar traits to the well-known hemoglobin, but takes up less space. The dark meat on an animal (it is found on many animals beyond chickens, and on many beyond birds) is the muscle that is most likely to be called on for sustained performance by working hard for long periods of time. Myoglobin has an affinity for oxygen similar to hemoglobin, and it used to be thought that myoglobin was present in these muscles to provide a standby reserve of oxygen for use in emergencies such as long hard runs. It ends up that there's not enough oxygen stored to make a difference, but tissue with myoglobin does let oxygen move through it much more smoothly and rapidly, allowing the oxygen to move in and replenish tired and strangling muscles more quickly.

This means that muscles with myoglobin can get reoxygenated more quickly, which lets them continue working. Tissues without myoglobin aren't as quick to reoxygenate. So muscles on animals that aren't as prone to make long distance runs or flights will have mostly muscles without myoglobin, or white meat. This varies from animals to animals. Chickens have both white and dark meat, but they spend a lot of time scrounging on the ground, and are not known as long distance flyers. Geese, on the other hand, are famous for long distance flying, so goose meat is mostly dark meat with little white meat.

More to come later.


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## The Hooded Claw

More interesting trivia and observations from Vital Circuits:

I was surprised how FAST blood circulation is.  The entire volume of blood passes through the left side of the heart about once a minute in a person at rest. If a person is doing heavy exercise, the complete circuit takes only about ten seconds, six times per minute!  When leaving the heart, the blood of a resting person flows at about one foot per second. A heavily-exercising person's blood flows faster, moving about six feet per second, or 2.5 miles per hour! A walking pace.  This speed isn't constant, in the capillaries, ultra-fine blood vessels, blood moves about 800 times slower (0.4 millimeters per second at rest).

Including all blood vessels, each of us has about 60,000 miles of blood vessels in our bodies.

Sea snakes (which live in the water and stay pretty level most of the time) have their hearts about halfway down the length of their bodies, as you'd expect. To deal with problems of keeping adequate blood pressure in the brain, tree snakes (which may sometimes be pointed straight up or straight down on a tree trunk) have their hearts only 1/7 of their body length back from the head. This makes it easier for their hearts to provide adequate blood to the brain when climbing a tree.

I was pleased that Vogel quotes from Dr. Watson in a Sherlock Holmes story describing how Dr. Watson listened and heard turbulence in the chest of a criminal, and diagnoses it as an aortic aneurysm.

I was very pleased with Vital Circuits, even though I was a bit disappointed it didn't cover some of the pragmatic health topics in the way I would like.  But I really enjoyed the material that was covered. I did encounter a serious disadvantage for Kindle books--The book makes significant use of diagrams, which are not well-rendered in adequate size on the PaperWhite. Additional problems with diagrams were that the diagrams were usually several pages after the text describing them. It was VERY inconvenient to switch back and forth between diagrams and descriptive text. I ended up solving this by getting my iPad and finding similar diagrams on the internet, mostly in Wikipedia. This worked well for most situations, though in a couple the book's diagram was from a specific orientation that figured in the description, and I often wasn't finding diagrams that used the same orientation. This was confusing, but only happened once or twice. In retrospect, I could've called up another copy of the book using the Kindle app of my iPad and looked at the diagrams there. This might have been a better solution. Despite these glitches, I really like the book, and give it five stars. But people who aren't card-carrying science nerds like myself should probably avoid it unless they are highly motivated to learn about this. 

I bought the book on Kindle just a couple of weeks ago when the price dropped, but it is not showing up as available for Kindle now. Hopefully this will change and it will be available in Kindle soon, the paper text is rather expensive (though referring to diagrams would be easier, as I mentioned above).


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## The Hooded Claw

Rice Farming: Complete With Methods to Increase Rice Yield, by Julian Bradbrook

An unusual choice, but I have relatives who own a farm which grows rice, and since the book was only 80 pages long I thought it might be an interesting way to learn something about it so I could understand what they do. For eight dollars for an eighty page book, I didn't want to buy the book, but it is borrowable through Amazon Prime, and I used my borrow for March.

In short, I'm glad I didn't spend any actual cash, and sorry I passed up reading another Max Allan Collins book for this one. The book wasn't well-suited for my purposes, and from what I saw I don't think it is terribly well-suited for anyone's purposes. The book is extremely general, and tries to talk about growing rice in all types of countries and climates, ranging from third world to more advanced and mechanized countries (and the farm that interests me is heavily-mechanized). I felt like there was more emphasis on third world situations, though that may have been just exasperation on my part. My feeling was that there wasn't enough explanation of many concepts to satisfy someone in a developing country, though I may not fully understand the audience. There definitely wasn't enough explanation of things such as the various parts of a rice plant. I didn't understand his explanation well, and there's not a single illustration in the Kindle version. Many of the tables of information on the Kindle version appear to be incomplete.

Least I sound like a whiner, there is a lot of information here...I actually was able to read and understand the section on rice diseases, and the sections on fertilizers. There were sections on processing rice that appeared reasonably complete as texts, though again some illustrations would have helped a lot. But these were at the end of the book, and by that time frankly I had given up and was just skimming for something of special interest to me.

The author is English, and the book is intended for an international audience, so I was not surprised to find the metric system in full bloom, but in an international book, I was disappointed to find that the author uses metric measures and doesn't include English values in parenthesis. I know the US is increasingly alone in the world on sticking to the English system, but I was still annoyed. I can deal with millimeters and centimeters, and Celsius temperatures aren't the end of the world, but hectares leave me reaching for a conversion table.

For my purposes, the book was clearly one star, but in fairness for the broader audience, I think it is better than that, though still hampered by brevity and a lack of illustrations. I am gonna give the book a two star rating, and not count it against my eighty books for the year.


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## The Hooded Claw

Minor addendum....Vital Circuits (the blood book I posted earlier today) was available for sale as a Kindle book only a few days ago, and I bought it less than two weeks ago. Earlier today when I posted about it, it had a listing for a Kindle version, but no price information, and a note that it was not available. Now the Book Bar maker is yelling at me about the book not being available and asking me to fix the error, and there's no evidence of a Kindle version at all! I changed my book bar listing to the paperback version, which made the Book Bar happy. The new paperback is quite expensive, but used copies are cheap ($3.50 plus shipping!). The author has a book on leaves available on Kindle that interested me. To make sure I have a copy, I went ahead and bought a copy, so it is safely in my library and on my PaperWhite! This way I'm protected if some squabble causes it to disappear as a Kindle book also.


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## The Hooded Claw

Ancient Images, by Ramsay Campbell

I'm not a big horror fan. I'm not even familiar with the big names in the field. Until I stumbled onto this author and book while investigating something else, I didn't even know that Ramsay Campbell was a significant English horror writer (according to that bastion of reliable information, Wikipedia, one horror critic has placed Campbell as a peer of H. P. Lovecraft). I don't often read horror books, usually picking up one or two a year, with a significant chance they'll either be Stephen King or else a ghost story that may not really qualify as classic horror.

I stumbled onto Campbell while following up a bit of trivia in my own persistent way (Campbell is married to the daughter of one of my favorite "entertaining" writers). Poking around in his backlist revealed this book, where the plot summary really fired my imagination.

It seems that Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff worked together in a horror movie not generally known. The filming of the movie was bedeviled by accidents and mysterious sightings, and shortly after finishing the movie, the director died tragically. The film was suppressed and never shown to the public. But a great fan of old movies has successfully concluded a years-long search, and has found a copy of the old film. Unfortunately, things start getting ugly for him fast, and after his death, his friend and protege decides to dig into things. Of course, things get ugly for her as well, and that's what the story is about.

This really gripped me, and I happily forked over for the Kindle edition of the novel (I didn't try a sample, I am uncomfortable with trying to judge a book from them, even though I'd be wise to do it more often). I had appointed yesterday as the day for one of my rare ventures into horror, and I followed my plan.

Here are the good things about the book (no particular order except for number one being especially important):
1) I was interested in the book, enough that I read it in one sitting, staying up late to do so.
2) The "monster" and the search for information was great.
3) The book makes a worthwhile, though not preachy illumination of film censorship, while not being one-sided. "Gore-or" movie fans (that's a term I just made up, though it has probably been used elsewhere) are appropriately shamed for loving movies that have no plot, story, or characterization, but are merely extensive blood and guts fests.
4) The characters are sympathetic, likable, and believable.
5) I was able to figure out for myself some significant things that weren't obvious, but proved out to be accurate, which to me is a sign of a "fair" book that doesn't do things like hide vital information from the reader, but it still had some things that surprised me in the end.

Here are the bad things about the book:
1) Much of the writing is ponderous (see sample below).
2) Being the logical science guy, I want everything explained in the end, and for no big holes to be left. This doesn't happen, quite the contrary. I won't commit detailed spoilers, but there are numerous things that happened in the story that don't fit in with what explanation we are given. And at the end, it is implied that


Spoiler



the "monster" is dying, when to me it appears that the things that have happened shouldn't have killed it, based on the explanation we have


.
3) The film I mentioned above is a significant MacGuffin, but the shooting of the film and the experiences of the actors are merely background elements and the classic film shtick isn't really exploited in the book.
4) There's a significant dependence in the book on tricks from cheap horror movies--Where the "monster behind the door" ends up to be Just The Cat. This sort of thing is fine once or twice, but it happens repeatedly. Things along the line of "A bony claw thrust out of the darkness. And the aged railroad conductor startled Julie out of her semi-slumber when he snatched the ticket from her limp hand." That's not an actual line from the book, but it could've been.
5) The ending is abrupt and unsatisfying. There is a bunch of end matter behind the novel, and I literally turned the page with no thought that the book was over, ready for the next chapter. But it was the end.

Here's an actual paragraph from the book:
_After the stuffiness of the train and the uproar of the traffic, the small wood felt like the first day of a holiday. Beneath the oaks and beeches, the velvety gloom was cool. Holly spiked the shadows among the trunks, tangles of brambles sprawled across the grass beside the tarmac paths that were cracked by the clenched roots of trees. Sandy strolled along the discursive paths, letting her senses expand until the wood glowed around her._

I'm usually obtuse about writing style as long as facts and events can be pulled out without too much effort, but this really bugged me. Though the writing in most of the book is better than this, it is still over-written in my opinion. And lest I be seen as bashing on a very successful writer, I gotta add that the book is thirty years old. With apologies to Toby Keith, I'm much better once than I ever was--Or at least than I was thirty years ago for things that have been important to me in the intervening time! And I'm sure writing is important to Mr. Campbell, and he's also diligently improved his skills (and at his least-skilled was ten times the writer I am--I don't even try to write for publication). And I did really like one bit of ponderousness, where a line of traffic was compared with the parade of baggage at an airport.

Exotic word alert: "Pedology" does not mean what you probably thing it does, nor does it even have anything to do with pedagogy, but it refers to soil science.

I've really lambasted the book, but the story and the adversary were really interesting, and kept me going. As mentioned, I read it in one sitting. Despite my blistering review above, I still have to give the book three stars. It might have gotten slightly better (though not above 3.5 stars) if I hadn't gone into the book so intrigued by the teasers, and eager for a really good read.


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## The Hooded Claw

Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II, by Keith Chester

For years, I've had a strong interest in UFOs, even though I am skeptical that they are spaceships from other worlds, or any of the other really interesting explanations. I've also been very interested in World War II, especially the air war, so even in my teens I'd read history books that mentioned foo fighters, mysterious sightings of unexplained objects by Allied airmen. In Martin Caidin's book Black Thursday, the highly respected aviation history writer gave a detailed description of a a sighting of mysterious objects by bomber crewmen who were attacking Germany, and I read this and was intrigued. But there was little else out there besides references to sighting strange objects without much more information. I recently decided I wanted to read a book about UFOs, but experience has taught me to view most of these books as not too reliable. This one seemed to have promise, the author of this book is not one of the "standard" writers on the subject, and I read reviews that swore it was carefully documented and skeptical. Alas, I was disappointed. There are a couple of problems. One is that the reported sightings, which the author carefully reports in detail, are almost always vague and similar enough to each other to quickly become repetitive. Usually they are limited to reports of small spheres or glowing lights that paced the sighting aircraft for awhile before zooming off or disappearing. Often they are limited to small lights zipping around at night. I'm sure they were mystifying at best and terrifying at worst to the pilots and aircrew who saw them (many of whom were convinced they were seeing some sort of new Nazi secret weapon, and surely felt scared and threatened). But knowing now that they weren't indicators of a German death ray or similar superweapon, they are just a bore to read for the most part.

To make things worse, I find that I don't trust the author. I don't think he is actively dishonest, but I think he is too credulous of articles in UFO magazines from decades ago, which he cites religiously. He also appears to have done quite a bit of research in military archives going through mission reports and intelligence reports trying to decipher the mystery of these sightings, and I do think he is an honest reporter for what he gets out of these, but I don't think he understands in detail a lot of what he is writing about. A few examples of these include describing a pilot viewing an object through 750-power binoculars (I assume that he misinterpreted a reference to 7x50 binoculars--It would be impossible to see anything useful, or even find your target, through 750 power binoculars) and unquestioningly repeating a report of sighting an object bearing an insignia of a white circle containing "the image of a large, grinning Cheshire cat!" I repeatedly feel that he is making odd choices of terminology and ways of referring to things that suggest that he doesn't really understand the types of planes and military operations he is writing about (for instance he finds it odd when a contemporary news report refers to a unit's intelligence officer as a staff officer, but that's quite appropriate), and other problems too frequent to mention.

I found myself starting to read the book each night, but quitting reading after a while, both from boredom and from unease about the research and analysis in the book, and after reading for a week where I had plenty of time to read if I'd been enthusiastic, I was only halfway through a 300-page book. So yesterday I decided to abandon the book. Conceivable that I will reconsider this weekend and try it again, but I don't think so.

In her "book blog" thread Seleya commented a few weeks ago that she found herself being concerned about what readers here on KB would think about her reading choices or what she wrote about the books. I responded to her in her thread that I didn't care about what people thought of my thread, I read and posted here only to please myself, and the rest of y'all would have to just go along for the ride. But I do find myself concerned that I've skewered three successive books here, and that KBers will think I'm too negative. So much for my independence!  But both for the tender feelings of those who read this thread (the number of page views astonishes me sometimes), and especially for my own enjoyment, I wanted to find a sure thing for my next book. Max Allan Collins would be a good choice, but maybe all the UFO sightings I'd read about made me lean towards science fiction. I chose an old reliable:









(image only, not a link)

Star Courier, by A. Bertram Chandler

If you've been paying attention here, you know that I am a fan of the John Grimes series by A. Bertram Chandler. This is next in the science fiction series about the independent-minded starship officer. When last we left our intrepid captain, he had lost his job as captain of the yacht of a billionairess, but was leaving on good terms, and was given the ship's boat of her yacht in lieu of severance and back pay. This gives him a small interstellar capable ship of his own, but he has no funds to speak of. Now he's trying to make a go of it as the independent owner of a starship that has essentially no cargo capacity. With no business experience, this is not a trivial matter, but Grimes finds a job delivering the courier of a few small, urgently-needed packages to a backwater world. Alas, things go wrong and Grimes ends up with his precious ship captured, and himself the prisoner of a band of alien pirates. Entertaining adventure ensues. This is not great literature, but was a fine and satisfying light read to wash the taste of three disappointing books in a row out of my (figurative) mouth. I enjoyed the book and recommend it, though it is again merely average Grimes. Last time I used this description, I said that book fell just short of four stars, but this time I happily give the book four stars. These are my posts and I don't have to be consistent if I don't want to! 

I read a stand-alone paperback with the above cover many years ago (cover above). The standalone book is not available on Kindle, but an omnibus collection of this story and three more Grimes novels is available at a very reasonable price:



A worthy collection, though not recommended as a starting point for reading John Grimes. I expect to read the remaining novels in this collection over the next few months.

Anyway, I am back in the saddle again, and expect to get in some further good reading this weekend!


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## The Hooded Claw

Vesuvius, by Gillian Darley

You probably know about Vesuvius and Pompeii, and cast plaster figures of people killed by the volcano, but that isn't the only work of Vesuvius. Have you ever seen this?






In October, I will take a trip to Italy and Croatia that will start in Venice, and end in Rome, focusing on ancient Roman archeology sites. So I have several books on the history of Rome and Venice lined up to read. This book about the volcano that destroyed the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum is the one that will start things off. I found the book extremely interesting, in fact I ordered several other books as a result of seeing them or their subjects mentioned in this one. And I highlighted 29 pages of notes and marks that I thought I might want to post about here, always a sign that the book is interesting. The book is a history of the volcano, its eruptions, and the people who studied it. It is not a vulcanology or geology text, and Pompeii is mentioned only in connection with the famous eruption that destroyed it.

Something that surprised me almost at the beginning of the book is that Vesuvius played a role in the adventures of the gladiator Spartacus. I know of Spartacus only from the famous old movie, but Kubrick left Vesuvius out. It seems that when Spartacus and fewer than 100 of his gladiator cohorts initially rebelled and escaped, they took refuge in the (dormant) crater of Vesuvius. This was in 73 BC. Somehow Spartacus knew of the crater and led his followers there. The outer rim of the crater at the time resembled the walls of a fortress, where they could look down on pursuers, and there was only one exit. Roman infantry gathered to guard the exit, and couldn't see Spartacus and his friends manufacturing ropes and ladders out of vines and willow stems. The gladiators used these to clamber up the inside wall of the crater and down the outside in an area not visible from the Roman camp. The gladiators circled around the outside of the volcano to catch the besieging Romans completely off-guard and rout them.

Before the famous 79 AD eruption, the Romans didn't seem to understand that Vesuvius was potentially an active volcano, though they noted the volcanic deposits and used a certain type of ash to make the original cement, which was critically important to their architecture. The 142-foot unsupported dome of the Pantheon (built in 126 AD) depended on volcanic cement.










Roman theories on what made volcanoes erupt were varied; the earliest theories were that active volcanoes contained maddened giants confined by the gods to the nether regions who were jumping around with rage, or that a volcano was a living creature of some kind. Later, most Roman writers believed that volcanos were hollow and the air inside somehow got stirred up and heated, taking smoke and stone with it. Because the active volcanoes known to the Romans were all close to the sea, many believed that salt water figured in somehow, and an oceanic connection for volcanic activity was firmly believed in by many until 1800 or later. I was surprised to learn that the word "lava" is not one with Latin or other ancient heritage, but was first used in a book about Vesuvius in the 1730s.

The book describes a parade of visitors to Vesuvius or the environs, beginning with the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, who died in an effort to rescue people from the famous AD 79 eruption, and continuing with a fellow from the 1600s named Kircher who intrigued me enough that I bought a separate biography of him (he claimed to have been lowered into the active, but not erupting crater in a wicker basket!), a fourteen year old Wolfgang Mozart, the English Admiral Lord Nelson, the Marquis de Sade, Mary and Percy Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great scientist Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens, a blind man named James Holman who climbed to the rim with help back in 1821, Mark Twain, and others. Many of these people went to the volcano rim while it was actually erupting and sending rocks and ash flying into the air past them!

I don't want to make this too long, but the book also talks about the relationship of the people of the area, especially the town of Naples, with the volcano. An eruption about 1600 BC smothered the current site of Naples with thick hot ash, and the people around the volcano have always felt threatened, for centuries appealing to the intervention of a patron saint to protect them. The book describes various ways they've encouraged the saint to intervene, and how they depended on the miraculous liquefaction of samples of the saint's blood that are preserved in glass vials as signs that they will be protected. As late as 1944, this was a matter of great concern to the American Army which had recently occupied the area as described in the video above. Vesuvius erupted with extremely unfortunate timing that many of the locals viewed as a sign that the Americans weren't welcome. Today there are government efforts to prevent development close to the volcano, and to have the ability to quickly evacuate people further away, that are often evaded by the people they are intended to protect. Many people have accepted a large cash incentive to move further away from the volcano, but pocketed the cash and continued living in the dangerous spot.

The book is decently written. The author loves to test our vocabulary by tossing unusual words into the text. This never became annoying, but I did use the dictionary feature on my PaperWhite a lot more than usual. The subject is fascinating, and it is not a science book, so no science background or interest is necessary. I give it four stars.

I mentioned the death of Pliny the Elder in the famous eruption. His nephew and heir Pliny the Younger was there, and later wrote an eyewitness account of the eruption that you may find interesting.

http://www.smatch-international.org/PlinyLetters.html


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## The Hooded Claw

The Hindenburg Murders, by Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins is among my favorite authors, and I am using the Kindle Owner's Lending Library to keep chugging along through his books that I haven't read (he is very, very, prolific!). This one is next, part of his "disaster series". These books are historical mysteries where a real mystery writer tries to solve a murder against the backdrop of a doomed vessel or other dramatic situation. This one is set on the famous German airship, and it definitely pleased me. The protagonist this time 'round is Leslie Charteris, creator of detective The Saint. I've never read any of those stories, nor even seen television or movie adaptations, but that didn't keep me from enjoying the book. It is an excellent mystery, throwing in an airship-board romance and lots and lots of period and setting color and chrome. It seems someone wants to do bad things to the Hindenburg, and is willing to murder to let them carry out their plans. I enjoyed the mystery, it made sense, and there is a surprise twist at the end that I wasn't expecting, but made me slap my forehead when it was revealed. There's even a logical explanation of why the murders and the conspiracy involved did not become known to history. As usual with this series, Collins does extensive research, and does his best to make his fiction conform to the known facts.

The mystery is worthwhile, but half the attraction of the book is the setting of the magnificent airship. I made note of lots of details that caught my attention:

The Germans had received bomb threats before the Hindenburg's voyage, and took them very seriously, including x-raying the luggage and belongings of passengers. How (unfortunately) modern!

One-way fare from Germany to America was $400 for the very luxurious trip. The Zeppelin-ports on each end were set up to make it easy for Zeppelin passengers to connect between the Zeppelin and conventional air trips at both ends. The return trip to Germany (which of course never took place) was fully-booked by upper-crust travelers who wanted to attend the coronation of King George VI, the King who replaced Edward when he abdicated to make a controversial marriage.

A significant part of the operating costs for the airships came from premium prices paid by stamp collectors and others for envelopes with a special cancellation and stamp showing that they had been shipped by Zeppelin air mail. Some of these envelopes were delivered by parachute drop to cities where Hindenburg passed overhead but didn't stop.

On the trip, Zeppelin took 440 pounds of fresh meat and poultry, 800 eggs, and 220 pounds of butter to feed the passengers and crew. The amount of butter compared to meat surprised me, I suppose they used it for sauces and on skillets (but I'm ignorant of cooking, maybe someone who knows about that can enlighten me!).

I was astonished to find that the Hindenburg buzzed Boston and New York City at a very low altitude to wow the passengers and make an impression on ground-bound residents. The 800-foot Hindenburg flew over Boston less than 500 feet above the ground!!!

Sadly, one of the German passengers on the Hindenburg (who was quite a nice guy, based on how he was portrayed in the book), survived the destruction of the Hindenburg by fire, only to perish in the Allied firebombing of Dresden eight years later in 1945.

Not really part of the book, but I was amused that author Max Allan Collins revealed in the afterword that he was expelled from his fourth-grade class at Grant School in Muscatine Iowa, for having this book at school:










I suspect it was the cover rather than the text of the book that caused the scandal. A man...err, boy, after my own heart, as a guy who toted fun books to school regularly, I would have cheered for him (though none of my books had such interesting covers).

Minor statistical note you may not have known: Despite the horrendous film and dramatic radio commentary about the fire we've all seen, more than 2/3 of the people on board survived Hindenburg's unfortunate arrival at Lakehurst, NJ.

I was totally pleased with the book. A very solid four stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Lost at Sea: The Truth Behind Eight of History's Most Mysterious Ship Disasters, by A. A. Hoehling

Probably the best endorsement for this book is that it was originally written back in the early 1980s, was revised in 1999 and reissued, and is still in print and on Kindle in 2013. That suggests that someone keeps buying it, probably because it is good. And it is an excellent book, I liked Lost at Sea, and recommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in the topic. The book has one chapter each on eight different ship losses. Most of these are well-known, I had at least heard of seven of the eight ships and had read something substantive about three of them (Scorpion, Mary Celeste, and Lusitania). The one I hadn't heard of was the most recent, a cargo ship called the SS Poet lost without a trace in the early 80s. A variety of things happened to the ships, ranging from the ship being found with no crew (Mary Celeste), being sunk from unclear causes with a VIP onboard (HMS Hampshire), or just completely disappearing with no messages or known reason, like SS Poet did.

The Mary Celeste probably had the most interesting story associated with it, it is well enough known that even many people who have no interest in maritime mysteries know about it. But the story that interested me the most was the SS Waratah. If you are tempted to feel sorry for Waratah for having an odd name, don't. The company that owned her operated another ship called Woolloomoolloo. What a name!

Waratah was an Australian passenger liner that disappeared without trace near South Africa back in 1909. It seems less well-known than many of the other disasters, probably because shortly afterwards the loss of the Titanic and then the start of World War I with multiple tragic ship losses smothered poor Waratah and her passengers with later news that pushed her out of mind. Waratah is especially interesting because one passenger left the ship mid-voyage just before it was lost because of repeated dreams (or visions, he asserted he wasn't really sure) that involved a man with a bloody knife and sword, and separate visions of Waratah being struck by a large wave and rolling over. We can't assume mystic powers were entirely responsible for these warnings, as many witnesses are recorded as describing Waratah as having a tendency to list to one side and stay there for a long time before abruptly straightening herself...She may not have been a well-designed ship to begin with, and she was very new when she was lost, so the crew hadn't had time to discover tricks for ballasting her to improve her performance. The rolling was bad enough that on the fateful voyage one passenger fell during one of the sharp rolls and broke her hip! She was put off in South Africa, but as I understand things that was her final destination anyway, so she wasn't miraculously saved by her injury. But there was ample evidence for even a passenger who wasn't a sailing man to feel uneasy about Waratah.

There may have been other nervous passengers, but Claude Sawyer was the only one who forfeited his expensive fare to debark in South Africa and find passage back to England on another ship. There was a bizarre scene back in England when the passenger list was released, and a flock of reporters, accompanied by a minister descended on his home to get his wife's comments on the presumed loss of her husband, and she was able to wave a telegram from him in South Africa saying that her husband had left the ship and was safe!

Of course, as a loyal reader of the John Grimes science fiction novels that I've commented here, I had heard of the Waratah waaaaay back in Junior High School, and have known what happened to her ever since. Waratah and her fate figured in the first John Grimes novel I ever read, and the cover of the book forfeited any opportunity to surprise the reader:










As I remember it, there were a fair amount of factual details about Waratah included in the story, so I was particularly pleased to see her covered in this book. I'm tempted now to go re-read Into The Alternate Universe, but I'm going to wait, as it is chronologically much later in Grimes' career than the books I've read lately. I don't remember specifically, but I'm confident the striking cover illustration was one of the things that prompted me to pick up the book, get interested and read all the numerous John Grimes novels over the next decade or so.

Mary Celeste is a well-known nautical mystery that I'd read a bit about before, but she has an interesting fate with lots of juicy details, so I also greatly enjoyed reading about her. I was interested to read about her--Mary Celeste was a sailing ship was discovered empty in the North Atlantic. Her captain, along with his wife, daughter, and several crewman, were not on board, and there was no sign of them or explanation of why they had abandoned a ship that was in fine shape. Almost as weird was that the ship that discovered the empty Mary Celeste was commanded by a good friend of the missing captain. The disappearance happened almost 140 years ago, but some of the dates associated with her and the people around here proved how short in terms of people's lifetimes that modern history really is....Mary Celeste left New York City on the fateful voyage the same day Ulysses Grant was elected to his second term as President. On the other hand, though the missing Captain Briggs had his wife and young daughter with him when he disappeared, but he left behind a seven year old son in care of his mother. The young son lived into the 1930s, dying just a year or so before he could have met my infant parents in his old age.

One other thing that I found interesting about Mary Celeste was that one of my favorite writers, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published a short story in 1884 that involved the supposed fate of Mary Celeste. I actually stopped reading this book to dig out my Doyle omnibus and read "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement", Doyle's story of the true fate of Mary Celeste. Alas, the story was readable and "okay", but not great, and most definitely not politically correct.

These were the two most interesting ships, but the other ships were also interesting. You'll have to read the book to learn about them and their fates, though I will add that in the case of one ship, the Morro Castle, the radio operator who seemed to be a hero during the disastrous fire that destroyed the ship was later found to be a child molester and murderer.


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## The Hooded Claw

There was a thread about genre-hopping in reading elsewhere. I'm interested to look at the last few books I read before the one I'm about to review, and found that one was on anatomy, one on farming, one was horror, one science fiction, one a mystery, and one was about disasters at sea. I think I have earned an honorary genre-hopper bunny!

But on to the next book!



In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature, by Christopher Woodward

I bought this recently out of general interest, but zoomed it to the head of the reading line because of inspiration from this thread:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,148151.0.html

I am a lover of ancient ruins. When I was able to travel overseas as an adult, the second country I visited was Egypt, and I chose it mostly for the ancient ruins! I was with a group of university alumni/students, and the day after an after-dinner excursion on our own where we got an "informal" local guide to show us through an area, one of my friends on the tour announced he'd had a dream in which I'd driven the poor little man who'd guided us to exhaustion, and he was drooping with fatigue, but I was demanding to see more and dragging him along by the arm shouting "More ruins! Show me more ruins!" So my love of ruins is well-documented.

Christopher Woodward also loves ruins, and has given us a quirky book where he shares some of his favorite ruin-related stuff. He opens with these two ruin-related art vignettes:






I think the above is familiar to most KBers, but the following one was new to me, and probably new to most of us:










This is _The New Zealander_, showing the future of London as imagined in 1873 by Gustave Dore. The New Zealand visitor is sitting on a ruined abutment of London Bridge, sketching ruined London, specifically the remains of St. Paul's. In 1873 England, apparently New Zealand was considered the logical heir to English civilization.

Lots of good stuff in the book. Woodward talks about various stages in how a ruin is perceived by those around it. Rome is used as an example for the initial discussion. A notable example of the usual initial response is that the Roman Colosseum was leased as a quarry by the popes. There is a receipt in the Vatican archive for 205 ducats in payment for the removal of 2,522 tons of stone between September 1451 and May 1452. But a few years later in 1462, Pope Pius II introduced the first legislation to protect the Roman ruins, though it wasn't well-enforced or effective.

Woodward mentions that Hitler was very impressed by the Roman ruins, his comment after visiting in 1938 was "Rom hat mich richtig ergriffen!" ("Rome completely bowled me over!") and when he returned, he informed Speer and his other architects that steel and ferro-concrete could no longer be used in German public buildings, because they were too perishable. Marble, stone, and brick must be used henceforth so that after the fall of the 1,000-year Reich, the ruins would be suitably impressive. Speer even catered to his Fuhrer's whims by presenting Hitler with sketches showing various existing German public buildings as ivy-clad ruins in the future!

Woodward also points out that archeologists are in inevitable and unresolvable conflict with artists....Artists prefer picturesque ruins, overgrown with ivy and surrounded by trees. These things are destructive of the ruins, and are an abomination to scientists and preservationists. Post-Roman Christian accoutrements such as illustrations of the Stations of the Cross that decorated the Colosseum for a millennium were removed when the archeologists took charge. And there is a record as late as 1820 of an Englishman riding his horse around the arena of the Colosseum, which would of course be cause for immediate arrest today, assuming you managed to get a horse into the place!

The book is a highly personal one, and reflects the biases of its author. I don't remember a single non-European ruin being discussed (whoops, while writing later I remembered one that is mentioned in less than a page--I'll describe it below). The author particularly scorns Egyptian ruins as barren and unrewarding, ruined by their desert setting. And (leaving out the exception I remembered) he doesn't even acknowledge New World stuff. I've seen some interesting "ruins" in the USA, notably of sugar mills in the south, even if they aren't as awesome as those in Rome or Greece, and of course Mayan and other ruins are very impressive

Back to Woodward's tastes as reflected in the book, I'd say 2/3 of the book is about either Roman ruins, or several periods of ruins in England: The local English remains of the Roman period (not much about the megalithic or other ancient ruins), quite a bit of stuff on the fate of the English Abbeys after they were seized by Henry the Eight, and a lesser amount late in the book about other miscellaneous ruins, notably "follies," copies of ancient Roman and other ruins created by the megarich when they didn't have a pleasing ruin on their property to gloat over, and on the destruction of the amazing English manor houses that were abandoned en masse after World War II. The book contains a photo I can't find on the internet to display here showing a magnificent ballroom that you'd readily believe was in Versailles, that has the floor completely covered, wall-to-wall, with open-topped sacks of potatoss by a farmer who now had custody of the intact-but-fading-fast magnificent old house. Over two thousand of these were destroyed in the mid-Twentieth Century.

There is some coverage of other ruins, among the interesting stuff was artificial ruins created for political purposes, such as (according to Woodward) fake machine gun bullet-holes in major buildings created in Castro's Cuba to commemorate legendary Revoluationary events, and a similar (alleged) political fake by conservative forces in Spain after the Spanish Civil War.

There are lots of quirky individual discussions of ruins or quotes from literary works featuring ruins. The author points out several unique features or ruins that I want to try to see for myself someday. Woodward describes a cycle that repeatedly applies to different ruins: starting with greed (exemplified by using the Colosseum as a stone quarry), followed by indifference and ignorance, then curiosity that finally leads to veneration. The author explicitly shows how this cycle worked for the ruins of Rome and for the English Abbey ruins.

I read about 15% of the book in one sitting, but then put the book aside and didn't go back to it for several days. This is usually the death knell for a book, and a sign I need to abandon it and choose another, but in this case I gave the book another chance, and finished the remaining 85% of the book in two days when I went back to it!

Four stars from me, and I think this would apply to anyone who was intrigued by the subject of the book. If the subject doesn't intrigue you, you will and should skip it!


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## The Hooded Claw

The Case of the Little Green Men, by Mack Reynolds

When I was a teenager, I read a lot of science fiction by Mack Reynolds, and though he was never in my absolute top tier of writers, I considered myself a fan of his work. By that time, he was near the end of his career, and he died while I was still reading and enjoying his work, especially his near-future (for the time) spy stories of the "Frigid Fracas" where US and Soviet spies would tangle with each other. I hadn't known he'd ever written a mystery, but I stumbled on this book when looking to see what books by Reynolds had been Kindleized. A "new" story by Reynolds would seem to be an automatic "buy" for me, but I was nervous both because this was a mystery, not Reynolds' usual line, and because it is a mystery from Prologue. My one previous experience with Prologue was not a happy one:
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,97765.msg1687203.html#msg1687203

But the Mack Reynolds name, and the low price won me over and got me to part with my hard-earned dough. This was published waaaay back in 1951, at the start of his career, and it is an actual detective story, complete with a hardboiled PI hero. To quote from Reynolds' Preface:

"The detective isn't tough, and he isn't even smart and he doesn't prove the case against the killer. And boy doesn't get girl, either. Otherwise, this story is just about like a good many others you've read."

Despite the tone of the introduction, this isn't a humorous story, but it is a real mystery with murders; what is especially interesting about it is that it is set in science fiction fandom. Our hero is hired by some science fiction readers to investigate the possibility of aliens infiltrating their science fiction fan club--He doesn't read science fiction, and certainly doesn't believe in infiltrating space aliens, but the science fiction fans will pay good money in advance and he is happy to take it. So the events of the book include attending a vintage science fiction local fan club, and attending one of the earliest national science fiction conventions.

I thought the book was okay. I enjoyed the look at early science fiction fandom. Reynolds was there, so my feeling is his description is probably reasonably accurate. It's not a great book or mystery, and be warned that the ending is not upbeat. I'd rate it as three stars out of five. If you aren't a science fiction fan, you should skip it.


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## The Hooded Claw

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande is a surgeon who has written several books on getting better at what you do. I read one last year on checklists that went far beyond medicine. This book is an earlier one, that focuses on medicine. As the title suggests, it addresses different areas in medicine where a special effort has been made to improve performance. He looks on as a sort of journalist at efforts to get surgical staff to practice better hand hygiene, efforts at battlefield surgery in Iraq and Afghanistan, efforts to improve cystic fibrosis care, and many others. I liked the book, and highly recommend it.

The book talks about the original physician who identified the importance of physician handwashing before dealing with a childbirth, and his clumsy and unsuccessful efforts to convince his colleagues that this was a good idea. This is still a problem, and it is not (solely) due to carelessness or negligence of medical staff. Washing up in the prescribed way takes a lot of time, and if it is done between each patient, a physician will spend a substantial fraction of his time just washing up over and over again. And many ways of cleaning will produce skin irritation if done so often. He describes an effort in his own hospital where he works to improve things, how such efforts usually fail or at least produce only short-term improvements, and talks about unusual steps such as adding a new member to the surgical team whose only job is to do things that would otherwise require a sterile nurse or doctor to "break scrub" then to scrub up again before returning to work. One of the more successful efforts in some facilities has been to reject the process of preaching at staff members about sterile practice, and get their suggestions of what can be changed to make it easier to stay sterile. This has lead to things as simple as adding hand-gel dispensers to more places and posting numbers about patient infections where staff can see them.

I was surprised to learn that during the height of the Iraq War, the Army was finding an increase in blinding injuries, despite issuing special protective goggles to soldiers. It ended up that soldiers weren't wearing the goggles, because "they look like something a Florida senior citizen should wear." The Army switched to cooler-looking eyewear, and eye injuries decreased sharply. Worldwide, the Army has only about 120 general surgeons on active duty, and extended deployments overseas have made it hard to recruit more.

Gawande looked into money and medicine. In the late 1980s, the federal government became frustrated with problems with how medical insurance payments were made, so a team of economists was set to measure the exact work involved on each of the tasks doctors performed. Payments were based on this, and the system is reevaluated periodically, with relative values for more than 6,000 services! Various judgements were made, such as that a hysterectomy takes about twice as much time as a session of psychotherapy, 3.8 times as much mental effort, 4.47 times as much technical skill and physical effort, and 4.24 times as much risk. The total calculation was that the hysterectomy was 4.99 times as much work! Cataract surgery on the other hand, is slightly less work than a hysterectomy. Because of all the judgement calls that would have to be made by even the best-intentioned evaluator, I'm sure this system drives doctors crazy, though Gawande doesn't gripe about it much. This book was written before the recent debate about health care reform, but Gawande points out that insurers find reason to reject about 30 percent of the bills they receive, and one expert on running a financially-solvent medical practice described the process as "war with insurance, every step of the way." A Dartmouth professor evaluated the financial payoff of medicine compared to other relatively elite fields, and found that the annual financial rate of return of the money put into college is 16 percent for primary care physicians, 18 percent for surgeons, 23 percent for lawyers, and 26 percent for business school (presumably MBA). American physicians earn over seven times more than the average employee, though in most industrialized countries the gap is three times.

The segment that I was most surprised to find interesting was a chapter on involvement of physicians and other medical professionals in execution by lethal injection. Gawande interviewed several physicians and nurses who were involved in this, and the debate interested me and surprised me. The AMA has come out against this, and it is theoretically possible to have professional sanctions for helping with executions. Despite this, one physician who has participated in executions said that (my summary) the patients have a medical condition, albeit one that is imposed by judicial order, and he feels an obligation to try to minimize their suffering while they go through that condition. This specific physician claims to be opposed to capital punishment. Gawande respects his argument, but points out that unlike genuine medical patients, the inmate has no right to refuse the physicians "care" and that the medical assistance is provided for the government's purposes, not the patient's. I'm reporting what the book says that was interesting, and will not discuss it further (and I KNOW the mods will appreciate it if we don't!).

Another segment that surprised me with how interesting it was was the segment on childbirth and reducing mortality rates for newborns and mothers. Ladies, no matter how awful your childbirth experience was, you have to feel sympathy for Charlotte, the former Princess of Wales. In 1817, the twenty-one year old woman spent four days in labor, because of delivering a nine pound boy with a large head who was in a sideways position. After fifty hours, emerged stillborn, and six hours later she herself died. The attending physician was criticized for not using the new innovation of forceps, and committed suicide soon after. The death of this child lead to Queen Victoria taking the throne, with considerable effects on world history, not to mention the books we all read!

Gawande spends a lot of time discussing some of the heroic maneuvers that were invented for dislodging infants arriving in inconvenient postures and attitudes, one of which involves breaking the newborn's collarbones to get it out! Interestingly, if not ethically, forceps for childbirth were a private secret of a family of midwives (and the male equivalent) for more than a century before they became known to physicians as a great asset in delivering stuck babies. Gawande spends quite a bit of time discussing the advent of the Caesarian section in place of forceps--Their use is becoming a lost art. I'd read criticisms of the frequency of Caesarians in the general press, but he explains some of the reasons for the increase, the largest being that use of forceps requires a great deal of skill and judgement that is hard to teach and learn, whereas a Caesarian takes "only" the more routine widespread and easy-to-teach expertise of abdominal surgery.

As a surgeon, Gawande is especially shocked to watch a Caesarian section, as what superficially appears to be a routine abdominal surgery culminates in reaching into someone's belly and pulling out five wiggling toes, a whole leg, and pulling out a new human being! Quite different from removing a tumor or sewing up damaged intestines!

Many other subjects are covered. Well-written and fascinating. Five stars from me!

After grim issues of life and death, to my next book will be a treatise on Marxism....

Memoirs Of A Mangy Lover


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## The Hooded Claw

Some of the Max Allan Collins mysteries I have reviewed in this thread and the one last year are on sale cheap in today's Gold Box Deal. Several in the "Disaster series" plus Majic Man, one of my favorite books from last year, can be had cheap!


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## The Hooded Claw

Memoirs of a Mangy Lover, by Groucho Marx

I'm a big fan of the Marx Brothers, and Groucho is my favorite. When I was a kid, my parents got a book of various jokes and humor from Reader's Digest, and my favorite parts of it were all the quotes from Groucho Marx (at this time I had no idea who he was). It wasn't till I got to attend a Marx Brothers Film Festival in 9th grade or so that I truly became a fan of the brothers collectively and Groucho specifically. So I've known for years that I would eventually read this book, and when I saw that the price had dropped a bit, it "called to me." I started it Saturday evening and finished it tonight, even though I took a break from it to read a few short stories in another book. Since I kept up the pace and finished it quickly, I clearly liked the book.

In short, this is Groucho running amok with words, most of which deal in some way with love, sex, or romance. There are occasional diversions into other subjects such as parties or etiquette. A cynical and sarcastic tone is always present, and many of the attitudes and assumptions are strictly 1960-era. The book is a mix of stories (tall tales, really) and running commentary on the topic at hand. Some of the stories are quite entertaining: Ones that come to mind are going out on a blind date with a woman who is gorgeous, but not too bright (This one, especially the part where she repeatedly bursts out laughing during a performance of "Death of a Salesman" actually has the ring of reality to it); Groucho's long-sought romantic conquest being disrupted by a flock of pigeons who fly into the open window of the hotel room; and the night rats ran rampant in the cat house. The view of women is DEFINITELY outdated, and wouldn't be acceptable now. Don't misunderstand me, in most of the stories overamorous or vain men get their just desserts. The book holds an early Twentieth Century view of women, but isn't misogynistic. The book was published for the general market in 1963, and as far as graphic sexuality, there is far more lurid stuff on network television every night. Similar to what happened to Scarlet in her A-Z thread when she read a book of short stories, I found that after awhile a diet of constant sarcastic ribaldry about sex wore on me, and I stopped to read a few science fiction short stories from another book.

The book starts weak, the middle half is the best, and ends rather weakly. I was smiling or at least smirking through the middle half, but seldom laughing out loud. I give it three and a half stars. But honestly I can only recommend the book to fellow Marxists.

I will close with a few Groucho quotes:

On a mother's description of the conservative mores of her daughter Prudence:
I remembered Prudence that night in the taxi, and if she was a virgin, Joan of Arc played second base for the Cleveland Indians.

On an evening alone with Groucho, Part I:
Bored, I never realized what dull company I was until I sat there alone. I had heard everything I had to say time and time again, and I was in no mood to listen to me again.

On an evening alone with Groucho, Part II:
I was eating and sleeping, but I hadn't come to New York to sleep. At least not alone. I could do that in Chillicothe, Ohio, and probably better.

On the advantages of dogs versus wives:
If your dog sees you playing with another dog, does he rush to his lawyer and bark that your marriage is on the rocks, and that he wants 600 bones a month alimony, the good car, and the forty-thousand dollar home that still has a nineteen-thousand dollar mortgage on it?

On dieting:
Last night I had a typical cholesterol-free dinner: Baked squash, skimmed milk, and gelatin. I'm sure this will not make me live any longer, but I know it's going to seem longer.

History of sex, Part I:
It was, of course, fortunate that the amoeba couldn't see, because if he had been able to take one look at his mate, the affair would have gone down the drain and our Earth would now be as empty as the head of the average teenager.

History of sex, Part II:
Professor H.M.S. Wimpble tells us of a Glaciolithic woman who, on entering her igloo, found her mate frozen in the arms of another woman. After heating them both back into consciousness, she said to her husband, "Who was that lady I thawed you with?"

A difficult question of etiquette:
On leaving a nightclub that's been raided, who enters the wagon first-the lady or the gentleman?

Groucho's advice to his wife when she wanted to use a medium to contact her dead uncle:
"Who don't you write him a letter? Write it on asbestos. You know where he is."

Groucho's question to the medium when advised she could answer any inquiry:
"What's the capital of North Dakota?"

Groucho's career advice:
An actor has nothing but his body, his talent, and his personal magnetism, and when these wear out he is just a memory that is soon forgotten...If a man owns a grocery store or a butcher shop and he becomes ill, he can hire someone to replace him. If an actor is sick, his income stops immediately. So be smart, don't go into show business.

Groucho on why 1960 is the same as 2013, Part I:
This is why the quiz and panel shows were such a success. Thousands of people wrote to the networks, begging for a chance to appear on these shows. In most cases, it wasn't the money that interested them. They just wanted to appear before an audience. As an obscure poet named Shakespeare put it, "All the world's a stage," and it seems as though everyone wants to be on it, front and center.

Groucho on why 1960 is the same as 2013, Part II:
The Wall Street Journal says that the entire country is living on a precarious precipice of debt; the government is deeply in hock, and so are most of its citizens. It's a joy ride, they add, but nobody in Washington seems to give a d*mn.

Groucho on how the balding male scalp might be rescued:
(Farmers) long ago discovered that their soil deteriorated unless they rotated their crops. For example if one year they raised corn, the following year, they raised wheat or cabbage or, in desperate cases, even eggplant. Now isn't it reasonable to believe that the scalp might respond to similar treatment? In the winter we would grow hair on our heads, and in the spring as the hair began thinning and falling into the soup, the scalp could be plowed up and string beans planted...A man could have a head of hair in the winter and a head of cabbage in the summer.


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## telracs

glad my experience helped you avoid getting burnt out on groucho....


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## The Hooded Claw

sour gummy worms said:


> glad my experience helped you avoid getting burnt out on groucho....


I can't talk now, I'm planting my cabbage....


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## The Hooded Claw

Magnus Ridolph, by Jack Vance

Jack Vance is an author I've always enjoyed, though I think of him as a fantasy writer more than a science fiction writer. Whatever genre, his books are always marked by exotic and different cultures, and wild interactions between people of different cultures. I started this collection of science fiction short stories while taking a break from Groucho's sexual innuendo and finished it late last night.

Magnus Ridolph is a resident of Lake Sahara, Old Earth, and citizen of a galactic civilization that has lasted long enough to develop very strange human cultures on different planets, and to have citizens who are of alien species. In the stories, he variously describes himself as "A modern-day gladiator with logic as my lance and vigilance as my shield," owner of a failed zoo, possessor of a "brain, otherwise sound, with a hypertrophied lobe of curiosity," and inventor of the musical kaliedoscope (tragically this innovation is not otherwise described). Others in the story describe him as "noted savant and free-lance troubleshooter" (pretty accurate!), looking like a dentist, an "old goat," "eminent mathematician," and various other epithets. The general pattern of the stories is that someone has a terrible problem (not necessarily a murder, or even a crime), and engages Ridolph to solve it. In one case, Ridolph has the terrible problem, when he falls for a swindle and tries to get out of it with bank account intact. Often relations between Ridolph and the client deteriorate as the problem is solved, and Magnus has to take extraordinary measures to collect his fee or otherwise get satisfaction.

These are not stories where there is a huge array of facts and the reader can solve the puzzle alongside Ridolph. Often at the climax, Ridolph reveals a crucial fact that has not yet been revealed to the reader. The entertainment is from the interesting problems and characters, plus the unusual nature of many of the solutions. I only even tried to "guess" what the solution would be once (murderer in a murder mystery) and though I felt pretty sure of my choice, it was based on intuition rather than a logical solution (but ended up correct!).

The first two stories are the weakest, and the last three stories are the best. Two of the last three (Spa to the Stars, and The Kokhod Warriors) feature problems that Ridolph solves as a troubleshooter, and incorporate a strong humor element (not present in most of the stories). I was laughing out loud for several minutes at the climaxes of those two stories. The last story is a murder mystery set on an isolated space station with no "law." The owner asks the vacationing Ridolph to help him solve the murder, but there are no fingerprints or clues or CSI stuff. There are thirteen suspects and they are limited to interviewing them and analyzing their responses to questions and the attitudes of their cultures toward murder. Then when they identify the murderer and get a confession, they have to decide what to do about it! An excellent story.

I had read a few of these in high school, but remembered little beyond that Ridolph was a troubleshooter and I liked the stories. I'm glad they lived up to my memories, and I could finally read them all! I really liked this, five stars out of five from me.

Minor bonus observation--It wasn't intentional, but somehow I picked two books in a row with a man posed smoking a cigar on the cover (admittedly there is a substitute for the cigar on the Groucho cover).


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## The Hooded Claw

Adventures of TinTin: Cigars of the Pharaoh, by Herge

While idly poking around at what was available on Kindle, I was pleased to see a few TinTin comics (or "graphic novels" as they are often known). I was introduced to these as a kid, when they appeared in a magazine called Children's Digest. Looking at them now, I'm amazed that I could read them when printed in the small format pages of that book. Being nearsighted must have helped! Anyway, I enjoyed them, and have shamelessly used B&N as a library a couple of times in seeing that these still had their old magic even now that I'm an adult. I decided a couple of years ago I wanted to bite the bullet and get my own copies of all of them (or at least buy them till I got sick of 'em!), but I was intimidated by the massive number of large thin paperbacks required if you want to get them in a size viewable by my middle-aged eyes. They are available in compact editions that combine several stories in one book, but the pages are too small to enjoy (in my opinion). I'd finally decided I would wait till they were available on iPad or other digital form, and had hoped that the big budget movie (which put me to sleep, I've never watched it past the first few minutes) would spur that. Seeing a few of these available in Kindle form gave me hope.

My memory was that Cigars of the Pharoah wasn't one of the stronger TinTins, and rereading it confirmed that fear. The story does have the usual action-on-every page formula (necessary because the original strips were published in a newspaper, and it was thought necessary to end in a cliffhanger so readers would buy the next paper). But the master adversary is barely seen, the action is all TinTin versus his minions, and it seems more just a series of things happening to him than a story. He sort of falls into breaking up the drug smuggling ring, rather than solving a mystery. If you read the thing with a critical eye, there are logic and realism problems with the story--Incredible coincidences, and a shift of scenery from the Arab Middle East to India that seems more like they were across the county line from each other than the significant distance apart they are. But I don't read these for logic, and I cheerfully overlook these peccadillos.

The conversion to digital form is done as well as you could ask for. They are beautiful and colorful on my ipad. I didn't try reading them on eInk, I suspect they wouldn't go so well there.

There are a couple of other TinTins available on Kindle, including one I haven't read, but they are odd choices, and all from early in the series. I suspect a loosening of copyright restrictions is the reason we see these.

Off-topic--If you enjoy TinTin, or would like to try him, and have Amazon Prime, there is a wonderful animated series called The Adventures of TinTin available for free streaming. Highly recommended!

I'm glad to see any TinTin on Kindle, but this is not the strongest representative of the species. Best I can give it is three and a half stars out of five. I am eagerly hoping for Red Rackham's Treasure, or better yet, Prisoners of the Sun (one of the coolest covers ever, it wowed me even in the small format of that old Kid's magazine!).


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

I'm a big TinTin fan also. I have the complete set of books, as well as the animated series from a few years ago.

Mike


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## legion

I'm here to cheer you on!
What an eclectic group of books so far.

I have to work myself up to 80 myself--going for 25 this year (aimed for 50 last year and failed ).

Anyway, *waves pom-poms* go THC!


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## The Hooded Claw

Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating, by Leslie Brunetta and Catherine L. Craig

I traveled last week, and this was one of those trips that allowed for little reading time. But I started this book on the airplane flying home, and finished it tonight.

This one intrigued me when I saw it on Amazon. I have read other books about how creatures adapt to their environment, and "clever" ways that they live, and looked forward to reading about spiders. This book does cover that sort of thing, which made me happy. I was less happy with the extensive coverage of genetics and evolution--Pretty technical stuff, and more than I wanted to know about that part of the subject.

The book does cover the evolution of spiders, and a lot of that is quite interesting. There are pages and pages of stuff on how DNA and mutations work, and though I learned some new stuff from that which stuck with me, I found it quite a slog. Not lightweight stuff. Compensating for this, a lot of the stuff about spider silk, webs, and how the spiders, webs, and prey interact was fascinating (details and tidbits coming). I give the book four stars, but just barely. If you start salivating at the idea of a discussion of DNA and mutations, you'll rate it higher of course.

Scientists and engineers are intrigued by the strength and springiness of spider silk, and are trying to figure out how to replicate it. So far, the book points out, they "...have spent millions of dollars trying to copy what spiders accomplish on a budget of dead bugs." Spiders aren't the only ones who build silk webs, however. Some mites build silk webs to defend against predators, and bees use silk to reinforce the wax cells of their honeycombs. There are other examples.

The earliest spider-like fossil is Attercopus, about 400 million years old. The Attercopus fossil doesn't meet the requirements to be called a spider, but apparently had silk and is very similar in many ways to the most primitive surviving spiders. The name Attercopus comes from an old English word for spider, and I remembered Tolkein using "attercop" in a poem or somewhere in LoTR (this book talks about Charlotte's Web several times, but doesn't mention Tolkein). After a brief search on Google, I can link to Tolkein's Attercop poem:
http://www.tolkien-archives.com/library/poetry/attercop.html

The earliest spiders don't appear to have used silk for web traps, but to protect eggs, line burrows, and in some cases to set out as a sort of trip wire to alert the spider that something small and edible was touching the silk line. Spiders got along with these uses for over 100 million years before they began using silk as a trap.

The author doesn't confine literary discussions to Charlotte, but points out that Spiderman's artificial web shooters squirt silk long distances, which no real spider does, and by relocating his silk generation to his wrists, avoid Peter Parker having to have a flap in the seat of his superhero tights (spider silk organs are located on the spider's derriere...). Though spiders can't give propulsive force to silk, many spiders are quite clever about using air currents to give silk a lift (sensing these air currents is one of the reason for small bristles and hairs on the bodies of some spiders). And some types of spider throw their silk as a lasso or bola to capture prey.

Spiders use their silk for a lot of different purposes that are discussed in the text. Some examples of silk use or other stuff in the book that interested me are:

Lampshade spiders, which construct a densely-woven web that appears much like a lampshade. The spider hides inside, shielded from predators, and when a prey insect lands on the outside, the spider will sink its fangs into the victim through the "lampshade" without even having to reveal itself.

You've probably read about and maybe even seen, baby spiders constructing "balloons (more like kites) of silk to transport themselves to new homes. At least one species of adult spider is able to do this also.

There are social spiders that live in a huge community and construct a massive web, often covering a tree. Community members don't eat each other (most spiders aren't that discriminating), share web maintenance, and cooperate to ensure the young are fed.

The European Water Spider constructs a tightly-woven sheet of silk under water and actively carries air down beneath the sheet to construct an air chamber that lets it live underwater!

Some spiders construct a web, let insects get caught in it, but do not eat them, and instead focus on eating other spiders that come on pirate expeditions to try to "steal" the kill. The authors describe this as like a fisherman using minnows as bait--Not to catch other fish, but to catch other fishermen! A related species of spider has learned to vibrate its legs in particular patterns and will conduct its own pirate raids into other spider's webs, but uses its legs to create a vibration that simulates a captured prey insect. The vibrating spider then ambushes the poor web-owner who is expecting to walk up to a helpless lunch!

Wheel spiders live in steep sand dunes, where their main enemy is a predatory wasp. The wheel spiders have no hope of outrunning a wasp once spotted, but they will often escape an attacking wasp by sticking their legs out like the spokes of a wheel and rolling on their sides down the sand dune like a ferris wheel gone amok.

Before writing Charlotte's Web, E. B. White read at least two books of the most heavy-duty arachnology (spider science) books of the time, and corresponded with one of the authors, sending the scientist a long list of behavior questions so that he could describe Charlotte's activities accurately.

Spiders didn't begin constructing the beautiful orb webs that we associate with them until flying insects became common, most likely during the Jurassic, while dinosaurs dominated the earth. Oddly, cobwebs, which seem primitive and crude to us humans, didn't appear till later. The spiders that build them have been more successful than orb web spiders (in terms of numbers of spiders out there). The problem with the beautiful orbs is that just as we have learned to see them, so have wasps that prey on spiders! Counts of wasp victims show that many more orb spiders are killed by wasps than cobweb spiders, even though cobweb spiders are much more numerous.

Back to the orb spiders, they do a number of clever things to their webs to make it easier to ensnare flying insects. They are too complex to try to describe in these "word bites", but are interesting to read about. It is something of an arms race between the spiders and the flying insects.

One builder of bullet-proof vests wanted to use the high elasticity of spider silk to stop bullets. This is very possible, but unfortunately, the silk flexes so much that the bullet and the "vest" would go all the way through the target's body before they sprang back through the entry wound. A technical success, but not one that would help the gunshot victim much! So this line of research was abandoned....

From the above, you can see that there is lots of interesting stuff in this book (I've only scratched the surface above), but you pay for it by several chapters on genetics and mutations! I recommend the book only for hard-core science buffs.


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## The Hooded Claw

poisonarrowpubs said:


> I'm here to cheer you on!
> What an eclectic group of books so far.
> 
> I have to work myself up to 80 myself--going for 25 this year (aimed for 50 last year and failed ).
> 
> Anyway, *waves pom-poms* go THC!


I hope you make and surpass the 25! I'm about 40% through my eighty books, with a bit over 1/3 of the year gone, but it is time to read another doorstopper!

Jmiked, glad to see another Tintin fan out there. I am going through the animated series on Netflix now.


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## The Hooded Claw

Speaking of Tintin books on Kindle, I noticed a few days ago that The Blue Lotus was available. I bought it, but it had only about 1/4 of the pages present! I noticed that it disappeared from Amazon a day or so later. Then today, I noticed that The Black Island is available. I presume they will fix The Blue Lotus, and put it back. Looks like we are going to get all the Tintins on Kindle! They seem to be starting from the beginning, though appear to have skipped "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets" and "The Broken Ear."



Speaking again of Tintin, I didn't notice till later that after reading two books with a man smoking a cigar on the cover, the Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh" book not only had cigars in the title, but there are some cigars on the cover at lower right! (admittedly unsmoked). I didn't plan it, but it is funny.


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## The Hooded Claw

(link to DTB, no Kindle version available)

St. Peter's, by Keith Miller

This is a fairly compact "do-it-all" book trying to tell everything about how the basilica of St. Peter's in Rome came to be, and to give some view of what it is today, including both the buildings and the interior and exterior decorations.

The author writes: "I have deliberately tried to make this book a kind of Frankenstein's monster in which elements of cultural and political history, architectural criticism, travel writing, etc., combine and lurch into life." Miller succeeded, and this book combines threads from a variety of areas. As a card-carrying genre hopper, I found this approach worth reading. There is a lot to like about the book. Miller covers numerous topics in a fairly small short book, and I feel I understand a lot of the history and culture better now than I did before. St. Peter's has been used to represent a lot of different things in about one and a half millenia as people changed and the Church changed, and Miller works heroically to make it clear to readers (such as me) without in-depth background in Church history or in Catholicism.

I read the book as part of preparing for a trip to Italy (including my first trip to Rome) this Fall, and I think it has been really helpful to me. There's enough good information in here that I'm actually thinking of taking this physical book with me in my luggage on the trip. That is quite a testimonial from a guy who is used to carrying a thousand books in his Kindle.

It's not all wine and roses, though. This is not a light read, and Miller's style, notably using a graduate school-level vocabulary, makes the reading harder. I'm ahead of the crowd on having a large store of words at my disposal, but I found myself repeatedly wanting to click on words to check the definition! But I'll have to wait for a Kindle version to do that. This was a real problem, I often found myself wondering if I should break my concentration and stop reading to look a word up, or just "wing it" with what I thought it meant based on context. Also, the book (which is fairly compact, and could fit in a large jacket pocket) is seriously lacking in large scale illustrations showing the interior and exterior of the basilica, especially in relation to other stuff. In the introduction there is one double-page spread with a floor plan with a few key features tagged by numbers, but I had to go to other sources (mainly web sites) to find most of the large-scale illustrations that would help me understand the descriptions in the text, especially for the relation of the Church with other buildings nearby. Fortunately, the book has photographs of some individual features in the church, and reproductions of some old prints, that have more limited subjects and are more useful. Occasionally the flow of the book wanders....The author mentioned the one "rota" in the rebuilt church (see below for a brief explanation), then shifts to a brief summary of over a thousand years of political-religious history. The history discussion goes on for ten pages, and I unsuccessfully flipped back a few pages twice to see what I'd missed about the rota. A full ten pages after they are introduced, the author explains what rota were used for (the history lesson admittedly ties into this).

I don't like marking paper books up, and it would still require a lot of thumbing through the book to find highlights, so I'm not going to be able to do a good selection of highlights and tidbits as I usually do. I did find the history of the church interesting. This is not the original St. Peter's, it is a replacement for a church allegedly built by Emperor Constantine back in the early 300s. It was built on what was thought to be the burial site of Saint Peter, the original Pope (more on that later). By the 1400s, it had become rather decrepit, and a decision to rebuild was made, but this was controversial and expensive. The reconstruction ended up taking over two hundred years, with many "chief architects" and multiple design changes. For quite a long time St. Peter's was two separate partially-complete ruins, part the old church, and part the new. The expense of the reconstruction was partly paid by selling indulgences, and Martin Luther specifically singled out the construction of the "insatiable basilica" as leading to the Church doing corrupt and unethical things to raise money, and impoverishing the rest of Europe.

There is a lot of stuff about the symbolism in the church, and things done in construction and decoration to make certain points. It is interesting, but most is too convoluted for me to explain briefly and successfully. One of the more interesting ones was the deliberate use of recycled materials in construction, not (usually) for economy or some sort of ecological sense, but for symbolic reasons. There are some columns that were long claimed to be from the destroyed Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (it is doubtful that this is really where they came from) incorporated, probably because of an idea of Christianity being an extension and (presumed) improvement on Judaism, and this fulfilling prophecies about rebuilding the Temple (I'm confident most Jews disagreed with this idea!). These columns were considered important enough that they were used on the original "Old St. Peter's" and used again in the new reconstruction a thousand years later. Something I was unaware of was a circle of stone called a rota, which was used in imperial coronations.

I've never been to St. Peter's, but I've been to Westminister Abbey in London, and marveled at all the tombs and memorials within. St. Peter seems to be set up the same way, with tombs and memorials to all sorts of individuals, some seemingly way out of place. I was shocked to read that there is a memorial honoring Bonnie Prince Charlie (yep, the Scottish guy!) in Rome. Some of the displays honor Eastern Orthodox Church notables. These things are kept very up to date, they are not old, several record events as recent as the 1960s.

In the mid-Twentieth Century, excavations under the foundation of the Church were done in great secrecy, and it was found that Peter probably is NOT buried in the traditional place, though there are other remains that quite possibly do belong to Peter. The excavations and what was found are described in some detail, and it is interesting--It reveals a lot about relations between pagans and Christians before Christianity became the official religion of the Empire.

Highly recommended to those who want to understand this building and place, probably because they are visiting it soon. Not so good for general consumption, and definitely not a light recreational read. It does have some significant problems, as I mentioned above. But it was valuable for me as a future visitor to the place, and I give it four stars out of five.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Urine Dance of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico, by Captain John Bourke, Third Cavalry, US Army

If I had class, I'd skip the obvious urine jokes, but I have no class, so I'll just offer up this blurb for the book: "The most exciting book on urine you'll ever read!" In the unlikely event any KBers do read it, I'm sure that will be true. Now that I've got that out of my system, I must state that it was not Beavis and Buttheadish grotesquery, nor even mere sniggering curiosity, that lead me to find and read this book (which I'd never heard of a few days ago).

If you've been paying attention in the KB Photo Forum, you know that I returned from taking my stepfather on a short trip to Arizona about a week ago. Our group leader on this (organized group trip) praised a book called "With Crook on the Border" written by an Army Captain named John Bourke during the Indian Wars of the late 1800s. Contrary to what you might think, both General Crook (subject of the title) and Captain Bourke had considerable interest in and empathy for the Indians they were fighting, tried to befriend as many as they could, and Captain Bourke did a lot of anthropology-style work trying to learn about various tribes and record what he could learn of their culture.

When I returned from Arizona, I actually used the Kindle sample system as it is intended to be used, and sampled "Crook on the Border." I liked what I saw, so ordered a copy, and I will be reading it and reporting on it here soon. In digging into more info about Captain Bourke, I learned of the existence of this shorter book. It is a LOT shorter, only about a dozen pages total. This compares to the Crook Book (hee hee), which qualifies as a "doorstopper" of over 500 pages. Anyway, when I learned of this book, THAT was when the sniggering curiosity cut in and took over. For 99 cents, I ordered a copy.

I went into this thinking that the Zuni were perhaps pulling Bourke's leg. I wondered if they concocted an elaborate show that they thought would disgust a snoopy and ignorant interloper who had no business looking at their private customs. Or perhaps it was just a gag, even if they weren't actually going to try to fool Bourke. That feeling got reinforced as I began reading. The ceremony begins with what Crook easily recognized as a sort of caricature of a Mexican Catholic service, complete with an Indian dressed as a priest and acting silly while his fellows laughed. But Bourke describes the rest of the ceremony, and it did involve bringing in pots of what his nose confirmed was urine, and with numerous Zuni slurping it up with gusto and announcing how delicious it was. I was grateful to read that Bourke watched, but didn't participate.

In short, Bourke watched the ceremony and was convinced it was authentic. The Zuni told him why they did it, and it was a reason that he accepted (you'll have to read the book if you want to find out why). Bourke went on to elaborate on their practice, and pointed out that in the Christian Bible, 2 Kings 18:27 was illuminating.

Short interesting read, graphic enough to get the point across but not be disgusting. I don't really see this as having enough substance to give it a rating as I usually do, but I'm quite satisfied that I purchased and read the book. Crook on the Border is coming up soon.

But before I dive into a lengthy nonfiction book, I wanted some fun and light adventure. That often means it is time for Captain Grimes, and yes he is back!









(image only, not a link)

To Keep the Ship, by A. Bertram Chandler

Up front, I have to say that this is one of the odder John Grimes books! It really encompasses two separate adventures, one of which happens as Grimes is trying to go home from the first. When last we left Grimes, he was struggling to make a go of it as a small businessman with his own very small interstellar ship. He becomes embroiled in the thing most businessmen fear even more than an IRS audit--He gets entangled in a lawsuit. To ensure he won't flee jurisdiction of the court, his ship is secured so that he has no access to it and can't use it. This gives him a severe cash flow problem, and he is forced to take a job as a watchkeeper looking after another ship that is awaiting sale. The boring job becomes much more exciting than he wants when revolutionaries hijack the ship and force him at gun point to transport troops to support a rebellion on a different planet. Being Grimes, he entertainingly extricates himself from this pickle, but he is now far from where his own ship is still tied up in a lawsuit, and he needs to get the ship for which he is responsible back to where it belongs. On the way home, there is an accident that I find stretches my credulity, even in a science fiction story. In short, his temporary ship becomes infested with little homonculi that look like human women. Unfortunately, they really like Grimes. To be specific, they think he looks delicious! With nobody to help him, he must deal with a ship infested with small, dumb, and aggressive little carnivores. This episode only takes 20 percent or so of the book, and I rather wish that Chandler had found a different way to pad the length of the book, or at least a different way to infest the ship with hostile animals.

The first part of the book is a solid three and a half stars from me, but the bizarre concluding episode drags it down to three stars.

Not available by itself on Kindle and long out of print in paper, but you can get it as a Kindle collection with several other novels here:


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## The Hooded Claw

On the Border With Crook, by John G. Bourke

As mentioned in a previous post, this book was recommended by our local guide on a trip in Arizona, so I picked it up. It is long out of copyright, and there are numerous versions available on Kindle. I chose the version above, not the cheapest, but a sample showed that the conversion wasn't too bad, and there was a separate short book about General Crook by the same author included. Once I'd bought it, I found that the conversion is tolerable, but not perfect. There are moderately frequent errors, usually minor such as a stray extra letter inserted in a line, or two words run together, or even a word split into two parts. Not to the point of being intolerable, but I did notice it. Other conversions might be better.

Despite niggling about the conversion, I liked this book a lot. It is very readable, and in many ways reminded me of the Eric Horne book (remember the one about the English butler?) that I started the year with. Much of it reads like a running conversation or yarn-spinning coming from the mouth of Bourke himself, rather than a book, even one written in the first person. There is a lot of description of what Arizona was like after the Civil War, and the expected extensive descriptions of being on campaign and the author's experiences. The book repeats a number of stories told by other people, many of which fall in the category of "tall tales". Both the author and General Crook were products of their time, and hold some opinions which can at best be called paternalistic now. But they were NOT anti-Indian, had great respect for Indians, and explicitly stated that most of the "Indian troubles" came from dishonest or even illegal acts of the white man. In addition to the campaigns against the Apache, the book covers the northern combats against the Sioux (same conflict that included "Custer's Last Stand"). I happily rate the book four and a half stars out of five. Recommended for anyone who finds the subjects intriguing. Rather further wax eloquent about it, I am going to post some excerpts.

He was a Russian or Polynesian or a Turk or a Theosophist or something, he had lived in so many portions of the world's surface that I never could keep track of him.

Some people learn quickly, and others learn slowly, and preachers, schoolteachers, and military people most slowly of all.

_[The Indians]_, that race which Americans have so frequently fought, so generally mismanaged, and so completely failed to understand.

The age of the garbage piles _[of Tucson]_ was distinctly defined by geological strata. In the lowest portion of all one could find arrowheads and stone axes, indicative of a pre-Columbian origin; superimposed conformably over these, as the geologists used to say, were skins of Chile Colorado, great pieces of rusty spurs, and other relics of the Conquistadores, while high above all, stray cards, tomato cans, beer bottles, and similar evidences of a higher and nobler civilization told just how long the Anglo-Saxon had called the territory his own.

_[When Jack Long and his spendthrift wife decided they were incompatible]_ "if you don't like me, said Mrs. Long one day, "give me a divorce and one-half of what you have, and I'll leave you."
"N'uff sed," was Jack's reply, "here goes."
The sum total in the Long exchequer was not quite $200. it was divided into two even piles, one of which was handed over to his spouse. The doors of the wardrobe stood open, disclosing all of Jack's regal rainment. He seized a pair of trousers, tore them leg from leg, and then served in much the same way every coat, waistcoat, or undergarment he owned. One pile of remnants was assigned to the stupefied woman, who ten minutes previously had been demanding a separation.
Before another ten had passed, her own choicest treasures had shared the same fate, and her ex-liege lord was devoting his attention to breaking the cooking stove, with its superstructure of pots and pans and kettles, into two little hillocks of battered fragments; and no sooner through with that than at work sawing the table and chairs in half and knocking the solitary mirror into smithereens.
"Thar yer are," said Jack Ye've got half th' money yer kin now tek yer pick of what's left."

In Arizona it was not customary to pull a pistol on a man; that was regarded as an act both unchristian-like and wasteful of time--Arizonans nearly always shot out of the pocket without drawing their weapons at all.

"Go thou with God," was the gentle (Hispanic) mode of saying farewell, to which the American guest would respond as he shifted the revolvers on his hip and adjusted the quid of tobacco in his mouth: "Wa-al, I reckon I'll git."

With a stupidity strictly consistent with the whole history of our contact with the aborigines, the people of the United States have maintained a bitter and unrelenting warfare against a people whose name was unknown to them. The Apache is not an Apache; the name "Apache" does not occur in the language of the Tinneh, by which name...our Indian prefers to designate himself...And as the Spaniards have always insisted upon the use of a name which the Apache have as persistently repudiated; and as the Americans have followed blindly in the footsteps of the Castillian, we must describe this tribe under the name of the Apache of Arizona, although it is much like invading England by way of Ireland, and writing of the Anglo-Saxons under the Celtic designation of "Sassenach."

No Apache would touch fish....When we first became apprised of this peculiarity of the Apache appetite, we derived all the benefit from it that we could in driving away the small boys who used to hang around our mess canvas in the hope of getting a handful of sugar...All we had to do was set a can of salmon or lobster in the middle of the canvas, and the sight of that alone would drive away the bravest Apache boy that ever lived; he would regard as uncanny the mortals who would eat such vile stuff.

Some of the snake stories of Arizona may have been a trifle exaggerated, but then we had no fish, and a man must have something upon which to let his imagination have full swing.

Darrel Duppa was one of the queerest specimens of humanity, as his ranch was one of the queerest examples to be found in Arizona, and I might add in New Mexico and Sonora as well....Three bullet wounds, received in three different fights with the Apache, attested his grit, though they might not be accepted as equally conclusive evidence of good judgement...the best answer I could get to my queries was that the Apache had attacked him at the moment he was approaching the banks of the Agua Fria at this point, and after he had repulsed them he thought he would stay there merely to let them know he could do it.

Man's inhumanity to man is an awful thing. His inhumanity to trees is scarcely inferior to it....I cannot repress a sentiment of regret that the demands of civilization have caused the denudation of so many square miles of our forests in all parts of the timbered West.

"He ain't a pastry cook," growled Jack, "nor yet a hasty cook, nor a tasty cook, but fur a doggoned nasty cook, I'll back 'm agin' th' hull Pacific Slope." [Jack continued] "Arizona whiskey 's bin plenty good enough fur th' likes of me; it's good 's a hoss liniment, 'n it's good 's a beverage, 'n I've tried it both ways, 'n I know."

If it could only happen so that every man who sold whiskey to an Indian should be killed before sundown, it would be one of the glorious things for the far western country.

It is unaccountable to me that so many of our own countrymen seem desirous of taking a flying trip to Europe when at their feet, as it were, lies a land as full of wonders as any depicted in the fairy tales of childhood.

A most amusing thing occurred at Crook's headquarters, when the Apache chief "Pitone," who had just come up from a mission of peace to the Yuma, and who had a grievance against "Pascual," Chief of the latter tribe, had the telegraph operator send a message to "Pascual" that if he did not do a certain thing he had promised to do, the Apache would go on the warpath and fairly wipe the ground with the Yuma. There couldn't have been a quainter antithesis of the elements of savagery and enlightenment than the presence of that chief in the telegraph office on such a mission.

"...to Americans generally, the aborigine is a nonentity except when he is on the warpath. The moment he concludes to live at peace with the whites, that moment all his troubles begin. Never was there a truer remark than that made by Crook: "The American Indian commands respect for his rights only so long as he inspires terror for his rifle."

Mustaches and beards coated with pendant icicles several inches long and bodies swathed in a raiment of furs and hides made this expedition of cavalry resemble a long column of Santa Clauses on their way to the polar regions to lay in a new supply of Christmas gifts.

Our cook had first to chop with an axe the bacon which overnight had frozen hard as marble; frequently the hatchet or axe was broken in the contest....all the forks, spoons, and knives had to be run through hot water or hot ashes to keep them from freezing the skin off the tongue. The same rule had to be observed with the bits when our horses were bridled.

"Ute John" was credited by most people with having murdered his own grandmother and drunk her blood, but in my opinion, the reports to his detriment were greatly exaggerated, and he was harmless except when sober, which wasn't often.

Pie, of any kind, cannot be made except under the most aesthetic surroundings; amid the chilling restraints of savagery and barbarism, pie is simply an impossibility.

This use of an ear trumpet by a so-called savage Apache struck me as very ludicrous, but a week after I saw at San Carlos a young baby sucking vigorously from a rubber tube attached to a glass nursing bottle. The world does move.

Greed and avarice on the part of the whites--In other words the almight dollar--Is at the bottom of nine-tenths of all our Indian trouble.


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## The Hooded Claw

I have a busy schedule right now, and my reading has gotten ahead of my posting! But I've finished two more books, first this one:



This is a book filled with short articles on different Latin words, their origins, and what they tell us about how the ancient Romans lived and changed over time. Highly recommended if you find that an intriguing topic. I picked it up over a year ago when it was free during a promotion, and pulled it out of the backlist at last. I've been reading it on my Android phone when I had a minute, the format of short articles made it perfect for pulling out to read for ten minutes! More detailed commentary later, when I can type on a keyboard.



Jmiked and NogDog both sung this book's praises, so I shelled out for it last night, and already read it during a plane trip today! I like it, though not as entranced as Mike and Nog. More on it later.



I was enjoying the spy book and read quickly, so had time to get about 10% into this book while flying! Very interesting so far, some of the viewpoints expressed irritate me, but part of the point of reading a book like this is to understand other people's perspective.


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## The Hooded Claw

If my comments on the above book (honestly, i thought it was ordinary or maybe not quite that good) filled you with passionate desire to buy, but the three dollars and change price put you off, it has dropped to 99 cents.

Actually, looks like all Prologue Books titles have dropped to 99 cents. Good chance to grab a bunch of cheap mysteries and westerns, though my two experiences with the publisher left me lukewarm to them.

I have seven books to write up for this thread, did a lot of reading while I traveled the last two weeks. I'll post at least a couple of them today!


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## The Hooded Claw

Ancient Rome in so Many Words, by Christopher Francese

I'm preparing for a trip to Italy that focuses on ancient Roman stuff, so my reading has taken a slight Romanesque turn this year to help me be prepared. I pulled this book out of the TBR pile, I'd acquired it when it was offered for free about two years ago, but never read it till now. I read it differently than the way I do most of my reading. I put this book into the Kindle app on my Android phone, and pulled it out when I had a chance to read for a few minutes, usually during my lunch break, sometimes when waiting at a doctor's office, or after eating in a restaurant when I didn't want to leave yet. This worked very well for this particular book, which is composed entirely of short articles on a series of different Latin words. The articles follow a consistent pattern; they are grouped by topic, such as family, legal, entertainment, etc., each article begins with a series of quotations from Latin writers using the words (each one is dated, and often the dates show how the meaning of the word changed over time), and finally we have the body of the article, which describes how the word was used, talks about institutions, traditions, or practices that are relevant to the word, and sometimes about how the meaning of the word changed. I know nothing of Latin, and there is no need whatsoever to understand Latin to read this book.

This sounds rather dry, but it was surprisingly interesting, and it was a fairly painless way to absorb a lot of information about how the Romans did things. Some of this was fascinating, and showed that ancient people were much like us in many ways, but also looked at the world very differently sometimes. Examples of some interesting stuff from the book follow:

Roman babies were soothed and calmed by rattles just like babies today, but the rattles were different and had some special significance. These rattles were called _crepundia_, coming logically enough from the verb for "to rattle." But where our rattles are mass-produced, the Roman ones were highly individualized, and would have distinctive figurines or marks, and often included the name of the father or mother. Since they were unique to each child, _crepundia_ could be used to identify misplaced babies, mothers who were compelled by poverty to give their children away would send a special _crepundia_ with the child in the hope that a grown child might somehow return and be recognized. Improbable reunions of lost or abandoned children with their parents, brought about by a recognized _crepundia_, were a stock feature of Greek and Roman comedy. Apparently this happened in real life, but was EXTREMELY rare, as you'd expect.

In modern English, we have the word pedagogue for a teacher or schoolmaster. This comes from a Roman term (taken from Greek) paedagogus. Despite the modern meaning, the paedagogus was intended more as a means of behavior control and preventing youngsters from doing stupid things than as a formal educator. For youngsters who were from extremely powerful families, this could be important. Apparently twelve year old Commodus became angry because his bath had been drawn too cool. Commodus was on his way to becoming Emperor, so rather than just throwing a hissy fit, Commodus ordered that the slave in charge of drawing his bath be thrown in a furnace. His paedagogus was more even-tempered, but still unwilling to openly contradict his charge, so a sheepskin was thrown into the furnace, the unfortunate slave was whisked away to a (hopefully) happier place, and the smell convinced young Commodus that his orders had been obeyed. Usually the paedagogus didn't have such a powerful youngster as his responsibility, and could be more stern. So the popular image of the Paedagogus was a strict and humorless guardian. When this custom died out, use of the term didn't, because some of the early Christian writers used paedagogus to illustrate how we should be guided to a perfect Christian lifestyle.

A castra was a Roman fortified camp, came to refer to any fortified place, with a smaller one being known as a castellum, and variations of these words still endure today, in the word castle. Former Roman military camps in England were refered to with the suffix "-caster" or "-chester" on the place name, and thus we have Winchester, Lancaster, and other places. In Spanish, castro refers to any fortified place, and people who lived near such a place were often known as "Castro" (presumably the forefathers of Fidel were from such a place!).

These are just a few examples, but it is a unique idea, well-written, readable, and I enjoyed it greatly. Four and a half stars from me. The author begins the Introduction by mentioning that he modeled this book after a book called "America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America" and this may replace the Roman book on my cell phone!



You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger, by Roger Hall


Spoiler



(note that on the cover illustration, two soldiers with guns out and fingers on the trigger are posed so that the standing man is in danger of taking the top off his buddy's head, while the lower man is about to cause his friend to go off half-cocked)



This book came to my attention thanks to Jmiked and NogDog, who both praised it in the strongest possible terms. They spoke so highly of the book that I bought it the night before embarking on an out of state trip, and completed it during a flight to the West Coast next morning. The book is a memoir of the World War II service of a young man who volunteered for the OSS, which is generally regarded as the spiritual forefather of the CIA. The book is a light-hearted one, and the author's cynicism is evident at being a part of a huge bureaucracy which was trying to train and organize young men to commit sabotage and raise havoc, which is about as unbureaucratic a behavior as it is possible to have. A few quotations can establish the general tone of the book:

_[it] was guarded night and day by a battalion of trigger-happy Marines. They seldom fired more than twice before yelling "Halt!"

My mind began reading O.S.S. as "Officers Suicide Section."

On the check list, "Things to do before going overseas," some disciple of Charles Addams had seen to it that the final slot would be filled with "Make Your Will."_

The author underwent extensive training in infiltration and sneaking, But the seriousness of what he is doing is illustrated when he is issued a "suicide pill" (rubber coated!)Possibly the most interesting part of the book is actually the descriptions of training, much of it in the States, where the author and his classmates were sent out to infiltrate and spy on American factories and installations that didn't know this was an exercise!

I liked it, but wasn't as enthralled as Mike and Nog. Still gets a solid four stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask, by Anton Treuer

This book poses a series of questions that the author (an Indian himself of course) believes many non-Indian Americans would like to have frank answers to. There are two weaknesses to this, one of which the author freely admits, namely that no one person can speak for all Indians. Obviously true, and the author encourages other Indians to write similar books with their own viewpoints. The other problem is also unavoidable; Not all the questions I'd like to ask are answered in the book, and it answers many questions I wouldn't have asked. But occasionally, these are valuable for raising something I had never even thought of!

Truth in advertising here, just as Treuer says he can't speak for all Indians, I definitely can't speak for all non-Indians, or even all Caucasians. I come from a state where a great many people are either full tribal members or at least have a significant Indian heritage. I'm not a tribal member, and don't consider myself an Indian, I grew up knowing many Indians, I have more than one branch of my family tree that were Indians, and I do have one Indian ancestor who I admire and am very proud of being related to (the author cautions that he views this as potentially a dangerous claim, akin to "some of my best friends are _____.") So this whole subject isn't as foreign to me as it is for many. I still don't know much about a lot of it, so I benefited from the book, especially since it is written by an Indian from the North-Central US, rather than from the more familiar (to me) tribes now residing in Oklahoma or the Southwest.

After spending too much time introducing the book and explaining my view of it, it is past time to move to the book itself. The book is a series of brief questions, followed by clear, well-written and useful responses. Questions are grouped in categories, such as Terminology, History, Tribal Languages, etc. The book concludes with a section on what to do, and some suggestions for further reading.

I am glad I read the book, many of the opinions expressed irritate me, and it is a good thing that I was irritated, since that forces me to think about my assumptions and beliefs. Some of the issues he raised are ones I have never thought about before, and made me go "Hmm, I never thought of that..." Such as his bristling at the use of Geronimo as a code name for Osama bin Laden by the SEAL team that was hunting him. Once pointed out to me, I agree with his criticism. Others I don't agree with or am indifferent to, and a handful make me genuinely angry. All these are good things to happen.

Well-written, and clearly conveying the author's views, this is a worthwhile book for any non-Indian who wants to get a different view and have his mind stretched a bit. Four stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Haunting of America: From the Salem Witch Trials to Harry Houdini, by William J. Birnes and Joel Martin

The book description on Amazon contains claims of great things. To wit:

_"...the only book to tell the story of how paranormal events influenced and sometimes even drove political events. In a narrative retelling of American history that begins with the Salem Witch Trials of the seventeenth century, Martin and Birnes unearth the roots of America's fascination with the ghosts, goblins, and demons that possess our imaginations and nightmares. The authors examine the political history of the United States through the lens of the paranormal and investigate the spiritual events that inspired public policy:"_

If you are paying attention when I post here, you know that I would LOVE for mysterious stuff such as UFOs or ghosts to be proven, or at least to get some credible evidence that they exist. You also know that I have high standards of proof, and am generally disappointed when I check into any books on the subject trying to get my hopes raised. I understand that many psychologists view doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results as a sign of insanity, but I'll have to leave that judgement to y'all...

So after reading the description, I viewed this book with high hopes. I was looking for my knowledge of American history to be stretched, or at least tweaked a little. Alas, I was disappointed. As I'll describe below, there was little evidence presented that supernatural events or beliefs were big influences on our history. I still found the book an interesting read, even though my interested and hopeful skepticism about ghosts and the supernatural remains intact.

I have just deleted an excessively lengthy critique of the first two chapters of the book. In short, I found them unimpressive, typified by a supposed angelic apparition to George Washington during the Winter at Valley Forge. Even the book's author notes that there was no mention of this apparition till Washington had been dead for over sixty years, and we have nothing specific from Washington about the apparition, not even a written eyewitness account by a known (or even unknown) historical figure that says Washington described the encounter himself. I didn't buy it, and neither should you. Other than an okay description of The Salem Witch Trials, the first two chapters are very weak. But that's only thirty percent of the book, and things improve from there.

The book talks about the rise of the Spiritualist movement--To be clear, these were (and are) people who believe that mediums can summon the spirits of the dead for conversation and interaction. This became a major movement only in 1848, when some children in New York claimed to be able to talk to spirits, and were great popular successes. The book talks in considerable detail about them and people of similar beliefs who followed them. Here we do get a legitimate tie into American politics. A great many early spiritualists were women. It seems that Spiritualist groups and meetings were among the first places in "proper" American society where women could take a leadership role and speak in public without being viewed as upstarts or tarts. A career as a spiritualist (they regularly gave seances or public appearances for financial consideration) was one of the few ways a woman could become financially independent. The book suggests some connection between some of the early feminist leaders and spiritualism, but gives little evidence, and suggests that as feminism became more mainstream, many feminist leaders distanced themselves from spiritualism.

The book talks extensively about President Lincoln, including describing a dream by Lincoln that appears in the movie Lincoln. There are also descriptions of several dreams and visions Lincoln had regarding his assassination. Mary Todd Lincoln's ventures into spiritualism and patronage of "spirit photographers" who would on demand provide photographs of their client in the presence of ghostly figures such as this shot:










The book describes a twenty year-old medium named Nettie Colburn who claimed that her seances had great influence on President Lincoln, encouraging him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, but sources confirming this seem to be few.

The book concludes with a fairly detailed account of some notable spiritualists of the late 19th Century, and a discussion of the quarrel between Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle over spiritualism. This is interesting to read, but doesn't contain much that influenced politics.

A flaw in the book is that there is no mention I remember of Native American occult ideas, and only a brief mention of the occult ideas brought into American consciousness by African slaves.

I did find the book well written, and enjoyed the history of spiritualism from a spiritualist's viewpoint. I was disappointed that the expected big tie-ins to American history were feeble and not well-supported. Provided you don't blindly accept the author's assertions as factual, I recommend the book for anyone wanting an account of this type. Three and a half stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

How do Private Eyes do That?, by Colleen Collins

This book is a collection of materials from the author's blog, entitled Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes. The presentation reflects that, with short stand-alone articles. Some good thought has been given to how to organize this, there are chapters with cutesy art-inspired names such as "Cubism" and "Pointillism" that aren't much help if you're trying to figure out where to look for a specific topic, but are supplemented by subtitles so that the heading chapter name actually reads something like "Cubism: Complex Investigations." Within each chapter are short articles probably taken with little editing from the blog. The beginning of each chapter lists all the articles in that chapter, with hot links to the article. So if you can correctly guess which chapter your sought-after subject is in, you're almost golden. But there's a fair chance you'll end up scanning multiple chapter beginnings if you are looking for something that can't be found using the Kindle's search function. Some genuine good effort is slightly sabotaged by inserting an unneeded fine art connection, but it is an acceptable system for an ebook.

The content is okay, though not awesome. A lot of it deals with how to research a subject on the internet and will mostly be familiar to those who have hung around the internet for awhile and paid attention. There are a bewildering variety of other topics covered, and most of it is somewhat interesting, but not awesome. Some material is repetitive, and there's at least one place where a significant block of material is repeated verbatim in two places. When I read this sort of thing, I am especially interested in "war stories" and there are a few here, and a couple that are very interesting, but the book definitely is not thick with such. If that's what you hope to find, look elsewhere.

There are several interesting things brought up that will probably be new to non-PIs (clearly some of them are new to practicing PIs, because some of the really interesting war stories are bad things that happened to other PIs of the author's acquaintance). One that was new to me, but made awesomely perfect sense once explained is that PIs on surveillance missions (in particular following a client's spouse to gather evidence of infidelity), should absolutely refuse to have contact with the client till the surveillance is done. A horror story about a PI who informed the client that her husband was in a motel with another woman explains that the client came to the hotel and (among other bad things) ran over the philandering husband three times in the motel parking lot! Big lawsuits followed. An interesting, though unsupported statistic from another PI is quoted: 98 percent of female clients who suspect their husband is cheating are correct, and 50 percent of male clients with suspicions of their wives are correct. There are a few ideas that sound like they may be useful to non-PIs, such as the use of a virtual phone number, a trick I'd heard of but hadn't considered the potential usefulness of for people in some situations.

For the average curiosity-driven reader such as myself, the book is okay, but nothing spectacular. The author speaks directly to other detective writers in the text about things that writers shouldn't have the PI do (unless the writer WANTS to get the PI in trouble), and suggests some specific things that can go wrong that might spawn good story ideas. For aspiring writers of detective stories, I think the book is more valuable.

If you have Amazon Prime, you can borrow the book for free (that's what I did). The book is okay for curiosity readers as I said, but I doubt it will bedazzle most. I give it three stars. Writers and wannabe writers should give it stronger consideration, though.



The Pearl Harbor Murders, by Max Allan Collins

This year I've consciously avoided the Nate Heller series that is my favorite from the prolific Mr. Collins in favor of his other work, and this book is another in his "Disaster Series." As always in these books, the protagonist is a historical mystery writer who gets involved in a real murder centered around some major event where the real historical author was present or at least close enough that we can pretend (s)he was present! This time around, it is Edgar Rice Burroughs, who I don't think of as a mystery writer, but it is a good book anyway, and Burroughs really was on Oahu near Pearl Harbor at the time of the infamous surprise attack. The book is divided up into chapters labeled December 5th, 6th, and 7th 1941.

As always, Collins has carefully researched the period and the author, and it shows. I was amused that during the book, a number of small touches made me think "A lot of this color is straight out of 'Tora, Tora, Tora!'" an old movie about the runup to the attack that is a big favorite of mine. It ends up in the afterword that Collins reveals that viewing the old movie was part of his non-reading research! There's also a lot of information about Burroughs in the book, including about the business side of his writing work. I was surprised to find that in the era before Kindles, Burroughs self-published! He printed his own books in the 1930s. A minor thing that I hadn't known was that during World War I, Burroughs wrote a violent and jingoistic Tarzan novel in which beastly Germans destroy Tarzan's home and commit atrocities against those he cares for, so Tarzan goes on an anti-German jihad throwing one German officer into the jaws of a hungry lion. Tarzan and other works were translated into German after the war, and released in Germany, and were incredibly popular for a time, until this novel (Tarzan the Untamed, tone-deafly published in German as "Tarzan the German-Devourer") was released, and the Burroughs name became Mud in Germany. Burroughs tried to repair the damage by writing an explanatory letter and (I read elsewhere when I followed up on this) deliberately introducing heroic and honorable Germans into a couple of books, but it didn't help! Not a big deal, but an interesting bit of background.

Writers, take note! Apparently Burroughs got many of his ideas from dreams, and deliberately would race to his typewriter if he woke up in the night and set a good dream down on paper, these notes were actually used to develop plots and characters in his stories.

It's not just history and color, the mystery in this story is a good one, and worthwhile as a read. There is some detail about Burroughs, but Pearl Harbor and the attack are used only as setting, this is not a book about the Pearl Harbor attack.

This is a good and competent mystery. I still don't like this (or any of the other "Disaster" series) nearly as well as I like the Nate Heller books, but it definitely pleased me. Three and a half stars.



Methusaleh's Children, by Robert A. Heinlein

I can't review this book impartially, as I first read it in my early teens, and along with most of Heinlein's other work, it holds a special fond place in my memory. Nevertheless, I hadn't read this one in a long, long time. At least twenty years, maybe more. I remembered a lot of the little details very well, and of course knew how the book turned out, but I was surprised how much I'd forgotten about how the individual scenes I remembered were put together. I'll admit that I wasn't as impressed by the book as I remember being, but I still liked it. Heinlein has been in the grave for a long time now, but his work still has that ole magic for me!

Without giving away too much, I'll just say that this book is set when group of long-lived, but far from immortal people come out of hiding and reveal themselves to the world at large. Unsurprisingly, they are not loved when they reveal that they are long-lived, but have no "secret" to immortality to share with everyone. The book introduces Lazarus Long, who appears in some of Heinlein's other books, and was my "favorite character" for many years. The results are well worth reading. I'm tempted to reflexively give it five stars, and I truly cannot judge it independently, so I'll just call it four stars and be done with it. But I highly recommend it to science fiction fans who aren't one of that unfortunate subset who just can't stand Heinlein's work! (I know y'all are out there!  )

One more completed book to write up, then I'll be caught up! It is a collection of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, a genre I usually avoid as a fan of "the real thing" as published by Doctor Watson's literary agent, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I'm tired of writing for now, so it will have to be covered another night.


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## The Hooded Claw

If You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger " appealed,  but the $12.99 price put you off, the book has now dropped to $9.99.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

The Hooded Claw said:


> If You're Stepping on my Cloak and Dagger " appealed, but the $12.99 price put you off, the book has now dropped to $9.99.


I'm glad the preorder price was $9.99.

Now if his wife would decide to epublish his spy novel _Nineteen_. Hall toned down his tendency towards humor quite a bit for a pretty straight-forward spy novel.

Mike


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## The Hooded Claw

I've been on strike....Started reading a paper book a few weeks ago, got about halfway through, and was okay with the book, but just stopped reading. I hadn't read a word on Kindle or in a DTB for at least two weeks, when yesterday I learned that a newly-enKindled Jeeves book that I had pre-ordered months ago had been delivered to my Kindle. The opportunity to read a new-to-me Jeeves book jerked me out of my lethargy, and I started the book last night, and finished it tonight. But before I cover that book, there is some unfinished business from a couple of weeks ago to address:



Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Kim Newman

Kim Newman is the author of the book Moriarty, which was possibly my favorite book of 2012. Even so, I generally avoid straight-out Sherlock Holmes pastiches, the only significant exception being a couple of books in Fred Saberhagen's Dracula series where The Great Detective collaborates with Dracula. This is one of my favorite series, but Sherlock Holmes works not by Doyle (or more accurately, books that aren't by Watson and published by his literary agent, Doctor Doyle) are not generally my cup of tea. I insist on the real thing.

Dracula is of course supernatural, and maybe it was the supernatural element (plus the Kim Newman involvement) that led me to purchase this collection of Holmes pastiches with a fantasy or horror connection. The low cost of entry, just $2.99 when I bought it, surely helped also. This is part of a series of similar collections, and I am thinking of picking up others, so clearly I enjoyed the book, though as you'd expect from a collection of stories by varying authors, I didn't uniformly rave about it.

The book starts off with some stories that I found weak--So seriously weak that I considered abandoning it. "The Comfort of the Seine" didn't interest me in the slightest, and the next story, "Lucifer's Footprints" was merely okay. Both of these were unimpressive, but they did at least have a complete story. Several of the authors in the book seemed to feel that their task was done if they merely set up a horrifying situation and ended the story. Fortunately, things pick up. The first sign of hope was "A Country Death." It arguably doesn't belong here...The story involves a rural English detective investigating the unexplained death of an elderly retired detective named Sherlock Holmes. But I liked the story anyway (oddly, several of the reviewers on Amazon actively hated this story!). But it was one that kept me reading. There is a short but decent story by Fred Saberhagen involving Holmes and the abovementioned Count Dracula. The last four stories are the best. I won't reveal much, except to mention that I expected to actively hate, and almost skipped over a story that involved an unexplainedly immortal Sherlock Holmes investigating a case in modern Las Vegas, but I stuck to it, and actually found it to be a good story. The description of Holmes' attire actually made me giggle a bit:

_"He needed to blend in, so he had on a gaudy Hawaiian shirt, canvas shoes, a beige baseball cap and a pair of chinos. It was the best compromise he could manage. He would rather die a hundred deaths than resort to jeans or shorts."_

I was also amused that we learn that Holmes is a devotee of the original Star Trek, and as you'd expect, an admirer of Mister Spock.

Remembering that the editor is Kim Newman, I shouldn't have been surprised that the last story is one of the novellas from Moriarty, mentioned at the beginning of this piece. For a moment, I was excited that I could read a new Moriarty story, but it ends up to be a reprint from the original book. I chose to re-read it, and enjoyed it again, even though I read it thirteen months ago. Good advertisement for the Moriarty book!

I may pick up others in the series, and recommend it for Holmes fans who like the fantastic or supernatural. Four stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Thank You, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse

First, please enjoy this musical interlude....






This old WWII period piece is by George Formby, who I rather enjoy, but the important thing is that he is playing a banjolele....I bring this to your attention because a banjolele is crucial to the plot of Thank You Jeeves. It seems that our narrator and Jeeves' employer, Mr. Bertie Wooster, has become infatuated with the Banjolele, and his continual practicing has gotten him thrown out of his apartment, and worse, is so intolerable it has driven Jeeves to give notice and find new employment!

The standard plot in the Jeeves novels is that Bertie Wooster, who is one of the least bright, but nicest guys in fiction, becomes involved in the romantic and other affairs of his friends (and sometimes not-friends), tries to help matters, makes them worse, and then the complex situation is saved in a single masterful stroke by Bertie's valet Jeeves, who is much, much, smarter than his master. The fun is in the convoluted plots, and most especially in the brilliant writing of author P. G. Wodehouse. This book follows the standard and delivers brilliantly on the expected entertainment. The book is more action-packed than most of the series, in a bit over twenty four hours...

(serious spoilers within)


Spoiler



...Bertie is accosted by the local police three separate times, finds an unexpected beautiful woman in his bed, submits to having his home searched, is kidnapped by the outraged father of a lady friend, presented with an ultimatum to participate in a shotgun marriage, is chased by a knife-wielding maniac, is mistaken for The Devil, saves his life by leaping from the 2nd-story window of his burning home after a lunatic has set it on fire, does a Sherlock Holmes imitation<!>, spends a night skulking in the woods outside a mansion, reconciles with a long-standing series enemy who has tried to have him committed as a lunatic, attempts a burglary, and confesses to a crime he did not commit!



However, this is not an action thriller, it is a light comedy and the tone throughout remains cheery and upbeat. An awesome book, highly recommended with five stars from me.

I will close with a few quotes:

He made a noise like a pig swallowing a cabbage...

The man annoyed me. I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie, but I was dashed if I could see why he couldn't do it with a bright and cheerful smile.

He appeared to be saying something, but in this he flopped badly. Nothing came through except a rather unpleasant whistling sound, not quite so loud as the row your radio makes when you twiddle the twiddler a bit too hard, but in other respects closely resembling it.

"Bertie?"
"Hallo?"
"Ever been hit over the head with a chair?"
"No."
"Well, you soon may be."
I began to see she was in a difficult mood.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to hit a fellow in the eye with a potato at longish range. I know, because I've tried it."

His voice died away with a sort of sound not unlike one of those toy ducks you inflate and let the air out of.

"In this world, Jeeves, you can do one of two things. You can set yourself up as a final authority on whether your fellow man is sane or not, or you can go blacking your face and getting put in potting sheds. You cannot do both."


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## The Hooded Claw

Bat Bomb, by Jack Couffer

When your proposal for a secret project is initiated with a memo from the President of the United States to the director of a special operations unit, you could be forgiven for feeling proud. But you might not be so proud if the President began his memo with "This man is not a nut."

This book tells the story of a highly-secret project to attach tiny incendiary bombs to bats, release the bats from aircraft over Japanese cities with the incendiaries on timed detonation, and let the bats do what bats do, and find a nice roosting place in Japanese buildings made of wood and less substantial stuff before the bombs go off and start fires. The project was the idea of a Pennsylvania dentist, who had connections with Eleanor Roosevelt. This book is written by a young man who was scooped up into the project, with the benefit of going through various records (though many were still unavailable because of classification) decades later. I have a paper copy, which I bought and read shortly after the book was published in 1992. It sat ignored on my bookshelves through two moves and two decades, but recently I decided to get it out and read it again. The book is also available on Kindle, and my link above is to the Kindle version.

The book is very anecdotal, and there are a lot of interesting incidents, some bat-related, and others not. Among the best parts are the accidental destruction of an Army airfield during a test, and an unfortunate private who had to make a plane flight with a half-grown bengal tiger, armed with only a combat knife. There are some downright disturbing descriptions of scrambling around in bat caves, knee-deep in guano and covered with insects and bat urine falling from above. Important to the story, but not fully explained because we just don't know fully what was happening, were the machinations by the project manager (the dentist mentioned above, for most of the book) and by the military bureaucracy to keep the project alive on one side, and seemingly to kill it on the other. Some of this is reconstructed from memos, but some is simply mysterious. The project eventually was cancelled abruptly for reasons that aren't really clear, but may be related to optimism about progress on building atomic bombs. Oddly, the fathers of both Senator John McCain, and of moonwalking astronaut Buzz Aldrin make brief appearances in the book.

The book is decently written, but frankly, most of what happens is only of interest to a fanatical devourer of weird historical trivia such as myself. If you are fascinated at finding out about this book, and are dying to read it, you will probably be pleased with it, but for the general interest reader, I'd skip it. Three and a half stars from me.


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## telracs

or you can read the short version of the story in Einstein's Refrigerator.


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## The Hooded Claw

After sleeping on it, I've decided I was a bit harsh on Bat Bomb. I'm changing its rating from three to three and a half stars. Try to contain your excitement over this, and please don't start thinking I'm going soft in my old age.

I've done quite a bit of reading this weekend, finished up one book that consists of short articles by different authors that I've been working on for awhile, and another that I bought on a whim just a few days ago because it sounded interesting and was only a buck. I'll write in detail about these tomorrow, but for now, here are links to:


Flying American Combat Aircraft of World War II, Robin Higham, editor

This is a book of short articles about experiences in various warbirds by different men who flew them during or after World War II. I'll write in detail tomorrow, but for now I'll just say that if you are a fan of World War II air combat, you should read this. If you aren't, you shouldn't, and I suspect you will be mystified why anyone would read such stuff...


Cavalry Man: The Killing Machine, by Ed Gorman

Short take on this one is that it is an acceptable potboiler mystery/western. It is the sort of mystery where you find out about things when the hero is hit in his face with them (sometimes literally), this is not the type mystery where you have all the clues and can work things out independently. It is quite violent, though not graphic. More tomorrow....


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## The Hooded Claw

Flying American Combat Aircraft of World War II, edited by Robin Higham

This is a collection of essays by different pilots who flew various US airplanes during or shortly after World War II. There are a variety of aircraft covered, and some of them are delightfully obscure, such as an informative essay about the B-10, a prewar bomber that I've hardly read anything about before. Because of the different authorship, there are a variety of writing styles and approaches to writing this up taken. At least one essay takes the title literally and has almost nothing in it but stuff like "...for takeoff, we would raise manifold pressure to 40 pounds of mercury, and cut it back to 30 pounds as we leveled out after take off, unless of course it was Thursday...."  Fortunately, most of the essays are more interesting--Many are a mix of "war stories" from combat or training with tidbits about the quirks of a particular aircraft. One is nothing but a narration of a pilot's experience when he was ordered to fly a type of plane he'd never flown before from the USA to Iran, which would involve a transatlantic crossing that he'd never been pilot on before. It starts shortly after receiving his orders when he and his boss scrutinize a world map till he triumphantly announces "Oh, I see Iran Sir, it's this pink country!" and ending when he crawls out of the plane in Iran after a hair-raising Atlantic crossing. Nearly all of them are entertaining and interesting to the target audience for this book. I'm going to post just a couple of tidbits...

Some B-25 bombers had a 75mm cannon mounted in the nose. This was a HUGE cannon to be mounted in an aircraft. Like most of the target audience, I knew this. But till I read this book, I didn't know that the man who loaded the cannon was a bombardier/navigator (and thus an officer), and he had to load the cannon while crouching in a small, windowless compartment with walls lined with 30 pound shells and empty hot brass shell casings rolling around on the floor. He had only one grip handle to stabilize himself while the pilot slammed the plane around dodging anti-aircraft fire at low altitude, and no windows to see what was going on. The author points out that these poor guys were probably the only commissioned officers in the history of the US Army to have a permanent assignment as cannon loaders!

The discomfort of flying at high altitude is discussed, and the sorry lot of P-38 pilots compared to their brethren flying single-engined Mustangs and Thunderbolts. The single engine pilots had a nice hot engine warming the nose of their plane, between them and the cold. The twin-engine layout of the P-38 (see the photo above) had nothing but sheet metal between the pilot and the cold, cold, Winter air of northern Europe.

B-17 pilots quickly learned that on narrow taxiways they should taxi around with just the inboard engines cranked up. The outboard engines stuck out over the ground, and would spray dust, dirt, and small rocks over the tail of their plane and everyone they taxied past.

I loved it, and if you are a World War II buff, you will love it too. Five stars from me, but that rating only pertains to a specialized audience.


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## The Hooded Claw

Cavalry Man: The Killing Machine, by Ed Gorman

I bought this just a few days ago, when I noticed the series (which I'd never paid attention to before) was marked down to 99 cents per book, and was compared to The Wild, Wild, West, a tv show of which I have fond memories from my youth. I noted that Gorman seems to have a lot of fans as a writer, and has won an award from the professional association of Western Writers. So I grabbed it up, and in a frenzy of optimism, grabbed the other books for ninety-nine cents as well. It would be awful to really like the first one, but find that the succeeding books had all gone up to eight bucks each, right?

Gorman is a good writer, and I was kept interested enough in the book that I finished it in three sessions of reading within twenty-four hours of starting it. But alas, there are problems, which I'll discuss later.

The book is set shortly after the Civil War, and our hero Ford is a war veteran who was an assassin/dirty tricks guy for the Union during the War, and has continued postwar work as a federal agent. His current assignment, which he insisted on taking, is to recover the stolen prototype of a powerful Gatling gun, which unfortunately is in the hands of his brother. His brother, like the rest of Ford's family, was a staunch Confederate during the war, and despises him. Ford insisted on taking the job, as he feels it is the only way he has a chance of keeping his brother alive. That's the situation. The hero is not the analytical type I often like to read about. In the book he describes himself as "I may not be the smartest and toughest investigator the Army has, but one thing I am is honest." And that is an accurate description of him.

The book is in a Western setting, but it is really a mystery. Not of the sort where you can puzzle out clues, but where little bits that advance the hero towards a solution are repeatedly dropped in our laps. It is fast-moving, has lots of violence and dead bodies and deceptive characters. It reads fast and kept me entertained. Despite the mention of Wild, Wild, West, other than that the hero is a federal agent operating out west, there is little resemblance between the book and the show (no advanced technology, no buddy relationship, none of the tongue-in-cheek humor).

There are some problems. There is one howlingly awful historical fact blunder, the author carefully describes the history of the Cherokee before and after the Trail of Tears. This would be fine except that he repeatedly refers to them as the Cheyenne. The word Cherokee never occurs in the book. I think Max Allan Collins has me spoiled on meticulous historical research, but this bothered me a lot. Probably more than it should. The author doesn't pretend to have written any great work of historical fiction here, this is more along the lines of a Western movie or television show. There are some trivial references and color to let you know you are in the Old West, but no more than you'd find in an old spaghetti Western. The book also has some editing problems. Most notable for me is a sentence that I reread several times without it making sense till I realized that if you took out the word "long" from the sentence and put in "loud" instead, it made perfect sense! We also have this beauty of a sentence from our first-person narrative:

_Like most people of these times, I had the fear of being buried alive._

There are less important glitches, but overall not what I expect in a book by a prolific author from a major publisher.

I think I over-reacted to the editing problems, but they do take me out of "the zone" of reading. Despite being yanked back to the real world occasionally, the book did keep me reading, even if I winced from time to time. Gorman knows how to tell a story. In my initial mention of this book, I called it an acceptable potboiler, and I think that's a reasonable description, maybe even a bit less than the book deserves. Three stars from me, it would be three and a half if not for the misuse of Cherokee and a couple of the more dramatic editorial oversights.


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## The Hooded Claw

Wicked Bronze Ambition, by Glen Cook

This is part of a long-running (fourteen books!) series that combines classic fantasy with a film noir "Sam Spade" type detective story. Contrary to the impression given by the cover, hero Garrett is not some sort of dimension traveler from our world, he is at home in his own world, playing the part of the hard-boiled wisecracking detective while living in a city where humans, elves, dwarves, rat-people, and others live together, though not always in harmony. I pre-ordered this months ago, and was eager enough to read it that I set aside another book so I could dive into this immediately.

The story is lengthy, complicated, and has a huge cast of characters, both returns from previous books and new ones introduced in this story. I wished the X-ray feature was activated! I can't discuss the story without giving away too much, but I can say that the dry humor and witty repartee in previous books continues, and the story is interesting. This is not a puzzle-solving mystery. Similar to the Ed Gorman book I just finished, this is more a book where stuff unfolds as the story moves forward. Garrett himself says that his style is to charge into a situation, shake things up, and then the facts will come together as the confusion sorts itself out.

It frightens me to check and find that I read the first book in this series when it was published twenty-five years ago, and have been a fan ever since! So as part of a beloved series, the book is difficult for me to rate objectively and independently. I was very entertained, though I don't feel it is as good as many of the other books in the series. Overall, I was quite satisfied with the book, and give it four stars. The series is highly recommended for people who are fans of both fantasy and mystery, or perhaps who are fans of only one of the genres, but are open-minded! If the series is new to you, go back to the beginning (Sweet Silver Blues, I think) rather than starting here.

The book is 496 pages long. With apologies to the rules, I am going to count it as a door-stopper, even though it is four pages short of 500!


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

The Hooded Claw said:


> Wicked Bronze Ambition, by Glen Cook


I pre-ordered this one, and set aside another book to start this one, also. 

I'm about halfway through it and while it's not slow, it does seem longer than most of the series. I always look forward to a new Garrett story. I'm not a fan of his other series, though.

Mike


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## The Hooded Claw

City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas, by Roger Crowley

This October I am going on a trip to Italy that will start in Venice, and end in Rome. As usual before big trips, I am reading up to help me understand what I see. I was in Venice several years ago, and hadn't prepared, but got some hints of fascinating stuff--For instance in the tour of the Doge's Palace, I remember being in a huge room for ceremonies that had portraits of every Doge hanging from the wall. But there was one portrait which was blacked out, and we were told he had "betrayed the Republic" or words to that effect.

I wanted to read a history of Venice, and this book looked promising and well-reviewed. Now I could find out what that treacherous Doge did! Unfortunately I didn't scrutinize the description of the book as carefully as I might have. This is a history of Venice, yes. But it is not a domestic history. The title actually explains pretty-clearly that it deals with the massive overseas empire the Venetians built in the first half of the second Millenium. There is minimal information on domestic history! So there is only a sideways reference to the treacherous Doge (I did look him up separately and got at least an outline of what he did, however).

Since I'm a fan of nautical history, this wasn't all bad, but I'm gonna have to get another Venice history book in the next few weeks. For the chosen topic, the book is extremely readable and interesting. The Venetian Republic was very different from the rest of Europe in the age of iron-plated knights and chivalry. Venice was about business. Period. They would trade with anyone, and viewed interfering with trade as the worst possible offense against them. On a less obsessive note, Venice did have a very strong system of rule of law, and though not a democracy, appears to have been a better place for non-nobles to live than most of Europe in those times.

The book goes into considerable details about how Venice expanded its business network to not only cover the Mediterranean, but to reach up to London and Germany. The period of this expansion and greatest maritime prosperity covers almost exactly three hundred years, from 1200 to 1500, and this is well-covered. Things didn't turn off like a light after 1500, but a combination of loss of many of their trading bases, plus competition from Portugese traders who "cheated" and brought the products of the Far East to Europe through a route around Africa meant things weren't nearly so rosy for the Merchants of Venice. The Black Plague didn't help...

My favorite person in the book was Enrico Dandolo, leader of Venice at the start of the critical years. He was ninety years old and blind, but nevertheless lead a military expedition, including sending his ship into the lead of a major naval battle, and cruising his ship up within shouting distance of an enemy castle so that he and the opposing leader could "negotiate" by calling to each other. What a guy! But there are many more interesting characters and events.

Here are a few factoids or bits that caught my eye enough to highlight:

The critical events in 1200 that I mentioned above involved the Venetians agreeing to provide naval transport for forces of the Fourth Crusade, which set out to support the Crusaders in the Holy Land, but ended up attacking not one, but two different Christian cities instead! The expedition took 4,500 horses in 150 special galleys. Many of the galleys had hinged landing doors that could drop to ground so that a horse could be lead onto the galley, and at their destination, the galley could be beached, and fully-armoured mounted knights could ride out onto the beach, ready for battle! This expedition was so large that half the adult population of Venice was needed to man the ships.

I was pleased to see that one Venetian warlord was named Malabranca. The book says this translates as "The Cruel Claw"! 

The Venetians disdained the responsibility of owning huge tracts of conquered land. They only wanted trading bases, usually on small islands, that could be easily defended but were strategically located. Some of these they took by force, but they accepted applications from places that wanted to be assimilated, and were very shrewd and discriminating in balancing the plusses and minuses of an potential acquisition before agreeing. One city applied seven times to be incorporated.

There were some very modern things about the laws and government of Venice. Everything was carefully documented and extreme steps were taken to prevent government officials from being bribed or influenced. When the Venetian state finally fell to Napoleon, the official archives of the state filled forty-five miles of bookshelves! Stern steps to keep Venetians, especially government officials from being influenced or "going native." High-ranking colonial officials were limited to two years at a particular place, and intermarriage or religious conversion was sternly frowned upon. Auditors from Venice could arrive at any colony with no notice, and authority to do anything and question anybody. In one case, they kidnapped the Duke who was head of the entire island of Crete without notice and took him back to Venice for interrogation and torture.

On a more positive note, there was justice, and it was reasonably fair, even for accused nobles, as well as (at the other end of the scale) peasants and foreigners. But penalties for the guilty were harsh. One man accused of stealing public monies had his right hand amputated, forced to publicly confess, and THEN was hung outside the treasury he had raided. A man who let a rebel prisoner escape lost a hand and both eyes removed. There are records of some cases where the initial judgement was unfair, and a retrial was granted, sometimes after several years (not that this would help anyone who had had body parts removed!). Religious toleration was enforced.

They may have had justice, but they did not insist on fair play in international relations; When an aggressive Ottoman Emperor threatened Venetian interests, the Venetians authorized fourteen different attempts to poison him. On the other hand, unless either greatly threatened, or else presented with some commercial prize that was deemed absolutely essential to their interests, the Venetians viewed war as bad for business, and tried to use diplomacy with most enemies. Their efforts in this area to deal with the Turks and Ottomans earned them suspicion from most of Europe, especially since the Venetians were not above trading with an enemy. An exception to this moderate policy was Genoa, a rival Italian trading city with whom Venice had multiple long and violent wars.

A couple of bonus words used in the book that I had to look up on my Kindle:
threnody--a lament
percipient--A person having a good understanding of things; perceptive.

I like the book a lot, even if the subject isn't quite what I expected. Highly recommended for history buffs. Four and a half stars from me.


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## cinisajoy

Thanks to your reviews I read an interesting book last night.  I got "The Urine Dance by the Zuni Indians of New Mexico."


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## The Hooded Claw

cinisajoy said:


> Thanks to your reviews I read an interesting book last night. I got "The Urine Dance by the Zuni Indians of New Mexico."


Lol! Don't wait, tell everyone your thoughts!


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## cinisajoy

The Hooded Claw said:


> Lol! Don't wait, tell everyone your thoughts!


I thought it was a good book and described the dance perfectly. I did learn a few things I didn't know. But should we put in a spoiler that it is not for the squeamish.


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## The Hooded Claw

cinisajoy said:


> I thought it was a good book and described the dance perfectly. I did learn a few things I didn't know. But should we put in a spoiler that it is not for the squeamish.


I thought the title was sufficient warning, but perhaps we should include that


Spoiler



the book involves urine


. In case anyone missed it!


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## The Hooded Claw

The Story of the Pony Express, by Glenn D. Bradley

I will soon be taking a trip where I expect an opportunity to visit one of the old Pony Express way stations, and I thought this book would be an easy and inexpensive way to learn something about the subject. As you may have guessed by the cover, it is out of copyright, almost a century old, and was scanned by volunteers. On the positive side, it is free! The book is quite short, more like a novella size than a full book.

My overall reaction is that given the cost (free) I can't complain, but I wasn't thrilled with the book either. It does carefully recount much history, but the writing style is a bit pompous and bombastic, with routine use of phrases like "Surely no firm has ever surpassed in integrity that of Dewey, Cheatum, & Howe..." Sometimes it degenerates into a list of company names or other factual but boring sequences. I expected some dramatic stories of individual adventures, but there are few of these, and they seem to be deliberately told in a way that limits the excitement.

On a more positive note, I knew almost nothing about the subject as of last weekend, and now that the book is finished, I feel I know a few things. The book contains a lot of information for the unlearned in this area. A couple of things that surprised me were that the Express received no government subsidies, and was a purely private venture. It did carry a LOT of government traffic, and according to the author, was extremely important for a few months at the beginning of the Civil War in helping keep the state government of California loyal to the federal government. The company never did make a profit, and was sold off after operating for less than two years. Many of the individuals involved in the company appeared to be very rugged and uncouth characters, and a significant percentage met unfortunate ends after the Express disbanded. Only one Express rider was killed outright on duty, and only one mail shipment was lost, despite passing through an area with hostile Indians, including passing through a major rebellion that lasted for several months. Despite this danger, for most of the time the line was in existence, the rider carried only a single pistol, with the idea that speed, rather than firepower was their friend.

A clever saddlebag design was used to expedite changing horses and keep things secure. There were four saddlebags, arranged so that one was in front and one behind each of the rider's legs. All were locked, three couldn't be opened by the men in the field, and one could be opened with a key held at each local waystation. Local mail could be added at the waystation. The whole assembly had a hole to fit over the saddlehorn, and could be lifted off and dropped onto the saddle of a fresh horse, with the shift taking only seconds. It would be passed from rider to rider, and one saddlebag would make the whole trip. Total mail on one trip was usually fifteen pounds, and never more than twenty pounds. Postage for each letter was originally five dollars for a half-ounce letter, but later reduced to a dollar per half ounce. This was a lot of money for the time! The riders were better paid than anyone in the company except very top executives; pay ranged from one hundred to one hundred twenty-five dollars per month, a gigantic salary.

The US government did not subsidize the Express, but was a heavy user. The British government also used it--This was the fastest way to get diplomatic and naval communications from the Far East and Pacific across North American and headed back towards Europe! One large report of British naval activity off China incurred a bill of one hundred and thirty-five dollars. Big newspapers were also major customers, as this was the fastest way to get news from correspondents out west. Transit time for a letter to go from Missouri to the West Coast was about ten days in most cases.

After thumbing back through the book and writing it up, I find I am more kindly disposed towards the book than I was when I finished it, but I still can only give the book three stars. Worthwhile if you really want to learn more about the Pony Express, but don't want it enough to lay out any money, but it probably will not satisfy more than slight curiosity!


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## The Hooded Claw

The Last of the Legions and Other Tales of Long Ago, by Arthur Conan Doyle

I have read Doyle's Sherlock Holmes Canon repeatedly, and have dabbled in some of his other stuff, notably the wonderful "Adventures of Gerard" series of stories (if you haven't read Brigadier Gerard, you should), and one collection of horror short stories. This is another short story collection, as the title suggests, it has a general theme of stories set in ancient times. But it is quite a mix, from straight adventure stories of old times, to a couple of occult stories, one of which qualifies as horror. These are either stories about ordinary men, or of minor or "secret" incidents in the lives of the great, there are no epic clashes of legions and such here.

Some of the story subjects intrigued me.


Spoiler



The book ends with a striking piece set back around 1100 BC <!> when three not-especially prominent men visit a Phoenician seeress who is flabbergasted to find that they will all be remembered for thousands of years, when the great city she lives in is ruined and nearly forgotten. I liked it. I also liked a rather humorous story where we watch with (mock) horror as a reclusive Roman singer visits a singing contest and publicly denounces a truly awful singer who is inexplicably being acclaimed by everyone, only to learn that the bad singer he is criticizing is the Emperor Nero (I told you he was reclusive!). A couple of the stories had rather ugly turns at the end, when someone got what they wanted and found that it was not a good thing.



I liked a few of the stories a lot, but this is a very mixed bag, and several are at best ordinary. Recommended for those who are intrigued by my description, especially if they are interested in ancient history, but anyone not in this group can skip it without fear.

A minor note--I've seen criticisms of some of these volunteer converted books alleging typos and such, but this conversion seemed flawless.

Three and a half stars out of five.

Now, please watch the first fifteen seconds or so of this short clip from the introduction to the most awesome cartoon show ever made, Jonny Quest:






You'll see a couple of short segments of a flying reptile....a Pteranodon or Pterosaur. When I watched this series as a kid, one of the most memorable episodes was one where the Quest team confronted one of these. At the time, I was quite taken with dinosaurs (they were an obsession for me till I switched my affections to space exploration a couple of years after the tragic cancellation of Jonny Quest), and of course a flying dinosaur was perhaps the coolest dinosaur of all.

So I was thrilled to see this book on Kindle, and bought it even though it is pricier than my usual choices.



Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy, by Mark P. Witton

I missed out on my chance to be the coolest kid in my elementary school! If I'd brought a paper copy of this gorgeously-illustrated book to school, I'd have shown it to everyone, and Everyone That Mattered in my crowd would have been suitably impressed. Of course, the book wasn't around then, and knowledge of pterosaurs was much lower. In fact, the author of this book reports that research on these dinosaurs basically stood still with nothing new of consequence learned from about 1930 till the late 1970s, after my elementary school days were over. But a lot has been learned since, and this book covers it all. The book is gorgeously illustrated with full-color paintings that are lovely when reading the book on my iPad. Numerous graphics also cover areas such as different theories of where pterosaurs belong on those branched trees of the relationship of different classes of life, and even how their muscles interrelate. I haven't tried reading it on my Kindle, and doubt it would be as satisfactory on eInk. The book is heavy, heavy going, and I am having to read it a chapter or so at a time, but the material is very interesting, and I'm glad I have it.

Not done yet, so a fuller writeup when the book is complete. I also intend to post a few screenshots from my iPad showing off some of the illustrations. But if the idea of a book on pterosaurs makes your pulse race, you have my permission to go ahead and buy it yourself, especially if you have an iPad, Kindle HD, or similar tablet to appreciate the illustrations!


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## Jeff

Johnny Quest is on Netflix, Claw. I hear it every so often when Camden's using my netbook.


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## telracs

sorry claw, i couldn't make it through 5 pages of the Brigadier Gerard stories.


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## The Hooded Claw

Jeff said:


> Johnny Quest is on Netflix, Claw. I hear it every so often when Camden's using my netbook.


Hurrah! Jonny Quest had quite an effect on me, indoctrinating me in the idea that science was way cool, and that it was a reasonable goal to aspire to jet around the world exploring ancient ruins and encountering exotic people, places, and animals. I seriously think it had a role in making me turn out as I did. I'm glad to hear that in all it's politically incorrect glory, it is continuing to mold young minds! On the other hand, considering how I turned out, maybe you'll want to keep the kid away from Netflix from now on!

I have owned DVDs of the series since they were released, and have no doubt I'll keep rewatching the shows from time to time till my lights turn out permanently.

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk


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## The Hooded Claw

telracs said:


> sorry claw, i couldn't make it through 5 pages of the Brigadier Gerard stories.


Too bad! "How the Brigadier Slew the Fox" is one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk


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## The Hooded Claw

Fossils: A Very Short Introduction, by Keith Thomson

Last night I was on the road, and hadn't brought my iPad with me to continue the Pterosaurs book. So when I had several hours to read after overstuffing myself on a steak dinner, I whipped out my new phone with a bigger screen, and chose a text-heavy book to read. Since I was reading about pterosaurs in my "main" book, fossils seemed like a good choice. Plus this book was short enough I figured I could read it in one evening, and by staying up a bit late, I finished it, though had to stay up a bit late. Reading on my new Galaxy S4 was fine, but I still prefer eInk for text.

The book is okay. I am not in the target audience, I have been a fossil fan since my childhood, as mentioned, and though there was a lot of new information (a lot has been learned since my childhood!), there was much that was repetitive to me. At least half the book was a sort of history of fossils and how they have been collected and received, and some of that was new and interesting.










Those of you who grew up in the US probably have seen this painting, and may even recognize it as by Charles Willson Peale. I hadn't known that Peale was also an avid student of fossils, and is regarded as inventor of the natural history museum!

The newly-discovered dinosaur skeletons were very trendy when Charles Dickens was writing, and he spiced up the very first paragraph of Bleak House with a reference to a Megalosaurus, a recently-discovered thunder lizard. (I am not a Dickens fan and never read Bleak House, so had to look this up to confirm it!).

An early dinosaur excavator named Cope bravely lead his expedition into the heart of Sioux territory just a few weeks after the defeat of Custer at The Little Big Horn, reasoning that "...every able-bodied Sioux would be with the braves under Sitting Bull...there would be no danger for us."!

One of the earliest collectors of fossils was a woman named Mary Anning. I knew nothing of her, and her life story is sad and fascinating. I'm considering purchasing one of several biographies of her, even though I have a (soft) ban on purchasing more Kindle books at the moment. The Wikipedia article on her life is worth a quick read.

You'll note that my tidbits are all from the historical section of the book, not the part that tells about fossils themselves, which I think is revealing about my attitude. I rate the book three and a half stars. Much higher rating for those who know little about fossils and want a good and readable introduction without the high-faluting technical terms and biology. As I post this (and when I bought it a few days ago) the book is selling for $1.99 in Kindle form, so it is a very economical purchase!


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## The Hooded Claw

Pterosaurs: Natural History, Evolution, Anatomy, by Mark P. Witton

Remember the pterosaur book I mentioned about a week or so ago? I've finished it. Although it was heavy going, and for parts of it I had to read it just a little at a time, I loved the book! A _LOT_ has been learned about pterosaurs in the last twenty or so years, and I was fascinated that they were as diverse as modern birds in the different physical forms they took, and especially how they "made their living" and fit into the ancient ecosystem. Almost as interesting are the ways paleontologists have figured this stuff out. It's late, and I will wait till tomorrow for a detailed writeup. For now, I'll just show off a couple of the awesome illustrations:




























Great stuff, and highly recommended for those who still have a Calvin-like fascination with dinosaurs are willing to read a book with some technical sections to satisfy it. Anyone else will quite properly avoid it like the plague. Be warned that it gets heavy in places, not a book for the faint-hearted. And yes, the third drawing is to scale. More tomorrow!

I needed a break from dinosaur stuff at times, so also finished this off this evening:



The Transylvania Flying Squad of Detectives, by M. L. Dunn

This is a lightweight fun fantasy adventure, I was greatly reminded of Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, for those who might have read that. I loved the story, but alas the editing is a real problem. Numerous typos, poor word choice, punctuation errors, spacing problems, and even the chapter numbers and titles weren't centered when read on both my smart phone and on my PaperWhite. It is a tribute to the story that I liked it anyway, despite these problems repeatedly jerking me out of the zone of reading. I got it for free (I checked my digital orders to make sure), but it is now showing $3.99, or borrowable with Prime. Recommended with minor reservations due to the editing.


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## The Hooded Claw

Finishing up from last night, we begin with a bit more about the Pterosaurs book....

As I've harped on excessively, the book was gorgeously illustrated and I really enjoyed viewing it on my iPad. My first ebook where I really liked the illustrations. The illustrations are inserted amidst the text as in my sample page above, and you can expand them to fill the iPad screen by pinch-zooming out on them. The illustrations of animals struck me as more like good nature photographs, showing the creatures doing something interesting in their environment, rather than the usual static pose in the dinosaur books I've been used to. There were also other less-dramatic illustrations showing relationships between different creature types, muscle and bone layouts, and the expected photographs of fossils that illustrated important points.

Something in the book that really captured my imagination was the way scientists are learning more about how these creatures lived. It is possible to take physical dimensions, as well as power (estimated from muscle mass) and use computer simulations to estimate the flight characteristics of these animals. This knowledge is combined with the type of environment the fossil is found in, the details of their teeth (showing what they usually ate), occasionally fortunate clues like finding chewed-up fish fossilized inside a pteranodon, and combine all this information to make a very informed guess about how the animal fit into its world and made it's living.

The book's chapters are organized differently as the book progresses...The opening material was general stuff about pterosaurs, which was great, then there are several very tough chapters on specific stuff about generalized anatomy (muscles, bones, etc.), then some material on specific topics in pterosaur life, which was great, and the last part of the book was a chapter on each major type of pterosaur, which was a mix between rather dense detailed stuff about physically unique features, and really really interesting stuff about how this particular type fit into its environment. The anatomy stuff nearly lost me, but I was glad I stuck it out and got back into the good stuff!

Remember the big spikey crest sticking out of the head of the Pteranodon in the Jonny Quest clip I posed earlier? I was taught growing up that this was a marker of the particular species. But these classic pteranodons are almost always found comingled with fossils of a very similar animal that is smaller (about 2/3) the maximum size, has only a small crest, and has a much wider hip opening, even though this other species is smaller. It is now believed that the spike on the back of pteranodons is a marker of a male creature, and this smaller species is the female pteranodon. So the crest is a male display, like the tail feathers of a peacock or the rack of a deer.

Most pterosaurs had small fibers, a quarter-inch long or less, over much of their bodies. These have been given the name "pycnofibers." The exact purpose isn't known, they may have helped with insulation, and in some cases may have provided some aerodynamic advantage.

As you can tell, I really liked this book. Five stars from me, though it is definitely not for anyone but the most enthusiastic reader on this subject.


I also finished the "Transylvania Flying Detective Squad" book yesterday. Our hero, an American soldier in World War II, dies in combat, and finds himself alive again in Purgatory. Purgatory seems to be stuck in the 1920s, so there are cars, firearms, and telephones, but it is different from our 1920s in that there are all sorts of fantastic creatures living among the reborn human residents, and witchcraft and magic do work. Our hero gets a job as a member of the police force in his new home, and is plunged into a mystery that involves murder and a plot to do something truly terrible. Of course the good guys must catch the killers and stop the evil plot. This is not great literature, but it is a lot of fun. The fantastic nature of things means it will not be for everyone. One of the big action scenes in the book is a running gunfight using "Tommy Guns" and pistols between our hero and his fellow detectives, and some of the bad guys including a troll, a vampire, a goblin, and a human, with both groups chasing each other in 1920s style cars! That may be enough for some readers to decide they have no further interest, but those who try the book out may find they enjoy it a great deal. Clearly a book involving trolls and witches isn't deadly serious, but this is an adventure and not a humorous book.

The downside to this is that the editing is atrocious. Numerous typographical errors, use of a word which isn't actually the right one, missing spaces, and other problems. These really affected my enjoyment of the book, both by jerking me out of my reading "trance" and by distracting me from reading to look for the next blooper. The story is so interesting and fast-moving that I finished the book within twenty-four hours of starting it, which is quite a tribute to the book. The implication is that this will be part of a series, hopefully things will improve next time. I snatched it up when it was free (verified by checking my digital order) but it now appears to be $3.99, but available for loan through Amazon Prime.

Three and a half stars from me, would have been an easy four and a half with fewer editing glitches. Still recommended for those who are intrigued by the story.


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## The Hooded Claw

No Cure for Death, by Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins is one of my favorite writers. This year I've consciously avoided his Nate Heller series, even though it is my favorite of his work. This has let me focus on other parts of his writing. This is one of a series of books about Mallory, an Iowa mystery writer who keeps stumbling into real murders that he feels he must investigate. In the introduction, Collins reveals that the core of the book was written as part of a writing workshop very early in his career. Collins also tells us in the intro that this is NOT a historical novel, it was much too soon for historical novels of the early 70s (the setting of the book and the series) when it was written. I did enjoy some of the details in the book, whether intentionally inserted or not, describing features of that time. Interior furnishings are the most obvious example, one home is described as having a portable television sitting on a rolling stand, and another home has a television with a stereo system and record player built in! When the first-person protagonist wants to convey to us that his car was not as nice as the other cars in the parking lot of a business, he tells us that his car was the only one without vinyl on the roof!

The book is a very acceptable mystery, but nothing spectacular. It dragged a bit in the middle, but things were interesting enough in the last third to raise my spirits. Still below-average for a book by Collins, IMO. I rate it three and a half stars. Definitely worth reading if you like others in the Mallory series, but not a book I recommend anyone specially seek out.


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## The Hooded Claw

A Journey into Michelangelo's Rome, by Angela K. Nickerson

In preparation for a trip to Italy later this year, I wanted to read something about Michelangelo. I'd picked out a book about the Sistine Chapel, but noticed this book as well. Since it is heavily illustrated, and I'd had a good experience reading the illustrated pterosaur book on my iPad, I wanted to give this one a try. In short, it combines a modest-length biography of Michelangelo with segments focusing on some of his most famous works, especially those found in Rome. There are sidebars about other especially important people or topics. There are lots of color illustrations spread through the book, a combination of reproductions of period engravings, paintings, etc., and modern photographs of buildings or public areas in Rome. The resolution on the illustrations was a bit low to show up to best advantage on my iPad 4, and some of the modern photographs show signs of being done by a not super-skilled amateur, but they are good enough to illustrate, they just don't wow.

"Good enough, but doesn't wow" is a good summary of my reaction to the whole book. It is informative and readable, it just never grabbed me or immersed me. I learned a lot about Michelangelo, his works, and the times, and I'm glad I read it. The price is very reasonable for a heavily-illustrated book. It will be on my iPad when I go to Italy for use as a reference. I recommend it mainly for someone in my position, who wants to orient Michelangelo to some of his key works that will be seen when touring Rome. I'm still gonna read the book about the Sistine Chapel separately.

I did snap up a few interesting bits of trivia to post here:

Part of Michelangelo's compensation from the Pope for one work was a townhouse called Macel de' Corvi, which I am told means "Slaughterhouse of the Crows"! I gather that the house is named after the area, but I still would prefer a neighborhood with a more upbeat and prestigious name!

Pope Julius II had other disadvantages as an employer. He routinely failed to compensate Michelangelo for buying materials and other work, and at one point when he was frustrated at the speed Michelangelo was completing the Sistine Chapel, Julius struck Michelangelo with a staff and threatened him. Since the Pope could easily throw Michelangelo in a dungeon, or even arrange to have him killed, the artist immediately began to pack to get out of town, beyond the Pope's reach. The Pope thought about what he'd done, and sent a lackey to intercept Michelangelo with a cash bribe, and assurances that being wacked on the head with a staff and otherwise abused "were all signs of his (the Pope's) favor and affection."

Michelangelo did have ways of getting even. In one of his paintings, Michelangelo used the face of one of his critics to adorn a resident of Hell who had donkey's ears and a snake biting essential male pieces. The outraged critic complained to the Pope, but was told that the Pope had ways to help people in Purgatory, but anyone in Hell was beyond the Pope`s reach!

Recommended mainly for Rome travelers as mentioned. Three and a half stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions, by Tony Hallam

I was fascinated by dinosaurs as a child, but have done little reading on them (or on other ancient life) as an adult till recently. I've somewhat kept up on developments through magazine articles and television shows, but they don't give you the concentrated examination of a topic that a book does. Enjoying the pterosaurs book reminded me of my long-standing interest, and brought to mind the extinction of the dinosaurs, which lead me to find this book. It covers the multiple dinosaur-like extinction events. These are periods when a large number of different types of creatures all become extinct in a very short period of time (short in a geological sense, it still may take a very long period of time from a human perspective). There are five "big ones" of these, and the extinction of the dinosaurs is not the largest. This book examines the big five events, as well as a several smaller extinction events. There are eleven chapters. After a couple of introductory chapters in the beginning, and summary chapters (plus one on the recent human-caused extinctions) at the end, but the meat of the book is several chapters in the middle that focus on causes, primarily geological, that played or may have played a role in some of the mass extinctions. There are chapters on comet and asteroid impacts (these are famous for their probably role in dinosaur extinction, but don't seem to be prime suspects in most other extinction events); sea-level changes (the author clearly thinks that these are very important); oxygen deficiency in the ocean (closely tied to sea level changes in many cases); and volcanic activity. Each chapter reviews the "big five" extinctions in terms of these causes, as well as other lesser extinction events where it is argued that the subject of that chapter may have played a role. The book ends with some discussions of how extinction events may affect the course of evolution, and a chapter on what some call The Sixth great Extinction, the massive number of species that have become extinct from human activities over the past few thousand years (which is very fast and very wide-spread compared to the extinction events with natural causes).

The book has an incredible amount of interesting information, and is reasonably well-written, but I struggled with it. The lesser problem is that it is very dense with new and exotic (to me, and I'm confident for most readers who aren't biology or paleontology professionals) terms. This can be handled, but I spent a lot of time ducking away from the book to look things up in Wikipedia. The bigger obstacle for me is that splitting the description of the different extinction events up so that each event is discussed multiple times in different chapters makes it tough to form an overall picture of each extinction event. With the exception of the two biggest events, these all run together in my mind, and even though I finished the book minutes ago, I already don't have a real mental picture of what happened with each event other than the two big ones.

Because of the nature of the book, there are loads and loads of tidbits and trivia. Here are a few that I highlighted:

The book includes a brief discussion of the "constipation hypothesis" for the extinction of dinosaurs, and reveals that the author is sometimes given credit for that name.

A mass die-off of plankton in an ocean can have various causes, but the effects on the ocean life are brutal. This has happened a number of times, enough that the name "Strangelove Ocean" has been coined for oceans where the plankton, which is sort of the grass of the sea, has died off. Yes, this is a reference to the movie character, since these near-dead oceans have such similarities to the near-dead world Dr. Strangelove waxed about at the end of the movie with his name.

Similar to the pterosaur book, I am amazed at the number of clever ways that scientists have been found to learn about the past, and do things like use fossil plant seeds, or even pollen, to deduce what the climate was like when a particular bed of fossils was laid down.

The author says that the main theme of his book is that most extinctions are caused by external events, not by competition from other species, but an exception is humans. Human activities have been responsible for enough extinctions to put the time we've been around at or near the top of the various extinctions, based on number of species that have gone away. There are lots of examples--One that I knew about is the disappearance of large mammals from the Americas soon after humans arrived, but he pointed out another possibly larger in terms of species, event--Native birds on most islands in the Pacific have been devastated after the arrival of humans. In general, the arrival of humans is bad news for any large species in a new area. If you are a land mammal, bird, or reptile with an adult body weight of over 220 pounds, your days may be numbered when humans move onto your island/continent/whatever. The book gives the example of Australia, where ALL of these creatures died out soon after humans arrived, and the overwhelming majority of creatures weighing between 100 and 220 pounds died out in the same period. I was also disturbed by his account of what is happening in the oceans, mostly due to overfishing. When we fish most of some of the larger fish in an area, it causes secondary effects that disrupt many types of life that we don't eat and have no economic interest in. Very sobering, almost depressing!

I liked the book, and am glad I read it, but only those who are REALLY interested should read it. The book has some good illustrations, enough of them that I chose once again to read on my iPad rather than on my Kindle. The writing is good, and I am awed by the breadth of knowledge of the author. I'm glad I read it, but it is not going on my short list of my best books of the year! Three and a half stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Sharpe's Rifles, by Bernard Cornwell

This is the first (with an asterisk, I understand some prequels were written later) in a lengthy series of novels about a British army officer in the Napoleonic Wars, in many ways a sort of land counterpart to Horatio Hornblower, one of my favorite characters in fiction. I've wanted to read these for years, several reliable friends have urged me to read them and waxed lyrical about them, including some KB members! I've avoided the series, generally for no good reason, except perhaps lately I've been reluctant because of my disappointment with the similarly-lauded Aubrey series. Nevertheless, I started this last night, and read frantically during my lunch break today, and finished it this evening. I REALLY liked the book!

I won't go into the story, but will say that hero Sharpe is quite different from Hornblower and many of my preferred fictional characters. He has no education, and is openly constructively criticized in the book by people who wish him well but say he could be great if he would just have confidence in himself. At least he doesn't suffer from Harrington Syndrome (being practically perfect in every way all the time).

Author Cornwell has regularly been praised for historical authenticity. This time and place (ground combat in Spain in the Napoleonic Wars) is something I know little about, but I certainly see no reason to question the details in the book.

Very readable and highly recommended for those who like military history or adventure stories. I'm not gonna call it five stars, but it gives a five stars an awful fright by getting so close! Four and a half for sure.


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## NogDog

Glad you liked it.  I was pretty much the same in my reaction: very enjoyable, but missing that certain something needed to make it a 5-star book.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

The Hooded Claw said:


> I REALLY liked the book!


I haven't read any of the books yet, but I enjoyed the British TV series a lot. I Netflixed them last year. They don't follow the books exactly, there are bits and pieces from all the books all intermixed.

Sean Bean made a great Sharpe.

Mike


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## Jeff

The Sharpe's books aren't great literature but they're great entertainment. I said that I've read them all in the Book Reading Game thread, but I may have been wrong. Bernard Cornwell is still actively writing and my memory of the titles I've read isn't that good. The romance element in each book becomes tedious as you read more of the series and the language he uses to describe battles scenes becomes a little trite, but overall I recommend them as well as his other short novels.


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## The Hooded Claw

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, by Simon Baker

I really liked this book! The author set out on the task to write a book covering the entire history of Rome, from the early days of being a quaint little village on the Tiber River until that loud noise you hear is the Roman Empire falling. Rather than write a twelve-volume book covering over a thousand years of history, Baker chose just a few (nine) episodes, mostly centered around key individuals, and described them in a fair amount of detail. Events in between are skimmed over, with just enough coverage of the high points so that you aren't at sea when the next episode begins. This is mostly a big picture history, there's little social history, no history of the arts, or of science and technology. The focus is on conflicts at the highest level of Roman government, and Rome's interactions with other countries--Usually someone or other being conquered, though the role of conqueree switches from the Romans to the barbarians back and forth.

For the curious, the various episodes are:
Seven Hills of Rome (an introduction to the early history)
Revolution (political conflicts and civil wars in the Roman Republic that sound EXACTLY like many of the arguments in Washington today--Really, the resemblance is scarey!
Caesar (Julius takes time off from reforming the calendar to seize absolute power and finally makes an unfortunate trip to the Forum on the Ides of March)
Augustus (pretty good emperor)
Nero (You know about this guy)
Rebellion (The Jews decide they can kick the Romans out. It doesn't end up being a good plan, but causes a shift in Emperors)
Hadrian (another pretty good emperor)
Constantine (the guy who switched Rome from the Old Gods to Christianity)
Fall (Rome goes KER-THUD!)

Highly recommended! The whole thing is interesting, but one of the things that interested me most was the last chapter, an account of the troubles that took a century to accumulate and lead to the sack of Rome. I want to read a different account of this to make sure Baker isn't biased somehow, but the Goths (the barbarians who sacked Rome) got a lot of sympathy from me. The troubles started when a mass group of 200,000 Goths decided that the Huns were making things too hot for them off in barbarian-land, and made the gutsy decision to migrate to Roman territory, and to extremely politely and humbly ask if they could settle in an unprofitable area of Roman territory and become Roman citizens. They mention that they hear Rome has a shortage of men willing and able to fill the ranks of their army, and point out that a lot of the young Gothic men would like to join, since by this time, Rome's army was mostly non-Romans, and many Goths had done well there. The Romans had a serious shortage of troops to keep the Goths from doing anything they wanted, so the Roman authorities responded to this situation by gouging the Goths financially, bamboozling and jerking them around, and in the final coup de grace of brilliant diplomacy, inviting the Gothic leaders to a banquet so the Romans could assassinate them most conveniently. This lead to the Goths going into combat mode (understandably) and crushing a Roman army in battle. Amazingly, the Goths STILL went back to their original offer, though they wanted a better deal now than they'd originally asked for. Since that original strategy had turned out so well, Rome responded with about a century of reprising the same strategy, and double-dealing the Goths over and over. The one time the Romans seemed to be about to break out of this, a coup killed off the critical leaders who were reaching a real settlement. THAT was when the Goths finally went on the march and sacked Rome, though Alaric, the Gothic leader, still bent over backwards to find an excuse NOT to pillage The Eternal City. I didn't know any of this stuff, so I want to read a different account and make sure that Baker isn't a secret Goth sympathizer! 

A few events in the book tied in closely to the Conan Doyle short story collection "The Last of the Legions" that I read recently. There was a brief mention of Roman legions being withdrawn from Britain, which was the main event in the title story of Doyle's book. Also, one of my favorite stories in Doyle's book was about an introverted Roman singer unknowingly denouncing the Emperor Nero's singing. There's quite a bit about Nero in the book, and it seems he really did love to sing, think he was a great singer (Baker suggests Nero was a decent singer, though not the great singer Nero considered himself to be), and have syncophants who applauded, as well as watchers in the audience marking anyone who didn't applaud enthusiastically enough for later "Talks." There were many interesting things about Nero--For instance he responded to the Great Fire of Rome quite competently (I'd actually read about that somewhere else, so I don't doubt Baker on this one) though managed to screw up the public support he got as a result. But it seems that the thing that really alienated Nero from the most important powers in the Empire was that Nero not only wanted to sing, but wanted to be an actor, and not only support The Arts (whch was a suspicious enough activity in the eyes of the Roman elite), but participate in them extensively himself by singing, and even acting in plays! But Nero did as many awful things as you've heard about, including trumping up charges and murdering his mother and one of his best generals. I'm sure those played a role in his loss of support.

Nero wasn't the only emperor with an artistic, but sensitive side. Hadrian, who was in general a pretty good emperor, was an untrained, but not bad amateur architect. When Apollodorus, the leading professional architect of the time, criticized plans for a Hadrian-designed temple, Hadrian had him killed!

Fascinating and well-written book gets my highest recommendation. Five stars from me.

NEWS FLASH: I have been wanting to read this book for awhile, but hesitated, partly because it was lengthy (448 pages) but short of being a "doorstopper" and counting towards my eight doorstoppers for the year. Of course, this is silly. The rules are supposed to exist to encourage me to read stuff, not to cause me to make silly decisions like this. I'm pondering a change in my rules, but I want to think about it before making it official. No doubt there will be a "breaking news" announcement on CNN when I make a decision and post it here!


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## The Hooded Claw

(image of the cover of the old paperback, not a link)

Matilda's Stepchildren, by A. Bertram Chandler

I continued my project of reading through all of Chandler's John Grimes series with the next book. At this point in his career, Grimes is owner and master of his own extremely small starship, unfortunately one too small for truly profitable cargo or passenger shipping. Needing money, he charters his ship to the galactic version of The National Enquirer. He will convey their star reporter to investigate a planet which is openly dedicated to vice. Anything can be had for a price. She is going to investigate reports that the goings-on there are worse than merely being a planet-sized bordello. The reports are right, and Grimes and reporter Fenella Pruin find themselves not merely reporting on awful things, but scheduled as the next victims of awful things.

I approached this book with trepidation, because I hadn't reread it since originally reading it, which is usually a bad sign for books in a series I really like. Other than a dim memory of some of the supporting characters, and one incongruous line that had stuck in my memory, I did not remember the plot at all. My worries were both justified and not justified. Unlike most of the John Grimes series, there are some specific really ugly things that happen in this book. They aren't described graphically or lasciviously (I don't think I've ever used that word before), but they are explicitly mentioned. This was done in such a way that it didn't bother me excessively, but it did make me mildly uncomfortable. I found a piece Grimes wrote later about the book, in which he complained that originally his US publisher, DAW books, wouldn't publish this story originally because it was too graphic, yet DAW was the publisher for the infamous Gor series at the time! Later DAW relented--And it was a DTB version from DAW where I first read this thirty or so years ago. I bought my ebook version directly from Baen Books, but it is now available on Amazon as part of this collection:



Several favored characters from the series return; scoundrel Drongo Kane, perhaps the most consistent nemesis Grimes has, plays a role. And the Shaara, a race of giant intelligent honeybees, are back. In one of the preceding books in the series, Grimes was captured for awhile by Shaara pirates, with fatal consequences to the pirates. Unfortunately, the pirates have friends, so the Shaara are a problem again in this book. Which is a pity, because I always liked the concept of large flying intelligent insects! (even though the aerodynamics behind 'em doesn't work!).

I'll avoid discussing the plot further, except to say that little of this takes place in a classic space opera setting. I remember reading an interview with author Chandler where he griped that he would like to try his hand at different types of books, but his fans constantly howled for more John Grimes. I concluded then, and still stick with it, that he decided he would write John Grimes books, but stick John Grimes into whatever type of setting that Chandler decided he wanted to write about. This book fits that theory!

I had dim memories of Pruin and two other characters in the book, and the only other thing I remembered hadn't occurred to me until I read it here. At one point, Grimes speaks the line "I was trying to loop the loop." <!> And it came crashing back into my memory. Of all the things to stick in my mind from the book years later, that made me laugh! I was glad to recognize it; I remembered so little of the plot that I was wondering if perhaps I somehow hadn't read this one.

Good, but not great, and the sensitive may not like some very unpleasant events that are described in a non-graphic way. I give it three and a half stars. I remember the next book in the series better-John Grimes turns pirate! And am looking forward to it.


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## The Hooded Claw

I am traveling for work, and posting anything lengthy on my smartphone is difficult, but I have had a lot of reading time on the airplane and evenings in my hotel room, and am keeping plowing ahead in my reading.

The booklist has included:

Tales of Terror and Mystery, by Arthur Conan Doyle... This is a freebie classic. It was a decent read, not fabulous. I really liked the concept behind one story of the early days of aviation. 

How to be Interesting: (in Ten Simple Steps), by Jessica Hagy.... Didn't live up to the hype. Some good reinforcement of stuff most of us already know, but nothing life changing. 

Storm Front (the Dresden Files, Book 1), by Jim Butcher.....I loved the television series a few years back, and have intended to read these ever since. I liked the first novel a lot. Not five stars, but very close. 

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, by H.  Keith Melton and Robert Wallace.... I am only about a third through with this. It is centered around some handbooks the CIA commissioned back in the fifties by one of the leading professional magicians of the time to teach how the trade secrets of magic could apply to agents seeking to do things like pass documents while under surveillance, or even slip knockout drugs into someone's glass! The authors have supplemented with declassified material on the MK Ultra program, bizarre Castro assassination attempts, and some of the more outlandish things The Agency tried to do. So far I am pleased. 

More details next week when I am back home with a keyboard to type on! 

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk


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## The Hooded Claw

Tales of Terror and Mystery, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The title gives it away--This is a collection of short stories, neatly subdivided into stories involving Terror, and stories involving Mystery. Despite the author, there is no Sherlock Holmes here, though in two of the stories, Doyle includes letters from "a famous detective of some repute" (or similar description) that analyze this particular mystery in a seemingly logical fashion. Some of these stories have been published elsewhere, and I read a couple of them in a DTB collection called "Round the Fire Stories" that I read long, long ago.

The first story is my favorite in the whole book--"The Horror of the Heights", written in the early Twentieth Century when the aircraft was new and flight still largely unexplored. The point of the story is that there are "things" up there that we don't know about. And by flying at extremely high altitudes, we may find them and discover that actually they have found us! The story suffers somewhat from being communicated in supposed notes hastily scribbled by a flyer who has had a misadventure, but the idea was novel enough that I still liked the story. Other "Terror" stories are okay, but not as clever. "The Leather Funnel" was disturbing (in a good way!) and "The Case of Lady Sannox" really did surprise me at the end.

Then we switch to mystery stories. These aren't as good, to be blunt. "The Black Doctor" depends on a gimmick that will make some groan, but I liked the gimmick. And "The Japanned Box" has an interesting surprise at the end. I'm deliberately being vague so that there are no spoilers here! I think our society has become more jaded, and the scarey stories are not as disturbing to me as they would have been a hundred years ago. The writing style is workmanlike, clear, and descriptive. I liked it, but some may view it as dated. The price is right, and if you are interested you will probably find it worth your while. Three and a half stars from me.



How to be Interesting (In Ten Simple Steps), by Jessica Hagy

This book, developed from the author's website, has gotten a lot of hype. I thought it was acceptable, but didn't live up to the hype. I probably would be more pleased if I hadn't gotten into it with such high expectations. The book really is about the rather shallow goal described in the title, but don't judge it too harshly--The author correctly judges that the best way to be interesting is to be yourself, pursue your goals, and minimize your therbligs.

There are a zillion self-help books out there with similar ideas, but the "cool" feature here is that rather than lecture you on how you should accomplish these things, or give examples from her life or the lives of others showing how others have accomplished them, the book consists of simple graphics illustrating a concept, followed by just a paragraph or two. Then we move on to the next graphic. Some people have been absolutely floored by this, and I think this accounts for many of the good reviews and the favorable publicity. I found this method to be an interesting conceit, and the illustrations are sometimes very good at getting a point across, but I wanted to see more exposition, and in a couple of cases I couldn't figure out what the author was trying to convey!

I went through a period in my life where I read a LOT of self-help books, and I still read a new one or re-read a particular favorite once in awhile. So I've had exposure to more of this stuff than less obsessive readers, and that may account for little of it being new to me. Most of it is worth some thought, and few or none of the ideas struck me as useless or wrong. The author is clearly trying to provoke thought in most cases, rather than merely lecture us, and overall this system just didn't work that well for me. I do think that many of the ideas are good and worth being reminded of, and probably more valuable than that if you haven't drunk deep from the self-help well previously.

Overall, I was barely satisfied with the book. The value of some of the concepts leads me to give it three and a half stars, but I wouldn't want to slip a ten dollar bill between this book and a three star rating!


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## crebel

The Hooded Claw said:


> How to be Interesting (In Ten Simple Steps), by Jessica Hagy
> 
> This book, developed from the author's website, has gotten a lot of hype. I thought it was acceptable, but didn't live up to the hype. I probably would be more pleased if I hadn't gotten into it with such high expectations. The book really is about the rather shallow goal described in the title, but don't judge it too harshly--The author correctly judges that the best way to be interesting is to be yourself, pursue your goals, and minimize your therbligs.


Claw, are you just checking to see if anyone is reading your posts? What the heck are my "therbligs"?


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

crebel said:


> Claw, are you just checking to see if anyone is reading your posts? What the heck are my "therbligs"?


Therbligs is a real word:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therblig

Mike


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## telracs

I actually know the answer to the therblig question thanks to a book a read many, many years ago.

A therblig is one of 18 basic motion elements first "described" by Frank Gilbreth, who was a motion study expert in the early 1900s.  These days we'd probably call him an efficiency expert.  

One of the ways in which he was quite efficient was reproduction.  He and his wife, Lilly, had 12 children.  Two of their children wrote 2 books about the family, "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Belles on their Toes". The original Cheaper by the Dozen movie was based on the book, but since then the remakes have been updated to modern times and have nothing to do with the Gilberths, who were quite interesting.


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## The Hooded Claw

It is a real word, and my phrase is part of a real quote, though one only a major fan of classic science fiction would know. Robert Heinlein wrote (via his character Lazarus Long) "Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic. This doubles your effective lifespan, and thereby gives  more time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows." In the context I and Heinlein used it, it especially refers to unnecessary tasks. 

Incidentally, therblig is merely a transmogrification of the letters in the name Gilbreth! 

I am glad that at least Chris and Scarlet and Mike are reading these posts!


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## telracs

The Hooded Claw said:


> It is a real word, and my phrase is part of a real quote, though one only a major fan of classic science fiction would know. Robert Heinlein wrote (via his character Lazarus Long) "Minimize your therbligs until it becomes automatic. This doubles your effective lifespan, and thereby gives more time to enjoy butterflies and kittens and rainbows." In the context I and Heinlein used it, it especially refers to unnecessary tasks.
> 
> Incidentally, therblig is merely a transmogrification of the letters in the name Gilbreth!
> 
> I am glad that at least Chris and Scarlet and Mike are reading these posts!


And Heinlein got the word from reading Gilbreth's work.... Gilbreth's main idea was to minimize movement to increase efficiency.

And i thought that reading this thread was part of my minion duties?

oh, and my favorite bit in the cheaper by the dozen book is when he teaches his kids to touch type....


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## Mike D. aka jmiked

telracs said:


> He and his wife, Lilly, had 12 children. Two of their children wrote 2 books about the family, "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Belles on their Toes".


I have a hardcover copy of _Belles on Their Toes_ around here somewhere, and I think a copy of _Cheaper by the Dozen_ also. My grandmother may have give to me on a visit many years ago.

Mike


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## crebel

Learn something new every day.  I didn't even bother to check whether therblig was a real word before posting.

In striving to achieve the status of lazy, I'm all for minimizing my therbligs.


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## Jeff

I should have known _therbligs_, but didn't. The Gilbreths were neighbors of my grandparents. I don't remember anything else about that either, telracs.


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## The Hooded Claw

crebel said:


> In striving to achieve the status of lazy, I'm all for minimizing my therbligs.


That's such a good quote, I vote for putting it under your avatar pic!


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## crebel

The Hooded Claw said:


> That's such a good quote, I vote for putting it under your avatar pic!


I tried, Claw. It's too long to fit...

Therbligs, therbligs, therbligs - my new favorite word.


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## The Hooded Claw

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Aquarium-The-Making-Soviet/dp/0026154900/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377841352&sr=8-1&keywords=inside+the+aquarium

Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy, by Viktor Suvorov

First, please check out "The Wolf Hunt," by Russian singer Vladimir Vysotsky. Do pay attention to the translated lyrics:






I bought this book when it was published in 1986, and though I liked it, I haven't reread it until yesterday and this evening. I was prompted to re-read it by a thread here about Cold War books. I'm going to talk about it out of order, so that anyone from the Cold War thread who is interested can read about it before that thread vanishes from memory.

In the Prologue, author Suvorov is forced to watch a film of a man being forced into an incinerator while alive and conscious. Just a couple of pages into the first chapter, he orders his tank driver to drive the tank through an intact brick wall! A lot happens in this book. Suvorov was an officer in the Soviet Army who was chosen to join the GRU, the Soviet Army's intelligence service, which was a rival to the more famous KGB. The first half of the book describes the end of his regular Army career and how he was chosen for special intelligence duty, then selected to be part of the cream of the crop, a spy who would operate under cover of being a diplomat. Suvorov describes in detail how promotions and factions worked in his part of the old Soviet Union, and it apparently was a truly dog-eat-dog, competitive, and brutal place. The book's title was chosen because GRU agents are continually tested, checked, and observed. Everything they do is visible, and he compares the experience to being a fish in an aquarium. Apparently even the Russians used the name "The Aquarium" to refer to GRU headquarters but he also makes it clear that the description applies equally to life everywhere in the organization. The second half of the book describes Suvorov's career overseas spying for the Motherland. The tone of the book is fast-paced, activity-oriented, and often paranoid or brutal. It is well-written, and I liked the book a lot. This was one of a series of books Suvorov had written about the old USSR, I read them all and thought and think highly of them, but I must admit I don't consider Suvorov a totally reliable narrator. The book is a must-read if you want to understand what spying was (and probably still is) like.

For some reason, I couldn't get the book to appear in the link-maker, probably because it is out of print. So I've inserted an image of the cover and a link to the Amazon page above. But on to the tidbits. I have several....

It is traditional among most countries that when their new diplomat/spies arrive at an embassy, they are given several weeks or months to explore aimlessly, orient themselves, and learn the ropes of the host country in detail. The Soviets often took advantage of this and immediately gave new arrivals courier and other assignments that didn't require detailed local knowledge to execute. They could do this with little fear of being detected by the counterintelligence services of their host countries, because those worthies usually viewed newly-arrived agents as low priority for surveillance, because they were not yet familiar with the country. On arriving in Austria, Suvorov was quickly given an assignment to go into Germany and meet a traitorous Western citizen who was an established agent for the GRU, and was going to hand over an example of the latest precision-guided American anti-tank missile. Suvorov wasn't given photos of the agent, but was given a series of phrases and actions that would be the recognition signal. Suvorov's job was to collect the missile and give the agent his payment. Suvorov was convinced that anyone who would be able to have access to such an advanced missile would be a very important person, most likely an American general or at least a high-ranking officer. He went to the assigned location and waited. Eventually an elderly German farmer drove up on a tractor towing a trailer. He presented Suvorov with an expended missile that had been fired without a warhead in practice, and had presumably landed in his fields! Not at all what Suvorov expected, but the man delivered the goods....

Suvorov describes a hilarious problem they had at the Soviet embassy in Vienna. An attic was filled with thousands of copies of elaborately-printed and bound books by a disgraced former Soviet leader that had to be gotten rid of after sitting unwanted for decades. They occupied precious floor space that was needed for operations, and there were literally tons of them. But they couldn't just throw the books in the trash. When they passed into Austrian control, the old books might be discovered by the media, which would embarrass Russia by pointing out that the oh-so-important words of the former great leader were now just garbage. The diplomats considered burning the books. But a classic sign of imminent war between countries is to burn all classified documents in the hostile nation's embassy. A big bonfire could cause a war panic. How were they to get rid of these masses of elaborate, expensive, and useless books? What a problem....

In the embassy room where extremely classified discussions were held, even the chairs were transparent (presumably plexiglass) to make it impossible for microphones or bugs to be hidden inside.

And as for the song I directed your attention to at the beginning of this post? When Suvorov's nerves were tearing him apart just before his first big independent operation, his boss advised him to listen to a recording of this song. He did, and it apparently had a calming effect, as Suvorov later describes the words passing through his head when he was trying to evade searchers in a critical situation! The singer Vysovsky seems to have died young. I can't say I love it, but it is certainly a striking performance, especially when you know the words.

Inside the Aquarium gets four and a half stars from me. If you like spy stuff, I think you'll love the last half, and like the whole book.


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## The Hooded Claw

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1), by Jim Butcher

After a diversion to fit the spy book in, we return to regular order....I was a fan of The Dresden Files during its brief run on Syfy Channel several years ago, and have meant to read these books ever since. Finally got around to it last week. If you saw any episodes of the old show, this is very, very similar. There's even one scene I recognized and remembered from the show. For those not familiar with the show, this is urban fantasy involving hero Harry Dresden as a practicing wizard (he even has it stenciled on his door) in modern Chicago. He is in the open, but there are more wizards who are secretive and disapprove of Harry's open ways. Plus, there are various fantastic creatures around, many evil. So things are interesting for poor Harry. I can't discuss the book significantly without giving away plot elements, so I'll just say that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face, and I give this four and a half stars, and a high recommendation.



The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception, by H. Keith Melton and Robert Wallace

Back in the 1950s, The Central Intelligence Agency decided that it needed to improve the ability of its agents to do sneaky things such as pick up objects without being noticed, hand them off between agents, and especially to put things such as powders or capsules into the food or drink of victims without arousing suspicion. They decided that professional magicians would be good advisors for such feats of legerdemain, and commissioned professional magician John Mulholland to write a series of short manuals to instruct agents in such things. These manuals were highly classified at the time, printed in only highly limited printings, and were thought to be lost, but at least one copy of a couple of them has been found in declassified archives, and Mulholland's writings are really the centerpiece of this book (why didn't he get coauthor credit? I'm sure he gave up copyright under whatever contract he signed, so it isn't some scheme to deny his heirs royalties). Mulholland's work is supplemented by a modern essay that describes the famous (or infamous) MK-Ultra program that focused on secretly administering drugs to enemies for mind-altering or lethal purposes that presumably would enhance American national security. Overall, this part of the program didn't go well, resulting in the accidental deaths of some innocent US employees during experiments to determine drug effects, and some assassination efforts against Fidel Castro that didn't go well. The modern essay is interesting, but the most intriguing part of the book is the old Mulholland essays on how to actually do sneaky things. Parts of these are very prosaic--There are detailed instructions and illustrations on how to modify innocent items such as matchbooks and pencils to make them into better accessories for administering drugs. But the most interesting stuff is the material on misdirection and "how to get away with it" rather than details of technique. The book is very specific, even breaking down techniques separately for men and women (clothing and socially-acceptable actions for each sex make their best approaches quite different for many problems). There is some unintentional mild humor as Mulholland tries to be open-minded (for the time) and assert the competence and capabilities of many women, but seems more to stumble over himself and protest too much.

Lots of interesting trivia:

I wasn't surprised that agents were provided with "hush puppy" pills that contained a harmless tranquilizer to be mixed with ground beef and fed to noisy or aggressive watch dogs that might interfere with sneaking around. But I was impressed that agents were also given adrenaline-filled syringes to bring the dog back to consciousness as they departed to minimize chances that the intruders would let sleeping dogs lie long enough to be discovered and give away the intrusion.

One of the wackier plans against Castro was inserting a chemical in his boots when they were shined by staff of the hotel he was visiting...The chemical was intended to make his beard fall out. So many schemes involving inserting foreign materials in Castro's cigars were considered and discovered by the Cubans that Cuban security created a private cigar brand exclusively for Castro that could be strictly controlled and guarded against adulteration. Other plans included planting exploding seashells on beaches that skin diver Castro frequented, or contaminating his diving suit with disease germs.

Various ways to sneak agents in and out of places were considered, one involved having the stealthy person wear a "dog suit" resembling a big Saint Bernard, and be walked past those searching for him. It isn't clear from the book if this was actually used. I doubt most people could convincingly imitate the movements or activity of a dog for even a brief period.










The objects in the photo are rectal suppositories <!> containing various tools that were designed to allow carrying essential items through the most serious search. These actually do appear to have been used successfully!

Where to "drop" an item so that it can be picked up by another agent later is always a problem. One solution used was to find actual dead rat or pigeon carcasses, create a cavity inside for the item to be dropped, and leave it. It this was done in the right kind of area, nobody would disturb such an item, right? Experience proved that hungry cats had no such scruples! So after some failures, the dead rodents were doused with hot pepper sauce before being left for pickup.

The above items are from the modern essay. Mulholland's material is not so compact with nuggets that make for brief descriptions, but there are a few....

Agents were encouraged to come up with their own schemes to accomplish tasks such as dropping powder into water, but they had to be very thoughtful about it. For instance if the scheme involved borrowing a (pocket?) watch, they needed to be absolutely certain that the proposed victim carried a watch!

Contrary to the popular belief, it is easier to employ sleight of hand tricks up close to the person to be fooled than far away. From far away, the spectator has a good view of every part of the agent's body, but up close, only part of the performer is in the spectator's range of vision, so it is easier to do actions without being seen.

Many of the plans for administering powders involved using a pencil that had been modified with a hidden compartment for the powder, and these often involved getting close to the subject to draw a diagram for him and give an excuse to have the pencil in close proximity to his drink (or wherever the powder is to go). According to Mulholland, most men will insist on altering any diagram drawn by a woman...So if women agents are to use this approach on men, the pencil modification used must be one that won't give away the modification when the victim handles it. One way to get around this is to make the diagram a sketch of a dress, most men will (according to Mulholland) disclaim any knowledge of women's clothing, and won't feel the impulse to "improve" women's diagrams. Of course, finding a reason for a woman to approach a man she may not know well, and ask him a detailed question about dresses involving diagrams may be problematic....

Interesting reading, though not quite as good as I hoped it would be. I still rate the book at four stars!


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## The Hooded Claw

When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of all Time, by Michael J. Benton

A couple of weeks ago, I read a book called Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities about the five big mass extinctions that are known to have occurred. I was interested enough by it that I picked up this book, which focuses on the largest of the five (and was NOT the famous extinction of the dinosuars--This one occurred about 250 million<!> years ago). This is a much easier read than the Catastrophes book. It begins with a history of fossils and geology, focusing on the difficulty of marking out the boundaries between different eras among the layers of rock. Despite the title, the focus is fairly broad, and there is mention of other extinctions, especially the dinosaur killer. The author reprints a list he compiled in 1990 of one hundred different proposed causes for extinction of the dinosaurs, proposed between 1842 and 1990! Some of the more unusual ones include: Slipped vertebral discs, cataracts, AIDS caused by increasing promiscuity, growth of unnecessary horns and frills, competition with caterpillars that ate all the plants, methane poisoning from dinosaur flatulence, the famous terminal constipation (allegedly caused by a change from ferns to seed-bearing plants as the main vegetation), terminal hay fever, dinosaurs too large to hibernate (did dinosaurs hibernate?), high levels of atmospheric oxygen, high levels of carbon dioxide (actually a couple of theories with different causes for the extinction), worldwide drought, fluctuation of gravitational constants (as a physics guy, I could shoot that one down myself...), poisoning by Uranium, sunspots, and many more. Benton complains about scientists from other fields (and total non-scientists) who feel their expertise qualifies them to make pronouncements about dinosaur extinction without knowing all the work that has been done previously, but he does have to admit that the meteorite theory from about 1980 does seem to have wide acceptance now as at least a major part of the reason for extinction, yet the research was done and the theory created by paleontological outsiders!

The dinosaur extinction was a big event of course, but the Permian extinction was bigger and further-reaching. Because swamp vegetation was killed off globally, there is a "coal gap." For about 20 million years, new coal didn't form in meaningful quantities anywhere in the world. A medium-sized creature called Lystrosaurus, sort of a reptilian pig, was the only large land-dwelling vertebrate to make it through the extinction. It is estimated that 90% of all species that existed before the extinction were wiped out. For comparison, the dinosaur killer took out about 50% of all species. It took about 50 million years for the ecosystems to recover to pre-extinction levels of diversity and productivity.

There's no universal agreement on a cause for the extinction, but it appears likely that an unusual type of volcanic eruption called the Siberian Trap was the major mover, possibly supplemented with other causes. Meteorite impact doesn't seem likely as a major contributor, though can't be totally ruled out.

This is a much more accessible book than the earlier extinction book, and I recommend it for those interested in reading on this subject. Four stars from me, very close to four and a half.



Death at La Fenice: A Commissario Brunetti Mystery, by Donna Leon

I hadn't been aware of this series, even though it has been going for decades, and has over a dozen books published--One of the disadvantages of not going into a bookstore nowadays was that in searching for the things that specifically interested me, I was unavoidably exposed to a variety of different books. Amazon's recommendations engine is good, but it isn't intended to go far afield in recommending stuff that is different than what you choose to buy. But I have received a suggested reading list for preparation to travel to Italy in about a month, and this book was one that is suggested. The hero is a police detective assigned to Venice, and the book does do a good job of giving an idea of what the romantic city on the water is like. The mystery here is that a legendary conductor of music has been poisoned between acts during performance of an opera. This fellow is world-famous, and Brunetti is under great pressure to find the killer. The story ends up to be complex, with clues to what happened going far back in the victim's life. Even when I was 85% through with the book, I remember thinking that I really didn't know how this was going to end up, or how the case would be cracked. But author Leon comes through for us, and the book and the mystery are very satisfying. I recommend it. Four stars.

I already skipped ahead and described Inside the Aquarium.









(image only, not a link)

Star Loot, by A. Bertram Chandler

In poking around the internet, I found a collection of essays and articles that author Chandler had written for an Australian science fiction fanzine in the 1980s. I learned that one of Chandler's earliest memories was being a small child in London and watching German Zeppelins floating overhead in amidst the spotlights as they did bombing raids in World War I. Chandler grew up to be a merchant marine officer, and eventually became an Australian citizen, but first he was on a ship that was pursued by a U-boat during World War II, and was in London on leave late in the war when he had to duck and cover because German V-2 rockets were striking the city. I'd be willing to bet that he is the only science fiction writer who has survived attacks by Zeppelins, U-boats, and V-2 rocket! Unlike Edgar Rice Burroughs, he never wrote any novels vilifying Germans that I'm aware of.

At the start of the book, Grimes has finally had to face economic reality--The tiny lifeboat he was gifted with by a former employer is just not economical to run as a business. He is forced to sell his ship Little Sister to avoid having it confiscated to pay his escalating debts. Fortunately, Little Sister was a very ornate ship, and he is able to sell it with enough left over to purchase an admittedly bedraggled surplus merchant ship of a more reasonable size. The (space) sea is in his blood, and he returns to business as skipper effectively of a tramp merchant. But since this is Grimes, the life of a quiet buyer and seller is not what he is fated for. He is quickly approached by the Survey Service, the organization that nearly court martialed him and forced his resignation after he suffered a mutiny several years ago. Although he had earned many enemies who did not accept his style of doing things, there are people in the Survey Service who think that Grimes could be very helpful to them. They think that the traits of independence, luck, and tendency to take sides that were a curse when he was a line officer, can now be harnessed and put to good use by serving the Federation as a covert operative. These people will not take no for an answer, and Grimes finds himself assigned to infiltrate a group of "privateers" (effectively a legal dodge to act as a pirate) and create an incident that will give the Federation an excuse to shut the operation down. This happens in perhaps the first ten percent of the book, and then awaaaaaay we go....!

Chandler almost never lets us down, and this story is a good, reliable adventure story. My only complaint is that the efforts by Grimes to join the pirates take up most of the book, and the actual pirate operation takes perhaps the last fifteen percent of the book! I wish this book had been longer. Nevertheless, I give it a very solid three and a half stars.


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## The Hooded Claw

Retail Undercover: True Shoplift Arrest Stories from an Undercover Retail Loss Prevention Agent, by Mark E. Douglas

Recently I realized that something was missing from my life....I usually read what I call an "occupational memoir" every month or two, but I hadn't read one lately. I think that nearly every job has something interesting about it at times, and I am always very curious how the world works, and how others of the employed keep their small part of the world running smoothly. I have a number of choices available to me, but this one intrigued me, so I bought it. It's only a buck, and can be borrowed if you have Prime and the KOLL. I chose to spend the buck and used my monthly book loan under Prime for something else. The book is only 58 pages long

The book is exactly what it says it is. The author was a loss prevention agent in a big store. He reports that they carried handcuffs and had authority to make arrests, which mildly surprised me. Something that mildly surprised me, but in a good way, was that shoplifting arrests can be a bigger deal than you might think. He reports that for some of his arrests where he caught repeat offenders, the police came to pick the accused up, and the accused was convicted of a felony because of the size of the thefts or the repeat offenses. Since I help pay for this stuff, I am okay with that...The store, part of a big chain, is not identified in the book, but they have a pretty sophisticated security system with video cameras to watch the floor, and multiple specialists whose main job is watching for shoplifters and detaining them, on duty being guided by another employee watching the cameras.

I found his observations on how to spot a potential shoplifter interesting. He says (understandably) that he doesn't want to give away their big secrets, but that a key thing to watch for is the eyes....Regular shoppers are focused on what they are buying, and oblivious to nearly everything else, while shoplifters are very attuned to their environment and the people around them. Open gawking around is presumably easy to spot, but savvier potential thieves put all the movement in their eyes. Of course some people looking around suspiciously have just temporarily misplaced their spouse!

There is an account of his training, and we go right into stories of action on the floor. It is reasonably entertaining and interesting, but nothing wondrous to read about happens. I was initially surprised (but not after I thought about it) to read that many shoplifters come back to the same store again and again to steal from it. Savvier ones will rotate around between different stores. He claims the staff are very conservative about actually stopping and arresting a shoplifter, letting the person go if they aren't absolutely certain they are leaving the store with merchandise (vs. having dropped it off on a shelf somewhere unseen), so the staff becomes familiar with repeat "offenders" and in some cases the potential thieves spot store loss staff and recognize them the next time in the store. Very cat-and-mousey!

The book is okay, it isn't spectacular. The stories of his work are of interest, but didn't grab me. There are some minor editing problems, no tremendous howlers. Some sentences are awkward, but there are no major misspellings or blunders that forced themselves on my attention. I rate it as three stars out of five. There's a Volume II, but it is cut down to thirty-some pages. I doubt I'll get it.



Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside the Shipping, the Invisible Industry that Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate, by Rose George

So after reading about how stuff is kept from leaving retail stores illicitly, I decided to read about how stuff got to the stores in the first place! This book intrigued me enough that I bought it even though it is priced above my preferred $9.99 limit.

You may have read about container ships, where merchandise is loaded ahead of time into big standardized boxes that fit neatly into pre-built racks on the ship, and can be handled quickly and easily by machines. This is very efficient, and has made transportation a ridiculously small percentage of the cost of an item. It is container ships that made it possible for all sorts of things to be made with cheap labor in Asia and brought to North America or Europe for sale. The author gives as a graphic example of how cheap shipping has become is that it is cheaper to send Scottish Cod from Scotland to China (ten thousand miles by sea) and have it filleted in China before shipping it back to Scotland for sale, than to pay people in Scotland to do the filleting! This is mind-boggling to me. The cheap goods are great for those who have a good job and can benefit by making their salary go further, but it is pretty bad if you had a job in Scotland doing filleting. Of course they are even less valuable for the large numbers of longshoremen and other dockyard workers who have lost their jobs because loading and unloading ships is so much more efficient than it was only a couple of decades ago.

Author Rose George explores this whole field for us by taking an extended voyage (England to Singapore) on a huge container ship. As she describes the progression of her trip, each chapter focuses on one particular aspect of shipping and zeroes in on it for us. There are a couple of diversions from the sea voyage when she takes a trip on a naval vessel of the anti-pirate patrol off Somalia, and another as she investigates whales and large ships, visiting a research center in New England. Some of the other specialized topics that get their own chapter include transiting the Suez Canal, what things are like for the unfortunate sailors who have to abandon ship, how crew deal with prostitutes and "land sharks" who prey on sailors, people who try to help sailors physically or spiritually, and many other topics. The book is competently-written, and the material is fascinating for people who like to understand how their world works. I learned a lot from the book, and had a pleasant read while doing it.

In this sort of book there are always lots and lots of interesting tidbits...Here are a few.

Container ships are BIG nowadays. The largest container ship can carry fifteen thousand boxes, or to put it another way, it could carry 746 million bananas! That's one for every person in Europe, or about two for every person in the USA, all carried on one ship!

The book talks extensively about the harsh life most mariners aboard the ship lead. Most of them are from third world or developing countries. A great many sailors are from the Philippines, they are popular because good English skills are common there. Officers are often from Eastern Europe. The life of a seafarer gives much less opportunity for glamorous seeing the world than it used to. The efficiency of quickly loading and unloading ships means that there are no extended times in port or opportunities to explore foreign shores. At best, most sailors will grab a few hours in a destination, barely enough time to get away from the dock area. It is not uncommon for sailors to spend years without leaving their ship. Missing your offspring's childhood is just part of the job. One sailor claims that his son was seven years old before daddy could be there for his birthday. The Filipinos call their job "Dollar for homesick." Working conditions and hours are often terrible and in an unsafe environment. Ships are usually deliberately registered under "flags of convenience" that aren't particular about worker safety laws, or investigating problems. Often there is nobody who has jurisdiction over a problem to complain to. And many owners are (presumably deliberately) negligent about paying workers on time. It sounds like a rough life.

Cruise ships are heavily insulated to protect passengers from vibration (though not necessarily in crew quarters, the cruise ship sailor memoir I read earlier this year described how the author had to sleep with earplugs on), but there are no such niceties on cargo ship quarters. The author was given a VIP room for visiting officers and the like, but every joint and hinge in the room was stuffed with paper to try to minimize the always-present vibrations of the engines. She described having repeated violent dreams, which the sailors claim are common and are a side-effect of sleeping with continual vibration.

The fuel oil that modern ships run on is dirty, unrefined, and even the people who sell it describe it as "one step up from asphalt." You can walk on it when it is at room temperature (though I'll pass trying it, thank you). I was surprised how much air pollution ships emit. They are a major contributor to air pollution problems in many coastal areas near large harbors. Even so, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, container ships are an incredibly efficient way to transport mass cargoes.

The passage fee for a large container ship to go through the Suez Canal is about $300,000. Egyptian land staff have to be bribed with plentiful cigarettes and other luxury goods, or "problems" will develop for a particular ship. The system is so corrupt that officers call it "The Marlboro Canal!"

The Somali pirates will read up on ships on the internet to try to get information to intercept. Once they have captured crew members, they will look up crew on Facebook and other web sites to look for large homes or other signs of wealth that will help justify a large ransom.

I liked the book a lot. Four and a half stars from me. If the subject intrigues you, you'll like it.

But before you leave, check out this unusual ship:






The above ship type got only a passing reference in "Ninety Percent", but it I'd never heard of it before and thought it was interesting!

I"m almost caught up with posting on my reading. One more to go. I finished this last night, but it will have to be described in a later post:



Venice: A New History, by Thomas F. Madden


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## The Hooded Claw

Well, I didn't write up the history of Venice book before I finished this one tonight...



Napoleon's Pyramids, by William Dietrich

Author Dietrich is actually a Pulitzer Prize winner! But that was for traditional journalism, not for a fantasy adventure like this one. Pardon my movie comparisons, but take 60% Raiders of the Lost Ark, mix in 40% National Treasure, set it during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt back in 1798, and you'll have this book! There are the promised pyramids and Napoleon, Admiral Nelson, deadly vipers, Freemasons, the Knights Templar, mysterious treasures, a night in a harem, a tomahawk, ancient magic, and even that newfangled invention the hydrogen balloon all mixed together in a fun romp! I had high hopes for this book, and was not disappointed.

I am posting here before I go to bed, and hopefully this marker will shame me into properly covering these last two books before I read another and get further behind!


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## The Hooded Claw

Venice: A New History, by Thomas F. Madden

A month or so ago, I described reading a history of Venice that focused on the Venetian overseas empire, and said I wanted to read a history focusing on Venice itself. This was what I chose. The book was a good choice, and I'm glad I read it. I feel well-prepared to go to Italy next month. The book is well-written and covers some fascinating materials.

I was very impressed by the Venetian system of government, which had a rotating executive (The Doge) and several committees of different sizes that had various areas of authority. These committees grew to the point that eventually about one percent of the total population had a seat in the governing body! Selection was based on wealth and on service to The Republic, and there were systems to ensure that new families and members who were deserving to "join the club." Compared to what I've read about how feudal government and monarchy worked in the other parts of Europe, it sounds great. If I ever end up living one of those time travel stories in Medieval Europe, I'm heading directly to Venice! Though how I'll speak the language once I get there will be doubtless be a problem...Despite the generally-good court system, and some degree of freedom of speech, the types of clothes people could wear were strictly regulated by class, however. No chance for a poor person to dress up and ape a rich person without risking arrest!

The system of selecting the Doge changed over time, starting out by being a verbal acclamation by a mob of all the citizenry gathered in one big gathering. This wasn't terribly efficient, and was later replaced by a committee to select the Doge. To minimize the chances of rigging the choice, it involved a series of committees that chose the next committee, which would choose another committee....and so on. In some cases, selection for the next committee was done by random selection (literally drawing balls out of an urn) rather than by election. Eventually a committee of forty-one electors would be chosen, and they would each in random order have a chance to nominate a candidate. This would produce about seven or eight candidates, who would have an opportunity to speak to the group about why they should be elected, and there was a further elaborate system to force the group into a good discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. The system was supposedly designed not to be fast, but to be complicated, and so cumbersome that only God could influence it! The greatest illustration of the the system's strength is that even though this was done for many centuries, there were almost no cases where the transition of power wasn't smooth and uneventful. The people had confidence in the system. A different testimony to the system is that the expensive homes of the rich and powerful were not fortified as they were in most other Italian cities during the era. Everyone had confidence in the system, and was not expecting violence from their rivals.

It is from a Venetian practice that we get our modern word "quarantine." During the plague years, incoming ship passengers were isolated on a small island for a period of forty days to ensure that any disease they were carrying would show itself. The forty days were "The Quarantia" and that word got transmogrified a bit when it came into English, but we still use it today.

I visited Venice before in the mid-2000s, and was very impressed by one room in the palace where the portraits of all the Doges lined the walls. But one portrait just contained a black shilhoutte. We were told that this Doge had betrayed The Republic, but no details were offered. This book explains what happened. It was rather sad, really. The motivations of the blacked-out Doge seem petty, and I suspect we don't have the full story. He was arrested because he initiated a plot to snuff out people who were angry at him by getting together twenty of his cronies and telling them to gather up forty men each and bringing them in to attack The Great Council. Of course, any scheme that depends on the discretion of eight hundred people is not likely to be successful, and this one failed as you would expect. The traitor Doge seems to have been genuinely repentant, but was beheaded nonetheless.

Venice was a great center of publishing in the 1500s and 1600s. You've undoubtedly seen some variant of this logo on Doubleday books:










It is a variant on this logo, belonging to the Aldine Press of Venice in the early 1500s:










This company was so respected and associated with excellence that it was copied by numerous publishers for centuries after it stopped publication! But some things about publishing never change. The philosopher Erasumus was a proofreader there, and later complained about the long hours, miserable working conditions, and stingy bosses! Among other innovations by Aldine were the octavo sized-book and the italic font (designed to allow fitting more print on each page).

You've undoubtedly heard the story of how the Turks were using the Parthenon in Athens as a storehouse for gunpowder, when a shell from a naval bombardment caused a tremendous explosion that damaged the building....It was Venetian besiegers that fired the fatal shell. Venice was at war with Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) over and over again. Venice was one of the most enthusiastic Crusading states, though they tended to focus on providing naval support, rather than ground troops. But go with your strengths, I always say!

Near the end of the book, we read about the abolition of the Venetian state during the Napoleonic Wars. There is a brief bit about the relations between the declining Venetian Republic and the newborne United States of America, which coexisted for a few years. The USA was eagerly seeking recognition from Venice, but Venice kept the new nation at arm's length for fear of angering England. The book does continue to talk about Venice during the 19th and 20th Centuries.

I am extremely satisfied with the book. Four and a half stars from me. Highly recommended for those with a particular motive to read about Venice. Others who just want to read something about that part of history will probably also enjoy the book.

Napoleon's Pyramids (Ethan Gage Adventure), by William Dietrich

I picked this book up when it was marked down over a year ago. I was immediately intrigued by it, but didn't get around to reading it till now. It is the first in a lengthy series about hero Ethan Gage. Gage is a young man in his early thirties who has already had an unusual life...He spent time as an assistant to Benjamin Franklin, and knows quite a bit about the new science of electricity, but also worked as a fur trapper and fur dealer in French Canada, so he is expert with a flintlock rifle and a tomahawk! He also had two years at Harvard, so he has considerable education, though is not truly a scholar. He has great knowledge of French, and as the book starts is working as an agent negotiating commercial transactions in Revolutionary France for American merchants and shippers. He describes himself as an "amateur scientist, investigator of electricity, entrepeneur, sharpshooter, and democratic Idealist." One night he wins a peculiar old amulet in a gambling game, and immediately finds himself pursued, framed for murder, and on the run from the gendarmes. Thanks to connections in the Freemasons, he finds himself attached to the French Army being sent to invade Egypt. He gets to meet an on-the-make young general named Bonaparte, and is being treated as something of a scholar who is supposed to help understand lost ancient Egyptian secrets that Napoleon hopes to use for his own purposes.

As I said previously, this book is sixty percent Raiders of the Lost Ark, and forty percent National Treasure. I stand by that description. The story is excellent, fast-moving, and interesting. The writing is decent, but not spectacular. The love interest in the book seems to be handled rather stiffly to me, but the mystery and action plots keep moving along. I know something about Napoleon and the period, and quite a bit about ancient Egypt, and the author has done his research. Both subjects are accurately-represented in the book, and you will probably pick up some interesting Egyptian lore in reading the book.

Recommended, and gets four stars from me. I had picked up another book late in the series while it was marked down, but these books cry out to be read in order, so before long I'm definitely going to pick up the second book in the series.


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## Trophywife007

I hope we get a report on your Italy travels!


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## The Hooded Claw

Trophywife007 said:


> I hope we get a report on your Italy travels!


I'll post either a thread in this forum, or in the Photo Forum! Wherever it is, I'll post a link to it here....


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## The Hooded Claw

Oklahoma Outlaws Spooky Stories and all around folklore, by David A. Farris

This privately-published book isn't even available on Amazon! I did find it for sale on the internet here:
http://www.bracebooks.com/product/oklahoma-outlaws-spooky-stories-and-all-around-folklore
And if you're in Oklahoma, I'm told it is often offered in local museums and in the local sections of Barnes & Noble stores. I am not able to add it to my reading bar since Amazon doesn't even offer it through third party vendors! I was dimly aware of this book and similar earlier ones by Farris, when I heard him speak about Belle Starr and a couple of other figures from the book. He offered this book for sale after his talk, so I bought it from him and have myself an autographed copy! Farris has produced several books on Oklahoma folklore, and I've seen them on sale around the state for years. His earlier books focused on particular topics--One book is on outlaws, another on spooky stories. This one combines chapters from the earlier books with some of them updated, and adds a couple of new chapters.

I'm satisfied with the book, though it is far from perfect. There are twenty-two chapters, covering well-known outlaws such as Belle Star (from what he says, her criminal activities were greatly exaggerated after she was murdered) and lesser figures such as Cattle Annie and Little Britches, whose criminal activities all took place in their early teens, when they were a bit too infatuated by some local shady characters. One of the most interesting outlaw chapters is on Belle Starr--Though she was fairly small-time as a criminal, she was a mean and tough woman, and at least twice assaulted her misbehaving adult son with a bullwhip in front of witnesses! Another one I found interesting (and knew nothing about) was about the lynching of four bad guys, one a paid assassin, and the others the men who'd hired him. The town of Ada, Oklahoma was moving away from being comfortable with having villains around, and the citizens marked their change in attitude by hanging these men in a barn, and making their drop slow enough that they choked to death hanging by their necks, rather than the more merciful long drop that breaks the neck. Gruesome stuff. This stuff mostly happened between the 1880s or 90s and about 1910, later than most of the Western adventures we are used to. In at least one case, a crime was reported on the phone!

After eight chapters of outlaws, there are several chapters of ghost stories and "Spook Lights," including a chapter on a wave of UFO sightings in Oklahoma in the 1960s that I hadn't known about. Then there are several chapters on mysterious beasts, most of which I found not very credible [one that MIGHT be true involved repeated sightings of a lion--Yep, as in "King of the Beasts"--in Oklahoma that it is barely possible escaped from a circus]. Others about "little people" and Bigfoot didn't get much respect from me.

The last two chapters are interesting, they are about misplaced bodies and mysterious deaths. One of them I was fairly well aware of--Outlaw Elmer McCurdy didn't have any relatives to claim his body after he was killed by lawmen after a bungled train robbery, so his preserved corpse went off on its own adventure, ending up with him having roles in a movie and a television show--Sixty years after his death! I was dimly aware of the second one, but hadn't heard details. There are some claims that Lincoln Assassin John Wilkes Booth actually escaped, despite the official story that he was shot while making a last stand in a barn. If these claims are true, Booth may have breathed his last in an Oklahoma town early in the Twentieth Century! I don't believe a word of it (nor do Lincoln scholars from what I'd read before, and looked up in curiosity after reading this book), but it is still an interesting story.

Highly recommended for anyone who wants to learn some Oklahoma folklore. Probably not very interesting for anyone not closely connected with the Sooner State, however. Writing is decent overall, but there are some serious editing mistakes. Most notably is a confusion between "site" and "sight." I ended up keeping count, and have forgotten whether it was four or five times that these words were used. But EVERY time I noticed them, the word chosen was the wrong one for the context it was used! There are other editing problems, but they are not such major howlers.

I still give it four stars out of five. Very much worth reading.










The Anarch Lords, by A. Bertram Chandler

I am continuing my project of reading all the John Grimes books, and this one is next. I remembered this one pretty well, and I know that I liked it when it originally came out in the early 1980s. In this part of the story of Grimes, he is spending much less time on spaceships, and the only space travel in this book is an amusing but not too exciting cruise as passenger on a luxury liner whose captain dislikes the job of playing host to a former pirate!

The book begins shortly after the end of Star Loot. Grimes has been enlisted as a secret agent on behalf of his former employers in the Federation Survey Service, and successfully engineered the fall of the pirate/privateer ring that he had been assigned to infiltrate. Unfortunately, his certificate as a "Master Astronaut" that allows him to be captain or crew of a starship gets revoked, and he cannot be an officer on the freighter he owns. But his employers in the Survey Service have other work for him. They engineer his appointment as a planetary governor! Grimes is sent to a rather sleepy agricultural colony world that was founded originally by extreme anarchists, but whose current descendants are the upper class over a slave-owning plantation system. They have a lot of self-government, so the Federation cannot just order things set right, but Grimes is sent in to shake things up and cause a change, and of course he manages to do so. In the course of the book, it is pointed out that the famous pirate Morgan became a governor after his pirate career slowed down, and that the famous Captain Bligh survived a mutiny (as Grimes has done) and went on to become a Governor for the British in Australia!

I didn't enjoy the book as much as I remember liking it originally, but it is a decent read. Another three and a half star book.



The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist, and the Lindbergh Kidnapping, by Adam Schrager

I'm going to wait to write in more detail about this till tomorrow, but this is another book about the Lindbergh Kidnapping. It is a biography of U.S. Forestry Service scientist Arthur Koehler, focusing on how he studied the wood in the portable ladder that the kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby left behind. Koehler had used forensic methods to find out some amazing stuff about the wood used in the ladder, even tracing the exact lumberyard that some of the boards had been bought from! More about it next time....


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## The Hooded Claw

I'll soon be reading the book below:



After seeing the new version of the movie on cable several months ago, I noted that this book was over twelve dollars in Kindle form. It has dropped to $6.44, and I grabbed it. With about 180 out of 270 reviews being five star, it would seem promising, even if I hadn't liked both movie versions a lot....


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## Trophywife007

The Hooded Claw said:


> I'll post either a thread in this forum, or in the Photo Forum! Wherever it is, I'll post a link to it here....


Thanks. I look forward to it!


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## The Hooded Claw

The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist, and the Lindbergh Kidnapping

As I mentioned above, this is a biography of Arthur Koehler, an expert on wood for the US Forestry Service, and it especially focuses on his work in helping solve the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping back in the 1930s. I like the book a LOT, and recommend it highly for those interested in that mystery, or for those who are just interested in forensics. Fingerprints and handwriting analysis were fairly well accepted by the early 1930s, but other types of analysis were new, and Koehler was skilled enough at his job and an excellent explainer and advocate on the witness stand who helped start establishing the credibility of other sorts of laboratory work. Lots of interesting details in the book.

Some interesting word definitions brought themselves to my attention. I'd never heard the term "xylotomist" and even the dictionary on Kindle didn't come through on it, but Wikipedia and other online sources reveal that xylotomy is "the preparation of small slivers of wood for examination under a microscope." This was Koehler's official job title, so I was relieved to learn that it had nothing to do with banging on metal strips to make music! And "brashness" is not just the ability to be a bit aggressive and perhaps obnoxious...It also is a technical term for the tendency of wood to break and splinter.

The most spectacular of the few pieces of physical evidence from the kidnapping was a homemade three-piece ladder used by the kidnapper. Koehler made the interesting observation (obvious once pointed out, but not so obvious to point out) that as a homemade rather than mass-produced item, the unusual characteristics of the ladder "...could be expected to reveal some of the peculiarities and associations of the man who made it." Obvious, but I wouldn't have thought to sum it up so well.

For those not familiar with the Lindbergh Kidnapping, a man named Bruno Haumptmann was eventually tried and executed for the crime, allegedly as the lone criminal. There is a cottage industry of people examining the case who assert the innocence of Haumptmann. I've never felt sympathy for that viewpoint, though I think it is quite possible there were other people involved besides Haumptmann. But I gained some sympathy for Haumptmann when I read this quote from Colonel H. Norman Schwartzkopf, who was in charge of the investigation:

"We have scores of circumstances which we will seek to fit in with the circumstances in the life of the man we find with the ransom money. If they dove-tail even 60%, we'll send that man to the chair."

He wrote this before Haumptmann was identified or charged, but it bothers me even though I think Haumptmann was guilty! And yes, if you are thinking back to the early 1990s, Colonel Schwartzkopf had a son who became a general in the US Army!

I was impressed by the stuff Koehler figured out from the ladder, including the exact lumberyard where some of it was sold, and using characteristics of the milling machinery to find the mill that had produced it. He also correctly predicted the type of location some of the salvaged wood used for the ladder had been acquired from.

The Kidnapping was not Koehler's first criminal case. Ten years before, he had been involved in the investigation of a mail bomb (in the 1920s, who'd a thunk it!?) and linked the wood in the bomb package to some wood chips found in the workshop of the man who was later convicted of building and mailing the bomb.

Weirdly, many years before the kidnapping, and even before Lindbergh's famous transatlantic flight, Koehler and Lindbergh lived just a few blocks away from each other in Wisconsin, far from New Jersey where the kidnapping took place. Lindbergh flunked out of the college he was attending at the time, but later returned to receive an honorary degree in the very same graduation ceremony where Koehler got his hard-earned Master's degree in forestry!

Shortly after the Lindbergh Kidnapping, a federal law was passed making kidnapping a federal crime so the FBI could get involved immediately. Weirdly, this was opposed by many "state's rights" advocates because of Bill of Rights concerns, specifically the Tenth Amendment.

There were a few brief mentions of early uses of science in crimefighting. A Chinese book from 1248 included a section on how to distinguish drowning from strangulation! And as far back as 1835, Scotland Yard used bullet comparisons to catch a murderer! A full-time criminology laboratory was established in France in 1910. Sherlock Holmes didn't have nuthin' on the real world!

There was heavy press coverage of the Lindbergh trial, which some called "The Trial of the Century." Some people feel that intrusive photo coverage of the trial contributed to the later decision to ban cameras from courtrooms.

Highly recommended for the target audience. Minor nits are that in a few cases the author shifts into fiction or psycho-history in describing the thoughts of historical people during a key event. This doesn't last more than a page or two, and only happens perhaps eight or ten times in the book, but it bugs me to present this as fact. For some reason "kidnapping" was misspelled as "kidnaping" several times in the book. After about the third time it happened I had to look it up to make sure it wasn't ME who was confused! Still fascinating and very readable, and I give it four and a half stars, just short of the coveted five-star rating!



Death's Door, by James R. Benn

Another in the series of "Billy Boyle World War II Mysteries." Former Boston Police Detective and now US Army Lieutenant Billy Boyle is still Eisenhower's nephew, and he is still resolving sensitive situations for his uncle. This time he is sent on what seems a fool's errand. He is to go into Rome, far behind enemy lines, and make his way into the neutral Vatican City and solve a murder! The situation is complicated because his girlfriend (who is a British spy) is held in an Italian jail nearby, and he is strictly admonished not to go near her. You know that is one order he won't follow, right?

As always, Benn appears to have meticulously done his research. The story involves considerable discussion of the politics of the Papacy during the war, and the Pope's activities dealing with The Holocaust. In an afterword, Benn says that he started his research feeling critical of the Pope, but gained considerable sympathy for him as he researched the reasons for the actions taken, as well as the positive steps to help that actually were taken.

After reading a history of the Inquisition last year, I was amused to find that one of the significant characters in this book worked for The Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, which was the early Twentieth Century successor to the Inquisition! Another surprise about the future of one of the characters is revealed in the author's afterword.

As readers, some of us (of course, I never did this, but I've heard about it from others, heh) are embarrassed about what they are reading and what their friends might think of their choice. There is a pathetic moment in the book (at least for me) when Billy discovers that the murder victim, an important Church official, was killed while he was partway through a Rex Stout murder mystery. The victim apparently felt this would be embarrassing if discovered by any of his friends, so he hid the book with a bookmark showing his place, under a biography of churchman Sir Thomas More. Then he put on his coat and went out in the Winter night on the errand that lead to him being murdered. I was surprised how much that "got" me.

There are lots of historical details on how TOUGH wartime life was for people in The Vatican, many of whom were foreigners. Even though they were in a tiny neutral state, they had shortages of food and fuel, and were severely limited in not being able to safely leave a tiny area of only a few hundred acres while the war dragged on and on.

I used the Kindle translate feature several times for Italian and German with great success (there are cues to what is said in the book, and in some cases it is clear from context, so this was just for fun), but Kindle didn't come through to translate one sentence in what I assume was Gaelic!

Early on, I felt like things dragged, and Billy was just thrashing around pointlessly. But almost like turning a switch at the fifty percent mark of the book, things got much more interesting and significant, and I eagerly finished the book. Four stars from me, the series continues to be solid.


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## The Hooded Claw

First, please take a look at this hoary old episode of "The Dating Game."








Dangerous Instincts: Use an FBI Profiler's Tactics to Avoid Unsafe Situations, by Mary Ellen O'Toole

I was enthused about this book, enough so that I bought it even though I have a "soft" ban on buying new books that cost more than a couple of bucks. The book is by a retired FBI profiler. It suggests you will learn how to spot bad guys like the profilers on tv, but of course she isn't going to reveal the deepest darkest trade secrets of her profession to us unwashed members of the public! She does go out of her way to debunk the mythology of profilers being able to make Sherlock Holmes-like deductions about people from brief observation, or from observing an office. She says their work takes a lot of time and observation, and still is imprecise. Nonetheless, this book is intended to be a guide to how to recognize dangerous situations, and especially dangerous people, and make ourselves safer from them. Several years ago when I had to deal with an unruly employee at work I'd read a similar book called "The Gift of Fear" that I actually liked better than this book. They make many of the same points, but on one issue they take opposing viewpoints.

Gift of Fear emphasized that you had intuition about people that was developed over the years, and if you felt something was wrong or funny about a person, chances were fair that there was something odd, even if you couldn't put your finger on what it was. In Dangerous Instincts, the author goes out of her way to proclaim that the most dangerous people are very skilled at impression management, and most of us seldom get experience (let alone feedback of how accurate we were) on identifying truly dangerous people, so it is very dangerous to rely on intuition about a person, whether it is that the person is reliable or not.

A point both books agree on is that the people close to you are usually more of a threat to you than strangers, though strangers can be quite dangerous also in the worst cases! O'Toole reports that four times as many murders are committed by people who knew the victim than by strangers. Dangerous Instincts dwells on the "SMART" model, an acronym for "Sound Method of Assessing and Recognizing Trouble." I'd prefer the clever acronym actually summarize steps in a memorable form rather than just brag about how great the model/book is!

I thought the book was decent as an introduction to the subject, but found little that I felt was new or extremely useful. Of course, I'd read the "Gift of Fear" book already, and spent far too much time reading self-help literature. If you want to read a book on this subject, either this one or Gift of Fear would be a reasonable choice. Three and a half stars from me, though not particularly strong.

And as the opening caption gives away, the Batchelor who was chosen as the winner on the youtube segment above was later found to be a serial killer! I would love to hear what the young lady had to say about it when she found out.


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## The Hooded Claw

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2), by Jim Butcher

I really enjoyed the first book of The Dresden Files, and when most of them dropped from $9.99 to $7.58, I took that as an excuse to grab the first few! So I dove into this yesterday. As the title strongly hints, Poor Harry is up against a werewolf this time. Or perhaps it is several werewolves. Harry does his bit to take a bite out of supernatural crime!

I was surprised to learn that there are reliable accounts of some attacks by supersized wolves in France in the mid-1700s which some people attribute to werewolves. Looking up a reference in Butcher's book, I find that this is historical (though few if any historians will agree about the werewolves!) and there's even at least one Kindle book about the outbreak! I have added it to my watch list, it is rather pricey for now. If you're desperate to know more about the historical wolf attacks, check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan

I can't discuss the plot without giving things away, I'll just say that I really liked the book. Complex puzzle, lots of interaction between known and unknown players, and satisfying writing. Solid four and a half stars from me. Recommended, though probably best to read the original book in the series first.


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## Trophywife007

Thanks for the review.  This has been on my TBR list for a very long time so at 4 1/2 stars I'll have to get to it.

I also have read a few of Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti series and have like each one... now I just have to get back to Venice.

Thanks for this thread!


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## The Hooded Claw

I'm now caught up in preparing to leave for Italy in a few days, so "general" reading of the type I talk about here is grinding to a halt, and will probably stay halted till I get on the airplane for Europe. I'll have my Kindle on the plane with me, but may leave it unused for at least part of the trip, and try listening to some audiobooks as an innovative measure while flying.

It isn't the type of book one reads cover to cover, but I'll mention that I have referred to this book while preparing to travel:



A big part of my trip will be on a cruise ship going around Italy (with stops in Croatia). I've been on two river cruises that were on very small boats (Egypt and Southeast Asia), but have never been on a "real" cruise ship before, so it was worthwhile to read the general cruising info in this book, and the sections on various ports are informative. Seems worthy for those who plan to tread water around the Mediterranean, though my acid test will be when I go on the trip.


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## The Hooded Claw

Unless you just stumbled into this thread, you know that I am obsessive about learning all sorts of details about everything I run into that strikes my fancy. When traveling in the US, I often use my smart phone to look up and learn about what I've seen or am about to see. Guidebooks, including those on Kindle, are helpful for this, but for extensive historical details they may not be useful. In the US, Wikipedia often comes to my rescue, but that won't be readily available in Europe, let alone on a cruise ship! So I shelled out ten bucks for an iPad/iPod app called Wiki Offline, from a company called avacado hills. It downloads the full text content of Wikipedia onto an iPad or iPod Touch (and presumably iPhone, though less important there). You don't get the graphics, but it is still a huge data file, over four gigs. Nevertheless, I have installed it on my iPad and on the Ipod Touch that will be filling in for my smart phone on this trip. So far it looks good, thought I would mention it here even though it is off-topic....


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## The Hooded Claw

Hello from Rome!

After some bad weather at the start, my trip is going well. I will start a separate thread about the trip when I return, but here are a couple of unedited semi random photos in the meantime....





One of these is the Ear of Dionysus on Sicily, and one is looking up in the Cathedral of St. Mark in Venice. You can figure which is which! I see Photobucket made these a bit large by default, sorry about that. I'm doing this on my ipad rather than a proper computer, so I can't view and choose the photos as well as I otherwise could...


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## The Hooded Claw

I traveled for three weeks, doing a bit of reading, and I've been back home for a week in which I did more reading. But haven't posted to this thread, so I am waaaay behind! So time for me to comment on some books!



Daily Life in the Roman City: Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia, by Gregory S. Aldrete

I did a lot of reading to prepare for my trip to Italy, and this was the last book I read for the trip. In fact I finished it on the plane crossing the Atlantic. I liked the book a lot, but it had one feature that bothered me--The book is set up so that you can't change the font it is in! This is annoying in itself, but it is made worse because there are layout errors in the book. In some lines of text, the letters start sloping down the page, and there are other distracting problems. I seem to recall reading that this is caused by an error the publisher makes in creating the Kindle conversion, rather than a deliberate choice. In any event, I found it annoying. But not enough to keep me from liking the book.

Something I had known unconsciously, but never really thought about, is that Rome is arguably the most influential city in Western history. For about half a millenium, Rome dominated the Western world, and even when the Empire fell, Rome continued to be the seat of the Catholic church and thus a key player in European history for about another thousand years. The book points out that it is only in the last four hundred years that Rome has ceased to be one of the top centers of Western civilization. Further, the layout of the city of Rome, and even the design of her buildings continue to influence the design of other cities, notably the layout of the major public buildings in Washington, DC, a city on a continent not even dreamed of by the Classical Romans. Important place, no wonder I was eager to visit it! All roads do lead to Rome.

There are lots and lots of details about city life in Rome. While reading, I highlighted a lot of stuff, but won't attempt to recite it all here. Even though I'd seen examples before, I was once again shocked at how harsh life was in those days. The father of a family had life and death power over everyone in it. There was a famous case where a Roman man killed his wife for taking a drink of wine, and this was met with approval by nearly everyone! Things were bad for free citizens, but worse for slaves. When a slave annoyed the emperor Augustus (who was not considered an excessively cruel man), Augustus had the man's legs broken. Another slave who ate one of the emperor's fighting quails (who knew there were fighting quails?!) was nailed alive to the mast of a ship. Presumably this taught the poor slave a lesson...When slaves were summoned as witnesses in legal cases, the only way their testimony was considered valid was if they were tortured. Speaking of law cases, there was no police force in the sense of people who investigated crimes. There were courts, but they would only hear trials of people accused by other citizens. True vigilante justice. Even important people were subject to this mob justice. The Governor of the province of Africa was burned alive in his home by a mob of citizens, but the authorities didn't take retaliatory action because the sense was that he deserved it! And no jails, the concept of locking someone up for punishment didn't exist. They had a single prison cell in Rome that was used to hold condemned people till they could be executed. Punishments were things like fines, flogging, and of course execution or being made a slave or sent to the mines.

The Romans did have some fun in their lives, though. Apparently a favorite saying was "Baths, wine, and sex ruin our bodies. But what makes life worth living except baths, wine, and sex?" 

There's a lot of stuff about gladiator fights and chariot races. Apparently gladiator contests were quite infrequent, but in a big city like Rome, there would often be a couple of days of chariot races in a single week.

If you are interested in learning some fascinating nitty-gritty stuff about ancient history, you really ought to read this. Four and a half stars.

My flight to Europe was an overnight flight, and I can never sleep on planes. So I thought it might be restful to listen to some audiobooks during the trip. I took along my iPod Touch stoked with several audiobooks. This one might be a good choice to prepare for the trip (Rome and the Renaissance, right?), but be on a slightly different topic than ancient Rome:



The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt
(I listened to the audio book, available here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Swerve-World-Became-Modern/dp/B005QPONF2/ref=tmm_aud_title_0 )

The book was tolerable, and I can't honestly say that I didn't like it, but it never seemed to be going anyplace, and I gave up on it after a few hours. The point of the book is that a book of "natural philosophy" from ancient times moldered unnoticed in the library of a monastery until it was discovered and publicized just in time to provide philosophical fuel for a different view of the world that helped prepare the way for the Renaissance. The ancient book argued that rather than natural events being caused by gods, magic, and spirits, that the universe was mechanical, governed by unchanging rules, and everything happened because of these rules, rather than because of divine intervention, or even sheer randomness. The modern book was a series of chapters on different topics, some quite unpredictable. Unlike a Kindle book, I can't easily refer back to the book to jog my memory now, but I remember extended discussions of ancient philosophy, how ancient books were used and how they were copied and preserved by monasteries, a lengthy essay on the only known complete Roman library that has been preserved for us, and other topics. Most of them were adequately interesting (though philosophy makes my eyes glaze over rapidly), but somehow my interest was never fired, and I just abandoned the book about halfway through.



MYTH Conceptions, by Robert Asprin
(I linked to the Kindle book above, but I actually listened to the audio book, available here: http://www.audible.com/pd/Teens/Myth-Conceptions-Audiobook/B00BNKKWK4/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1383093695&sr=1-1 )

After the failure of The Swerve, my two choices were a Patrick F. McManus humor book, or MYTH Conceptions. I've read some previous books by McManus, and I figured the audiobook had a good chance of making me crack up and start laughing out loud, which I didn't feel would be a good choice on a plane with the lights out where people were trying to sleep, so I went with this book. Still a lighthearted and fun book, but I'd read it before, and I figured the chances of uncontrollable laughter were lower.

I first read this series years ago in trade paperbacks with lovely illustrations. This was my first venture back into it in many years. I'd hoped that the narrator would add a lot to the story, but somehow I wasn't enthused by the narration. In a couple of places the pace and emphasis of the narrator just didn't seem right, and the voice used for at least one character was somehow very annoying to me. Nevertheless, I knew this was a decent fun little story, and the audiobook didn't change that. I listened to most of it during my plane travels, had to finish the last hour or so in an evening after I arrived. Four stars.



Alpha Beta: How the Alphabet shaped the Western World, by John Man

I bought this months ago, and it sat unloved on my Kindle PW. But one of the features of the cruise I took was that there were several professors on board, who would give a lecture on some ancient topic each day. One of the lectures was on the Phoenicians, and the professor made some mention of the relation of the Phoenician alphabet to our own. I remembered that this book was on my Kindle, and dug it out to read in the evenings, even though it wasn't something I'd planned to read. Good example of the value of having a Kindle with a bunch of books along! I won't give a detailed rehashing of the material (please hold your applause), but will mention something that surprised me....When I was a precocious little Clawlet, I had a steady diet of books like this one:










Yep, when I was about seven my mother bought me this exact book off of a spinning wire rack at the Thrif-T-Wise, probably after I whined and cajoled about it a bit. This book and others taught that our alphabet came from the Phoenician alphabet, but didn't really explain why the Phoenicians developed their own system instead of using the existing hieroglyphics or cuneiform that had been invented by others in the ancient Near East. I'd read some internet news articles a number of years ago that suggested that indications of an ancestor to the Phoenician alphabet had been discovered at the remains of remote ancient mines in the Sinai desert, but there was no real explanation of why such developments might have happened in such a gawd-forsaken place. This book fills in some of those details. It seems the inventors of this script were not the people we usually think of as ancient Egyptians, but were outsiders working on their behalf as overseers and mercenaries at these remote and unpleasant mining camps. We will never really know what happened at these remote places three thousand years ago, but some pretty shrewd guesses have been developed, and the whole story was interesting. The book has some interesting stuff about other writing systems as well. If you are interested in such stuff, the book is worth reading, but it didn't grip me or fascinate me. Three and a half stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend, by Mark Collins Jenkins

This book isn't "CSI Transylvania," but a nonfiction book that looks at how traditional folklore and legends about the undead contributed to the origin of the vampire as we know him in books and on the screen. I picked it up for $2.79, but not sure how long that reduced price will last. The book opens with a short history of modern vampire fiction, including movies. There are examples of some offbeat vampire movies I was unaware of....Apparently the first ever "signed" (as in American Sign Language) movie was Deafula, back in 1975, and yes, it featured a deaf vampire! I was a bit surprised to find that a gay Dracula appeared in Dragula way back in 1973. Other movies have featured Dracula as a porn star and as senile (portrayed by John Carradine, no less!). In addition to the expected Billy the Kid and Abbott and Costello, Dracula has also been pitted against The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I'll end this diversion by nodding to Bunnicula, and yes, he was a vampire bunny rabbit! Moving from the comic to the tragic, I was surprised at the number of claims of "real" vampires that have been found in modern times (I was surprised there were any, actually!). Moving from the ludicrous to the tragic, I had heard of some of the individuals who committed violent crimes believing that they were vampires.

After this opening material, the book describes some of the original rise of Dracula in the public consciousness, thanks to Bram Stoker and various show biz folk. I hadn't known that Dracula was a hit on Broadway before Universal bought the movie rights and made the famous motion picture. The famous opera cloak became a part of Dracula's costume to provide cover for Dracula's vanishing act on stage--With his back turned to the audience, and cast members holding his cloak, Dracula could drop through a trap door and disappear!

The book then moves into history. I was surprised to learn that as late as 1732, an Austrian military doctor did an investigation of a reported vampire outbreak in a small Balkan town and claimed to have examined corpses that had been dead for a long time with no decay, growing hair and nails, and liquid blood in the mouth. Some similar cases like this are described, and there is some pretty gruesome stuff describing what happens to buried corpses that could contribute to this sort of report from an experienced and presumably reliable and sincere observor. The book goes into considerable detail and moves backwards in time...Apparently it was a very common belief that dead people who were wicked or who had just innocently suffered a mishap that allowed evil forces to take control would rise from the grave and attack the living--Sometimes focusing on their family and friends, and sometimes on any available victims. People with less education that physicians were easily alarmed by some of the corpse changes I mentioned above, and their countermeasures are discussed. Conditions such as the plague that increased these sort of fears are covered. The book becomes somewhat repetitive in talking about different beliefs of this sort going further and further back. I was disappointed that there's no overall theme or even a briefly-stated historical narrative that ties everything together.

I found the book very interesting at first, and it seemed to get less interesting as it went on. I finished the book, and don't feel let down by the author, but I am disappointed. I had high hopes for the book. I give it three stars. For dedicated vampire lore enthusiasts only (though a horror author who wanted to have authentic background or perhaps just a lode of material for story ideas might find it invaluable!).



Foreign Planes in the Service of the Luftwaffe, by Jean-Louis Roba

Another book I picked up cheap, costing just $1.99. This book is exactly what the title indicates, a study of how the Germans used captured aircraft for their own purposes in World War II. Because of the number of countries they overran (capturing airplanes and factories that survived the invasion) there was a surprising amount of this. The book is primarily a picture book, however. There is a series of photographs of variouis planes with an extended caption--A couple of paragraphs at most--For each photo. So there is no overall narrative or chain of thought, and most of the descriptions are along the lines of "The Germans captured 45 Bohunkus 13s when they overran Pottsylvania. Because of the feeble engine on the Bohunkus, it couldn't serve the Germans in its original role as fighter plane, and most of the captured planes were used in flight schools as advanced trainers." There's a bit more than what I just wrote, but not a lot more in most cases.

I really enjoyed many of the photographs, and it is a chance to learn a little bit about some obscure aircraft used by less glamorous air forces such as Austria or Poland. The photos looked great on my iPad, but I wouldn't count on them showing up to advantage on an eInk Kindle. I definitely considered the book worth the small amount I paid for it, but I think only a really dedicated warbird fan would be satisfied with it at the $9.99 list price. I give it three and a half stars. Another book for enthusiasts only.



Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture, by Marvin Harris

This book has been on my TBR list for decades! When I was in high school, I had an excellent social studies teacher for several classes, and I remember him telling us about this book. I had in mind to read it even then, but it isn't a book that was likely to show up at the Waldenbooks where I got most of my reading material, and it faded from my thoughts till I stumbled onto the Kindle version and snapped it up immediately. I read it on the airplane coming home from Italy.

The book was published in the 1970s, so it is not a new book, and wasn't even brand new when I heard about it. The author tries to analyze apparently senseless customs of various people and culture and see if logical reasons for the customs can be found. This has been done by others since, and I was especially reminded of the two Freakonomics books, though those took a much more numerical approach than Harris did here.

The book has several chapters, sometimes independent and sometimes building on the previous chapter. It opens with the famous "sacred cow" of India, which are kept alive even when their owners are starving or at least are protein-starved. Harris makes an economic case for Indians protecting the cow and refusing to slaughter even feeble and dying cows. A big part of his ability to do this is looking at the situation from the point of view of an Indian peasant with incredibly limited resources, and not being influenced by our experience with much more prosperous farms. I found this reasonably convincing. Harris moves on to other topics such as Hebrew dietary restrictions, then gets into the really weird such as the famous cargo cults, and some New Guinea tribes who do the reverse of the Hebrews and give their all to raising vast numbers of pampered pigs before slaughtering them and embarking on a sudden war with neighboring tribes.

I found a lot of this extremely interesting, and some of it very convincing. In other cases, I wasn't as convinced. I usually couldn't put my finger on why I feared his reasoning might be unsound, usually because I just didn't have enough knowledge separate from his description. There's no effort to incorporate mathematical analysis as done in the Freakonomics books, and little or no effort to test his conclusions by (for instance) examining how the unusual customs in question functioned in cultures with similar, but not the same situations.

A minor downside is that the books is somewhat a product of its time (early 70s) and there are repeated references to antiwar protests and especially "the Counterculture". In fact, one of the last chapters in the book is specifically focused on attacking the philosophy and mindset of counterculture, drugs, gurus, and "hippies" (I don't think he ever actually used that term). Now this just seems quaint at best!

Worth reading, and the book is definitely interesting, even for the casual reader. I suspect there is more recent scholarship on some of this stuff, but this is still worth reading. A solid four stars from me. Hey Mr. Howard! If you're out there, I finally read the book after all these years!

Two more mysteries to cover and I'll be caught up, but they will have to wait for another night--Way past my bed time!


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## The Hooded Claw

Trophywife007 said:


> I hope we get a report on your Italy travels!


It's true, sometimes wishes are granted! Look for my thread in the Not Quite Kindle Forum, or just click on the link:

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,165986.0.html


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## The Hooded Claw

I'm traveling, but have a couple of books left from my last post, and two newly-read books to report on. First, three mysteries in a row!



The Fellowship of Fear, by Aaron Elkins

Way back about 1990, there was a short lived television series starring Lou Gossett that I really liked. The title was Gideon Oliver, and I seemed to be the only one who liked it--only five episodes were made and shown before it was cancelled! The hero was an anthropologist/detective. Now that is old hat, but at the time, I thought it was really innovative and cool. I knew vaguely at the time that the series was based on books,but never did anything to follow up on it. But I never forgot it either, and recently I saw that the series was available on Kindle for only three bucks apiece! This is the first, and I really liked it.

The book was written in the 80s and the story is closely tied to the period. Anthropology professor Oliver has a temporary job as a visiting scholar teaching American military personnel in Europe. Cold War paranoia fills the air, and it seems Oliver is in the middle of a spy novel, only he doesn't know it. All he knows is that there are two attempts to kill him, one preceded briefly by nonsensical (to him) demands, the other just an unexplained hit job. The pucker factor increases when he learns the two men who preceded him in his visiting professor slot both had mysterious or tragic fates. If Gideon Oliver doesn't figure things out soon, he may be the third professor who doesn't get to grade finals....and he really, really would like to know why someone stole his socks! Not deep, but a good read. Solid four stars from me. I've bought the next couple in the series.



Death in a Strange Country, by Donna Leon

Another Guido Brunetti mystery set in Venice. The Commissario must solve the murder of an American sergeant found floating in a canal, but it may be more than the simple mugging-gone wrong that his boss is pressing him to announce. Not a lot I can talk about without spoilers, but I enjoyed the book. Three and a half stars.



Nice Weekend for a Murder, by Max Allan Collins

The prolific Collins is author of perhaps my favorite non-Sherlock mystery series. But this year I've deliberately avoided my beloved Nate Heller books in favor of reading some other Collins novels. This book is part of his Mallory series, about a mystery writer who keeps finding himself compelled to solve murders. Mallory is part of a group caught in a mansion in the country and cut off from the world by a snowstorm when a murder is discovered. Not exactly a unique setting, but this story is set during the Mohonk Murder Mystery Weekend, apparently a real annual event, which is one of those solve a mystery settings where participants play assigned roles and provide information while trying to solve the fake crime. Many of the participants are mystery writers or fans, and someone has fulfilled every writer's secret fantasy by murdering a critic famous for his devastating sarcastic reviews. Not a long book, but I was pleased with how complex and clever the murder scheme was. A very solid three and a half stars.


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## The Hooded Claw

Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization, by Lars Brownworth

Next year I am traveling to Greece and Turkey, so it is time to begin some reading to prepare myself! This will be an archeology-oriented trip, so the Byzantine Empire is on my agenda for reading.

The inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire didn't consider themselves citizens of that country--They thought they were the true Romans, even after Rome itself had fallen to the barbarians. Constantine, who could be considered their first ruler, nearly founded his capital on the ruins of Troy, but a vision in a dream told him to look elsewhere, and pointed him towards the already existing city of Byzantium. In an important new monument to mark the new capital, Constantine had buried the three most sacred religious items available (from both pagan and Christian faiths)--The ax Noah had used to construct the Ark, the cloak of Athena, and the baskets from the feeding of the five thousand. He had more than personal ambition to justify his move away from Rome. The classic Roman empire was no longer a secure anchor for a civilization--In eighty years, they had had twenty-nine emperors, but only one escaped murder or capture to die a natural death.

The point of Brownsworth's book is to argue that Byzantium saved Western civilization, mainly by holding off the Islamic tide, and to a lesser extent by keeping knowledge alive when Western Europe was in the so-called Dark Ages. I don't totally buy his thesis, but he makes a good case and tells an interesting story.

Too many interesting trivia bits to recount them all, but I found interesting the account of Emperor Julian. I'd heard mention of Julian in the book on the military history of Iran I read last year--He was "the last of the pagans" and was determined to move Rome away from the newfangled Christian faith and back to the old gods of Olympus when his career was cut short by fatally losing a battle to the Persians. This book had more detail, and I found him an interesting guy--I want to read more about him, and there is even at least one biography available on Kindle!

Julian died in battle, but the transition of power was often similarly violent and less honorable. Murder, especially of an incompetent emperor, seems to have been an acceptable method of career advancement at the top levels of Byzantine power. One emperor who had acquired the title of Michael the Drunkard was done away with, and not a peep was raised in protest. Another aspiring Emperor condemned the youthful "legitimate" imperial heir to death by being tied to an ape and thrown in a furnace, but partisans of the young man did the upstart in first--And hurriedly crowned the captive youth before the chains of the dungeon had been cut from his legs.

Brownsworth points out that the Byzantine empire lasted 1,123 years and 18 days, had 88 emperors, and held off the Muslim advance for eight hundred years. Definitely not a flash in the pan, and in a book of 352 pages, obviously he can only hit the high points. I still enjoyed the book, and recommend it for those interested in the subject. Four and a half stars from me.



Burmese Daze: Myanmar in 28 photos, by Elisabeth Sowerbutts

I'm an obsessive long-range planner, and am thinking about taking a trip to Asia in 2015. For free, I figured this book would be worth a look. It is a short book of photos. Each photo is reproduced in a rather small size, with a couple of pages of text that informally talk about whatever the author thought was important about the photo. There's no way to get more than an index-card-sized view of the photo. The photos are NOT just dramatic photos of monuments or temples. One that I particularly remembered was of an elderly local woman being helped onto a departing boat at the last second. The author freely admits she is just a point-and-shoot photographer, and not even a technically-knowledgeable amateur. Despite this, I thought the book was okay, and certainly worth the cost--Even worth the regular cost of 99 cents if you've an interest in the subject or are thinking of a trip and want to have a look. But it isn't a "must-see" or anything I'd recommend to anyone who doesn't have a special reason to seek it out. Three and a half stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Dark Place, by Aaron Elkins

I've been reading a big illustrated nonfiction book, but I received a new PaperWhite 2 kindle today. And just had to try it out! The illustrated book didn't seem like a good choice, so I pulled a promising novel out of the bit bucket and dove in! This is the Second Gideon Oliver novel, sequel to the one I read and described recently. The book stands alone, and there is no real need to read the previous book first, though I'd recommend keeping in order just on general principles.

Gideon Oliver is called in by the FBI as a consultant. Several hikers have been murdered in a national park, the bodies have been discovered after several years, and it appears the most likely killer is....Bigfoot! I was pleased that anthropologist Oliver has the same view of Bigfoot that I do...it would be utterly and completely awesome for Bigfoot to exist, and 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, but both Gideon and I will need much better evidence to accept that a huge strong humanoid is running around in the woods. I read the book in one long evening, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fair warning, do not loan your paper books to Gideon Oliver. He reads irreplaceable rare sixty year-old reference books in the bathtub!

I was jealous of the guy who loaned Oliver the reference book, he has a fifteen thousand volume private library!

In a discussion of the likelihood of Bigfoot existing, Oliver's mentor (the guy with the library) asks a good question...with all the reports of Bigfoot, why are there only big adults? Why doesn't anyone report seeing a smaller skinny teenaged Bigfoot?

Now that my PW2 is broken in, I can return to reading the illustrated book on my ipad.

The Dark Place is Highly recommended. Four and a half stars, I liked it better than the first book.


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## The Hooded Claw

The Photographer's Guide to Washington, D.C.: Where to Find Perfect Shots and How to Take Them, by Lee Foster

I spent some time in DC two weeks ago, and bought this to give me an edge in finding some good photo locations. It had some good advice, I ended up being more of a tourist than a photographer on my trip, so didn't get full use out of it. But it was still helpful, even as a tourist--Since I've been to DC before, I decided I was going to get away from the standard tourist routine of the Smithsonian and the Capitol, and find some unusual places to visit. This book came through, steering me to The Old Stone House (oldest building in the District of Columbia, built in the 1760s) and Dunbarton Oaks (a mansion with an elaborate garden and an archeology museum. Pricey for such a short book, but worth it if you come to DC and are serious about some decent photographs.



The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, edited by John Riley-Smith

I've always had a good impression of the "Oxford" guide and companion series, though I've only read one other of these myself. I had high hopes for this book. The most striking thing about the book is that it has lovely illustrations. Most are in black and white, but ever so often in the book there will be a four-page spread of color illustrations. All the photos are well-chosen and of good quality. They represent all sorts of things, from old illuminated manuscripts, interiors or exteriors of buildings, statues, pieces of jewelry, everything imaginable. They showed up splendidly on my iPad, and I'd avoid this book unless you intend to read it on a tablet (preferably one with a nine or ten inch screen) or perhaps the Kindle for PC app, which I imagine would work well. The illustrations will not show up to good advantage on an eInk Kindle, and you'll lose one of the great benefits of the book.

As for the text of the book itself, I was both impressed and disappointed. For starters, the title led me to assume that at least a significant part of the book would be a chronological history of the Crusades. Nuh-uh! The book consists of a series of chapters on specialized topics. No overall history or story line. This disappointed me, I particularly wanted that overall history. I've read clipped references to the different crusades as part of my reading on ancient history, but nothing that just focused in on that story, and I felt at a disadvantage in reading and understanding some of this book. Wikipedia became my friend, even more than usual when reading nonfiction!

Don't get me wrong, this is an excellent history book. There are a series of chapters by different experts, each chapter covering an extremely specific topic. And the chapter topic is usually generic that spans multiple, if not all, of the various parts of the Crusade story. Some of the subjects were very interesting, even surprising. There were chapters on songs sung by the Crusaders and by the people back in Europe, art, architecture, the Military Orders of knights, and on how the image of the Crusades changed and was used in the 19th and 20th Centuries. There are fifteen chapters in all, some titles gave me hope of "Ah, here's a chronology!", such as "The Latin East, 1098-1291", but even they didn't come through in the detailed sequential story of leaders and battles and cutthroat diplomacy that I'd hoped for. Something I hadn't expected or known about was that there is mention of Crusades that were NOT attempts to recover and protect the Holy Land and Christian sites from Islamic occupiers. The _Reconquista_ seeking to drive the Moors from Spain wasn't too surprising, but "Crusades" that were declared and attempted were against the English rebels who forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, and against groups of European Christians deemed heretical. I was vaguely aware of Teutonic Knights fighting in Poland and the Baltic States, but they often considered themselves Crusaders, and kept at it for a long time, well after the classic Crusades were over.

Lots and lots of information, and some good trivial stuff, such as:

One lengthy siege lasted twenty-one years<!> before the Europeans finally succumbed.

I am accustomed to thinking of England and Spain as bitter enemies in the 1500s, but in 1511, Henry the Eighth sent 1,500 stout English longbowmen to Spain to take part in a crusade planned by the Spanish king.

Forms<!> for indulgences given by the Pope to non-warriors for financial support for a fort in the East are among the earliest surviving examples of printing by old Mr. Gutenberg.

Even if you aren't a history buff, you've probably heard of the Knights of Malta. They continued to do military work against the infidels long after the classic crusades were relegated to the history books. As late as the 1790s, they still had a significant fleet doing anti-piracy work against the Barbary Pirates, their last battle of this type taking place in 1798! Shortly thereafter, Napoleon scooped up Malta on his way to invade Egypt, and that was the end of them as a military force. They continued in existence as a group that cared for the sick (one of their various alternative titles was "Knights Hospitallers") and even today there are apparently about 10,000 Catholics associated with them as lay members. I was amused to learn that in the 1650s, the Knights of Malta actually purchased three small Caribbean islands, but they had to sell them a few years later, so didn't really extend themselves into the New World.

The romance of the Crusades continued to be important in Europe for Centuries. The Crimean War in the 1850s was routinely referred to as a Crusade, even though it involved England and France fighting Russia, a Christian state, to protect Turkey, which was an Islamic country! The Middle Eastern campaigns of World War I, with British troops driving from Egypt into Palestine and occupying Jerusalem was a more appropriate use of "Crusade." Apparently for many of the people involved, the idea of being a Crusader for Christendom was something they took very seriously, even in 1917!

I found many bits and pieces of the book extremely interesting, but it never gripped me, and I found myself not going back to it for days at a time. I loved the illustrations, and might have been delighted with it if I hadn't gone into it expecting a more conventional history. The fact that I wasn't readily drawn back to reading it each night it makes me rate it lower than I otherwise might. I give it three and a half stars. Better as your second book specifically about the Crusades than as your first.



George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America, by Robert and Lee Dalzell

One of my less economically-logical habits is proactively buying up most any nonfiction book I can imagine myself reading if it drops to a couple of bucks. I have bought a couple of hundred books of this type, and usually they go into my archives and don't get thought of again. But one of my excursions during the DC trip was when KBoards member Susan in VA kindly took me out to Mount Vernon for an afternoon visit. I was interested in what we saw, remembered that I had this book, and pulled it out to read once I was home. As the title suggests, this book is about the huge estate at Mount Vernon, and George Washington's relationship to it over the years. A great deal of detail about his efforts to update it and manage it is given. In the course of reading the book, I learned a LOT of mundane but interesting stuff about how life and work went in the southern states during the late 1700s. A continuing theme of the book is how obsessed Washington was with managing and improving his estate. During the Revolutionary War, he insisted on continuing a plan to rebuild and improve the house, even though he couldn't be there to supervise. He had his loyal, and adequately-but-not-superbly competent nephew Lund, who was in charge in his absence, write him detailed letters about what was going on, and sent Lund incredibly detailed instructions. It seemed like this long distance micromanagement got more intense during particularly difficult or hard points in the War. Apparently Washington used this planning as an escape from the tensions of war.

In addition to a narrative history of the house (including the time before Washington owned it--The site had been in his family for several generations, and he inherited it unexpectedly when his older brother Lawrence died young), the book includes chapters on each of the types of workers and managers employed in the house, giving detailed accounts of the life and work of a handful in each group, and describing Washington's relations and frustrations with each type. Nobody is left out here, from slaves to top management. And considerable attention is given to Washington's will in which he largely broke up the estate. Since this was done only months before his death, when he appears to have had something of a premonition, it was apparently intentional on his part. Interestingly, he did provide for payments for support of his former slaves (who he freed upon the death of Martha), with the last of these support payments being given forty years after his death.

Once again, lots of fascinating trivia. Scrounging for supplies in an America with little manufacturing capability was a continuing issue, especially the search for good supplies of nails. Apparently it was a common thing to burn down a run-down building in order to make it easier to salvage and re-use the nails!

Among Washington's favorite sayings were:

"System in all things is the soul of business." (he was big on planning and being "rational")

"Many mickles make a muckle." (it didn't make any sense to me either, but the book explains that it means that when you make small errors or compromises, they tend to multiply and cascade and ruin the big picture)

"A penny saved is a penny got." (stolen from old Ben, who of course didn't invent it himself anyway)

Washington continued his micromanagement by remote control even when he was away from Mount Vernon as our first President. In late 1792, as President Washington was desperately trying to prevent the various founding fathers from splintering into self-interested factions, he wrote his overseer with detailed instructions for planting ivy around the icehouse, spreading gravel on the walks, and getting in a supply of oyster shells for next year's building projects (oyster shells were the standard way of getting lime for cement at that time and place).

Martha Washington was very intelligent, and had a reasonable education for a lady of the time, but couldn't write well. When she wrote someone of consequence who wasn't a close personal friend, George would draft her words into a presentable letter, and she would re-copy his writing in her own hand. One of Martha's biggest complaints as the original First Lady was that as a public figure, she could not just go about New York City as she wished. George had responsibilities as guardian of some of her children and grandchildren, and he fulfilled them scrupulously, but sometimes circumvented Martha. When George decided that Martha's son Jackie, who was away at a boarding school, should be innoculated for smallpox (which Martha opposed), he wrote the schoolmaster about it and asked that all correspondence on the subject be sent to George's nephew!

When Washington was at home at Mount Vernon, he had absolute hordes of guests, both invited and uninvited. Particularly after the Revolutionary War, people felt they had a standing invitation to just show up, even if they were strangers, and to expect a tour of the grounds and an invitation to one or more meals. In one typical month, an average of four or five dinner guests were at every dinner, and only three days during the month were George and Martha at home alone for the evening meal. Between 1768 and 1775 (this is prewar, of course) it is estimated that over 2,000 people were guests at Mount Vernon, some repeatedly. This wasn't just generosity or being an exploited sap by Washington; Having a large impressive house, and giving the impression of having unlimited ability to entertain lots of guests were an important part of being a person of importance in Virginia at the time. Fortunately, most of the food for these meals was produced at Mount Vernon, so the actual cash outlay was surprisingly low for meals.

George had management troubles. His nephew Lund, who was in charge during much of George's time away, was a decent and sometimes excellent supervisor, but had a terrible hatred of collecting rents from tenants, and often didn't do it if times were tough and he didn't believe they'd have the money. George found that his personal attention was even more important for more lowly staff. He did some surprisingly sophisticated time-and-motion studies of slave carpenters, and found they were four times as productive when he was present and checking up on them than they were in his absence!

I liked the book a lot, though it obviously isn't for everyone. One unfortunate thing is that the book has lots of good illustrations, but the reproduction quality on the Kindle version is awful. The pictures have an undertone of a sort of plaid grid pattern. I suspect it is an artifact of converting them into Kindle form. I still liked the book. Four stars out of five from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

I took time out from reading for a couple of weeks, but am reading again now. I've read two books this weekend, and have two books I finished back before my "reading strike" that I need to write up. So let's begin...



The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain

According to Wikipedia, The Innocents Abroad was the best selling Mark Twain book during his lifetime, and one of the best selling travel books of all time. I've read the two Twain classics (Huck and Tom) that nearly everyone is exposed to in school, and I've read and greatly enjoyed a lot of Twain's humorous essays, but had never read this one. It was written during the late 1860s when he was still a newspaper correspondent, and was assembled from newspaper reports Twain sent back when he took a trip to Europe and The Holy Land. Being Mark Twain, he has sarcastic and humorous reactions to much of what he sees. Having been on trips to some of the same destinations listed in the book (Paris, Rome, Palermo, Cittavechia) and dealt with guides and others who make their living from tourists, I found his observations on guides, taxi drivers, quite entertaining. I liked the book, but it didn't amaze me. Overall, I give it three and a half stars. This volunteer free edition did have enough typos to be noticeable, though not offensive. The book is very episodic, as you'd expect from something published in pieces in a newspaper, so I am just going to wind up with a few quotes from the book. My own glossing of his words is in italics:

We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves. Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant; walking the quarterdeck in moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but these are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing people suffering the miseries of seasickness.

[The expedition photographer gave a magic lantern exhibition, and promised to begin by "showing the passengers where they will eventually arrive"] but by a funny accident the first picture that flamed out on upon the canvas was a view of Greenwood Cemetery.

When the ship rolled to starboard, the whole platoon of dancers came charging down to starboard with it...when it rolled to port, they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of sentiment. Waltzers spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go overboard. The Virginia Reel, as performed on board the Quaker City, had more genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw, and was as full of interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth escapes to the participant. We gave up dancing, finally.

The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all have battled for Tangier--All have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged, oriental-looking ***** from some desert place in interior Africa, filling his goatskin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge built by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the infant Savior in the Virgins arms have stood upon it, maybe. _[THC's comment--Though we no longer are able to see things this extreme, seeing this type of stuff is why I love to travel--Twain has clearly stated what I love about it, and why I went to places like Cambodia and Tunisia. He has a similarly-good one about Notre Dame cathedral that is too long to quote]_

The speeches were bad--execrable almost without exception. In fact without any exception but one. Captain Duncan made a good speech; He made the only good speech of the evening. He said: "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN--May we all live to a green old age and be prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne." It was regarded as a very able effort.

We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home...The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels. _[Claw's comment--some of us just bring back and show pictures]_



Turkey: Culture Smart! The Essential Guide to Customs and Culture, by Charlotte McPherson

Speaking of travel, as it happens, next April I am traveling to Greece and Turkey. So I am beginning, and will subject y'all to secondarily, sprinkling my reading diet with books about those countries. This is the first. As the title suggests, it is an orientation to the country and people, not an actual travel guide of things to see. This is part of a huge series, there are dozens of these books. I grabbed this and several others when the price of the series was lowered to a bit over two bucks. I found it a very interesting and apparently useful guide, though the acid test will be when I go to Turkey! I rate it four stars, well worth the low price (I'm assuming that it is still at the lower price). As practice for being a renewed consummate ass, I will just quote a few interesting tidbits and customs mentioned in the book:

In a real sense, Anatolia _[Turkey]_ was the cradle of Christianity; Saint Paul was born in Tarsus in Cilicia. Many of his missionary journeys in the first century CE were to Anatolian cities--Epheseus, Konya, Troas, Miletus, Colossae. Followers of Christ were first called "Christians" in Antioch, near the Syrian border. Many of Paul's epistles, and those of Peter, were written to believers in Anatolia. The Seven Churches of the Book of Revelation were all in Western Anatolia. In 325 CE the first general council of the Church met in Nicea (Iznik) where it proclaimed the doctrine of the Trinity and established the Nicene Creed.

In January in a place called Selcuk, they have a camel wrestling festival. One of the great sadnesses of my life is that I will not be able to be there! Seriously, I'd love to see it!

Turkish proverbs and saying include:

"First tie your camel to the tree, then pray to God for its protection."
"Do not speak of rope in the house of a hanged man."
"A cup of coffee commits the drinker to forty years of friendship."

Male children are circumcised at the age of eight! ouch! This is the occasion for a major celebration, possibly even a parade.

Turkish coffee is served with grounds in the bottom, so you can only drink halfway down, and must not swirl the cup or get the unpleasant-tasting grounds.

I recommend the book for those who plan a trip to Turkey or otherwise have an extraordinary interest there, but of course it won't be very useful for anyone else. Authors who plan to set a book partly in Turkey might benefit if they aren't otherwise familiar with the country.

Two more books to cover, I'll hit them next time....


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## The Hooded Claw

Transylvania's Most Wanted, by M. L. Dunn

This is a sequel to "The Transylvania Flying Squad of Detectives." I reviewed it last August (hard to believe it was that long ago, seems like a month or two ago!), and I really liked the story, but hated the poor editing. I had high hopes for this book, As the first book in the series has been released in a new edition with a slightly different name, and a allegedly the editing problems have been fixed. I assumed that if the first book had been fixed, clearly the second book wouldn't have been released without a painstaking review for typos and ungrammaticisms (is that a word?). Poor, naive, trusting Claw was wrong!

This book has exactly the same strengths and weaknesses as the first book, with one exception. The story is outstanding. The grammar and spelling is awful. There are frequent words dropped from sentences, possessives with the "'s" missing, and most memorably, a stretch of the book where "assignation" is repeatedly used when "assassination" is intended. On a different order of blunder, a highly experienced assassin commits a Homer Simpson-type explosives safety 101 violation, though doesn't seem aware of it or the worse for it.

Now that I've dispensed with the negatives, I have to say that I really liked the story a lot, it was interesting and exciting and a marvelous adventure/mystery tale. One change that was probably necessary, even though I didn't like it--The first book in the series was told in the first person, which I like a lot for this type of hero. This one is told in third person. Probably necessary because it would be clumsy at best to convey critical information from scenes that are critical to the story but which the hero isn't aware of. There is a bit of retconning of the world. The world our hero has been reborn in was referred to as "Purgatory" in the first book, but that word never appears in this sequel (I used "search" to verify!). I suspect the use of the word in some religious aspects bothered potential readers or at least distracted them. And there are important details of the world outside the locale of Transylvania (where our hero lives) that didn't appear in the first book, but are essential to the plot in this one.

There are some good, well-thought-out details here; the police do their utmost to capture, but NOT kill werewolves, because the for twenty-nine days of the month, the werewolf is just a (presumably) law-abiding citizen who has no control over his lycanthropy. There are other nice bits.

I really enjoyed the story, and without the editing problems would cheerfully give this four and a half stars, but with the editing, I must send it down to three and a half stars, with serious consideration of a three. I hope these things get fixed in the next volume in the series (I'm assuming that will happen).



The Ho Ho Ho Mystery (Third Pig Detective Agency), by Bob Burke

Last year I read and reported on the first in this series, which features a hard boiled detective who happens to be a pig living in Grimmtown, a fairy tale world he shares with characters such as Little Red Riding Hood and Mary, Mary. The hero is referred to as the "Third Pig" because he is the sole survivor of the Three Little Pigs. In this book, our hero is engaged by Mrs. Claus to find her husband, who has been kidnapped two days before Christmas. The pressure is intense, as Christmas presents for millions of boys and girls around the world are on the line!

First off, I enjoyed the story and liked the book. How can I not like a book where the rugged hero utters the lines, "Follow that sleigh!"?

The mystery is pretty good, and is presented "fairly" enough that I had figured out the reason for the kidnapping and the solution of a secondary case before they were revealed in the book. An important mystery regarding Santa is explained.

One thing that disappointed me about the book is that the fairy tale setting is not broadly used. There are mentions and interactions with a handful of characters from the classic tale, but not much use of Grimmtown as a setting. The hero is literally a pig, but except for a couple of mentions of his hams, you'd never know it from the book. It could easily be rewritten with a human PI hero, and other than a handful (literally, about five) word changes to accommodate primate body parts, you wouldn't know the difference. Similarly, except for Mrs. Claus and one other character, little use is made of the extensive mythology surrounding Christmas. We visit Santa's workshop at the North Pole during the story, but it doesn't figure prominently or memorably. I feel like this could have been at least a four and a half star book if the author had fully used the setting he chose. But that didn't happen. On the other hand, I enjoyed the story anyway. My misgivings are because it is less than it could be, not because it is flawed. Three and a half stars from me.


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## The Hooded Claw

Neutrino, by Frank Close

My name is The Hooded Claw, and I am a science guy. Except that Bill Nye already took that title, darnit! But a significant part of my education and work are physical science-intense. This is by my choice, as I find a lot of this stuff fascinating, though a lot more is heavier than I want to mess with unless I'm being paid to do it. And hopefully not even then. But I do read science books for fun, as followers of this thread have noticed. This book is about a subatomic particle called the neutrino. There's a fair amount of physics describing neutrinos and what they do, and a lot more describing the scientific detective story of the discovery of various aspects of "neutrinodom." This is more interesting than it sounds--The neutrino was predicted long before it was observed, and the first attempt to observe it failed because they thought they were looking at a place neutrinos should be, but there were actually no neutrinos there! And a key figure in the story was a Soviet spy who disappeared for several years when he defected to Russia, then reappeared in the story behind the Iron Curtain where the best experimental apparatus for his research was unavailable. Then there is the project that cornered the world's supply of gallium, and there are millions of gallons of chlorine bleach in the story...

In addition to the NOVA/PBS-style detective story, there is a fair amount of particle physics, but always explained in non-mathematical terms. Some of it is still pretty heavy. My bachelor's degree was in physics, and I still struggled with a small amount of the book, though I don't think I lost much interest or enjoyment in what I missed. If you remember protons, neutrons, and electrons well enough to say "Oh yeah, those things," you can probably read and enjoy the book if you are interested, though you'll miss a bit more than I did.

I'm going to list a few trivial items that caught my eye in the book:

The Sun's heat and light comes from nuclear reactions in its center. It takes long enough for this energy to percolate up to the surface that the sunlight we are enjoying today tok about 100,000 years to get to the Sun's surface, before spending a few minutes traveling the much longer distance to Earth.

One of the early theories of how the Sun was so hot and bright came from an ancient Greek scientist named Anaxagoras, who was lucky enough to find a meteorite minutes after it landed and observe that it was extremely hot. It was a lump of metal from the sky, and was burning hot, so he concluded that the Sun was made of hot iron.

One of the experiments to measure neutrinos was a success--Because they measured six neutrinos being produced from over fifty thousand nuclear reactions!

An important experiment regarding neutrinos was known as SAGE, the Soviet-American Gallium Experiment. The Soviet Union came to an end while the experiment was in the planning stage. They had the good judgement to keep the original name, rather than renaming it Russian-American Gallium Experiment, or "RAGE"!

In a great stroke of good luck, a sensitive new detector for neutrinos came online just two months before light (and neutrinos!) from the first close supernova in over three hundred years reached Earth.

I liked the book, and recommend it if you aren't instantly repelled by the subject. Four stars from me.



Speed Secrets: Professional Race Driving Techniques, by Ross Bently

I am not a professional race car driver, in fact I don't even enjoy humdrum workaday driving, but I do love my occupational memoirs, and I love big powerful fast things. So when I saw this marked down to a few bucks, I had optimistic hopes that the book would be interesting enough to justify the purchase. Alas, I was disappointed. The author explains that he wrote the book to be a sort of coach for aspiring Indy (and other race types) drivers, and it is very specific, and though it is in a conversational style, the material is dry and not that interesting to read. The book makes significant use of diagrams and graphs to make points. I made it twenty percent into the book before giving up. Using the Kindle samples would have served me well here, but I didn't do it.

A couple of minor bits of interesting trivia--

The author claims that a comfortably-fitting seat is critical, especially in longer races. He claims a good seat is worth a half-second per lap on most tracks. He specifically identifies uncomfortable seats as the cause of losing two races, though in one case it wasn't that the seat was uncomfortable, but that the seat bracket broke, and he had to use a great deal of effort and energy to keep his body stable. The second was truly from seat comfort, he got a pinched nerve in his hip, and his right leg went entirely numb during the race!

When in the car, the driver's shoes must be dry and clean. It is common for a crew member to wipe off the driver's shoes with a rag as he gets into the car. In one Grand Prix race, when the drivers boarded their cars after a hard rain, they were delivered onto the track in a cart, and lifted straight from the carts into the cars so their feet wouldn't get wet!

These were the sorts of things I was hoping to find in the book, but there weren't enough of 'em, and I have abandoned it. Another argument for using the sample system; I'm glad I only paid a couple of bucks for it. It did appear to this regular driver's license guy that it would be genuinely valuable to someone who aspired to drive in auto races.


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## The Hooded Claw

Hercule Poirot's Christmas, by Agatha Christie

Like a lot of other Agatha Christie books, this is marked down to $2.99 as I post. After The Ho Ho Ho Mystery, I felt in a seasonal book mood, so grabbed it along with several other Christie books.

I found the opening a bit slow. A reclusive and hateful millionaire has summoned his sons to a family Christmas gathering. The family is not a happy one, but with their inheritances and allowances in mind, everyone feels compelled to attend whether they want to or not. Soon after everyone arrives, the murder takes place....

This setting is not exactly unprecedented, and I found the beginning of the book a bit slow. But once the murder occurs and Poirot (spending the holiday visiting a policeman friend in the sticks) comes onstage, things happen quickly and I did not need to prod myself to maintain my interest and keep reading. The mystery is a good one, is logical, and I was quite surprised at the solution. I easily clued into one thing that Christie rather clumsily beats us over the head with, but entirely missed many other things. An innovative solution that I wondered about didn't even come close to being right. Highly recommended as a mystery, but the Kindle edition is marred by being one of those books with a fixed font set so that the reader can't change it, and it is the most annoying font available on the Kindle. I believe I've been told that this is due to a sloppy conversion, rather than a deliberate choice by the publisher. I bought several marked-down Christie books at the same time, and I hope they aren't all like this.

Despite my whining about fonts, I have to give it four stars.



The Time Traders, by Andre Norton

When I was a kid, Andre Norton and science fiction were synonymous. Other than one or two Robert Heinlein books, the bulk of my elementary school's library science fiction collection was Andre Norton. I didn't encounter this particular one until I found it in my junior high school library, but it is the first in what was my favorite series by Norton. I'm about halfway through it, and still finding it very readable, even though I haven't read it since at least high school. The book as originally written is extremely dated now. The hero is a juvenile delinquent who is in court and given a choice of "jail or the Army", in this case the Army being a secret project that is battling the Soviets over wrecked alien spacecraft millenia ago in the Ice Age. It seems that the early rapid progress of the USSR in the space race has been because they are using scavenged technology from ancient wrecks, and have adapted alien time machines to find better wrecks in Earth's past. To keep up, the USA must foil them or at least match them. Cold War paranoia at its finest!  I am really enjoying the read, and I don't think it is just nostalgia. It's a good adventure story.

A word about editions--I am actually reading a double volume from Baen Books that combines Time Traders with sequel Galactic Derelict. A clumsy attempt to edit the story to modernize it has been made. References to the old Soviet Union have been replaced by a "bad guy" Russia that is described as emerging from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, plus there are references to how "we" landed on the Moon decades ago, but then abandoned manned exploration of other planets. My memory is that the original book contained explicit references to Sputnik, but I haven't seen any in this reading. I'd disapprove of this even if a hash hadn't been made of it, but I'm particularly annoyed that many other dated references are left in--movie film is repeatedly referred to, as well as film being exposed, but the word "video" doesn't appear in the book. The hero is astonished that a video (though that word isn't used) screen displays in color rather than in black and white. There's a free version of this story on Amazon that appears to have the same bollixed-up edit. The version I linked to costs a couple of bucks, but based on reviews, it appears to be a scan of the original book text. Plus, it uses an old cover that is artistically dubious, but (to me at least) captures the book's essence perfectly. Though if you buy, you might want to try a sample to make sure the scan job is good. I'm thinking about getting it myself.

I'm not done yet, but this is definitely headed towards four stars or higher.


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## The Hooded Claw

I finished The Time Traders, and was really surprised by how much I enjoyed the book. It is a tribute to Norton that she could produce a "juvenile" that still appeals to me in late middle age!  This isn't great literature, it is an adventure story. I'm surprised by the resemblance to the TinTin comics of Herge. There is continually something happening to our hero Ross Murdock, he is either being captured or knocked out or on the run or something. But it didn't get old or repetitive, it held my interest and I loved it.

I give the book a four star rating, and it gave four and a half stars an awful fright!



Battle of Britain 1917: The First Heavy Bomber Raids on England, by Johnathan Sutherland

I am fascinated by early aviation, especially the wood-and-wire early aircraft, but I also have a soft spot for lighter-than-air ships. This book lets me satisfy both my urges. It describes the attempts by the Germans to break open the deadlocked trenches in World War I by bombing England with the most advanced aerial equipment available at the time. It also tells about the British response. The German effort failed miserably, but it affected a lot of lives, and the fear of attack it created had a significant effect on British aerial strategy, and even their geopolitical decisions, in early World War II, a period I'm much more familiar with. This book tells the story competently, beginning with the Zeppelin raids and moving on to the raids by lumbering multi-engine Gotha and Giant biplanes. There is a chapter at the end on aftershocks, and the effects on the combatants after the war.

This is a fascinating and romantic time. The weakest part of the book, oddly enough, is the descriptions of the raids. In any book describing a long campaign like this, there is a risk of the book becoming a repeated list of battles and losses, and there is some of that here. But even the descriptions of the raids themselves are pretty clinical and impersonal. There was a lot of heroism on both sides here, and I feel like these stories could have been better told. Fortunately, the author is better at describing the big picture and the command decisions on both sides, and there is enough of that in the book to hold interest. I kept reading the book, both for the big picture stuff, and because the raid descriptions were often interesting even when described coldly as they are in this book.

The book is full of trivia and interesting details, here are a couple:

The Hague Convention (one of the predecessors to the Geneva Convention of movie fame) of 1899 forbid nations to drop bombs or explosives from the air (blimps and balloons at that time). Of course, this didn't stop anybody once the bullets were flying.

German airman Alfred Muhler has to have been the luckiest man in Europe one night in June 1915. His Zeppelin, the LZ37, exploded and the rubble fell a mile and a half to the ground. Muhler was inside the forward gondola and survived! He fell through a roof and onto a bed, which no doubt helped. I was curious enough to look him up on the internet, and reports there claim that he came to on the bed with a nun staring at him<!> and was still alive in 1938!

For security reasons before it began operations, the German bomber unit that had the heavy bombers (which was based in Ostend) was referred to as Ostend Brieftauben Abtieling--Ostend Carrier Pigeon Squadron!

One Zeppelin that was damaged over England headed for home, and ended up in a wet landing in the English Channel. It was near German-held territory, and remained afloat, so the giant airbag was towed to shore and returned to service!

In the age before electronics, the British had a real problem of how to warn of air raids. For awhile they had a policy of NOT giving warnings--If masses of people took shelter, it would disrupt immense amounts of war work, which was a prime German goal. Eventually this proved unpopular enough that the big brass abandoned this inhuman policy, but getting warning out was still a problem. One of the methods used was to have policemen walk the streets carrying placards stating "Police Notice--Take Cover".

The next book will be my hundredth book of the year! I started this:



It is marked down to $2.99, if it intrigues you, you might grab it quick before that changes.

I am happy with it fifteen percent in, but am considering setting it aside in favor of a Sherlock Holmes book. Since the one hundredth is such a special book!


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## The Hooded Claw

The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially Ourselves, by Dan Ariely

I've read Ariely's work before, he is most famous for Predictably Irrational a few years back. He is a psychology professor whose claim to fame is doing experiments to tease out motivations and patterns of human behavior. This time his focus is on lying, and especially cheating. Arielly points out that an economic model of human behavior would predict that we would balance the gains from cheating against the penalty for being caught, factor in the risks of being caught, and make the most cost-effective choice. This is the basis of much of our society, including the whole police and criminal justice system, and especially "tough on crime" campaigns. But experiments and experience show that this doesn't happen. People are much more honest than this model would predict.

An alternate explanation is that people cheat when they think they will benefit, but that they also want to appear (both to others and especially to themselves) honest and honorable. Ariely talks about a bunch of experiments he did involving subjects who could take a test, be rewarded for correct answers, and have various opportunities to cheat and get credit for more correct answers than they actually gave. His writing style is very friendly and readable, the ways he designs his experiments to test for different things is fascinating, and the results are of course very interesting. This is a very readable book.

As an example, he ran the experiment where groups of people were tested, and a paid plant among the subjects very flagrantly cheated (and wasn't challenged on it by the person running the test). This caused people who saw that to cheat slightly more. Not too surprising. Less obvious, in another experiment where the plant challenged the system, and publicly pointed out that it was absurdly easy to cheat under the system, the proctor running the test told him he could do what he wanted. This time, cheating went DOWN, though didn't stop. Another of the same series of experiments was perhaps even more interesting. At the university where this took place, there are two universities in town that are naturally bitter rivals. Most of the test subjects were from one university. For this experiment, the plant flagrantly cheated as before. But the cheater was wearing a t-shirt from the rival university. In this situation, cheating went down furthest of all!

The way that Ariely analyzes this, when someone flagrantly cheats without negative consequences, that sends a signal that it is socially acceptable to cheat, and makes people more prone to cheat. The student who challenged the system forced the students to think about what they were doing, and evidently the desire to seem honest restrained some people from cheating. Finally, the outsider who flagrantly cheated caused the test subjects to want to differentiate themselves from the guy who was "not one of us" and inspired them to more honest behavior.

Other interesting experimental results include that people who are more creative are more inclined to cheat<!>. On the other hand, higher or lower intelligence doesn't seem to influence cheating. Also, being tired or stressed makes you more likely to cheat, and if you are irritated at someone, you are more likely to cheat them. All the descriptions and discussions of this stuff are very interesting. Ariely tries to come up with suggestions of how to use these results to design systems that will make the participants more honest. There aren't any earth-shatteringly brillliant suggestions, but the whole thing is worth reading. This is a popular discussion, not a scientific one, so it is a fairly easy read.

I liked the book a lot, and if you find the subject interesting, I predict you will like it as well. Four and a half stars.



The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

If you've been reading this thread for long, you know I am a great admirer of Sherlock Holmes! So I made my 101st book of the year a Holmes book. This is one of the better collections of Holmes short stories. It was the first Holmes short story collection (as opposed to short novel) published. I find it memorable for including the first Holmes story I ever read (The Speckled Band, in 7th grade English class!), and two of my all-time favorite Holmes stories (The Speckled Band and The Red-Headed League). Speckled Band is one of the greatest Holmes stories despite having some appallingly bad natural history information in it! I've read most of these stories at least three or four times, but this time I noticed a couple of things I hadn't realized before. In this collection, Holmes doesn't "get his man" in several of the cases.


Spoiler



In one case, he solves the problem, but doesn't tell his client because he believes the client won't believe or act on what he finds (the Wikipedia article on this story suggests that there is a Victorian subtext justifying this that escapes modern audiences), and in three cases the opponent gets away, though in one of these it appears they meet their just desserts anyway, and in another it seems the opponent is not truly a "bad guy"


. But that is four out of twelve cases!

A fabulous collection, and a great place to start if you are Holmes-curious but haven't read him before. I can't possibly give this less than five stars.


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## The Hooded Claw

Armored Thunderbolt: The US Army Sherman in World War II, by Stephen Zaloga

This is a really impressive book! As the title states, it covers the Sherman tank, the main US Army tank during World War II. Unlike many tank books that get caught up in describing minute details of armor and armaments, this one focuses on the big picture of how the tank came to be designed, how the US Army system for developing new fighting vehicles worked, and the arguments among battlefield commanders and rear echelon types over how the Sherman and other fighting vehicles should be changed or improved. This is an important story, because by the time of peak US combat in 1944, the Sherman was frankly a second-rate tank. It did have some strengths, but it had critical weaknesses when fighting the most common German tanks. Since the US has prided itself on providing soldiers with technologically-advanced weapons, this is something of a scandal. It became a public scandal in the US after the Battle of the Bulge, and it remains fertile fodder for documentaries on The Military Channel and similar places. I won't attempt to summarize the whole book here, but a lot of it was complacency--When first introduced in 1942, the Sherman had been quite a good tank, but the problem was that by 1944, everyone else's tanks had improved quite a bit, but the Sherman had had only modest upgrades. This isn't because of some wicked plot or negligent failure, a lot of it was based on our determination to use our industrial strength by producing masses of tanks, something that would be hindered by major design changes, and also a determination by one of the key Army generals that rather than complicating the supply and production situation and wasting effort by pursuing pie in the sky changes, the US would only make substantial changes to these key vehicles when they were requested by battlefield commanders. And in fact, those battlefield commanders were suspicious of breaking in new stuff during combat, and often resisted accepting even the modest upgrades they were offered. This is a fascinating story for people who like that sort of thing, and I highly recommend the book. It also has awesome illustrations. They look great on my iPad, will probably look good on an 8.9 inch Kindle Fire, and be just okay on a 7 inch Fire or an eInk Kindle.

I should mention that this book is not a smear of the Sherman (I am actually something of a fan of the Sherman for various reasons, though I don't deny its weaknesses). The author points out, and gives examples that show that part of the problem US tankers had was that they were attacking Germans who were usually on the defensive and often had prepared positions with good knowledge of the terrain the Americans were advancing into. Under those circumstances, the attacker is at a severe disadvantage, and Zaloga shows that when the tables were turned and the Germans were attacking Americans, the Shermans usually gave an excellent account of themselves. And he doesn't neglect my favorite reason for loving the Sherman--It was incredibly reliable and rugged, and Companies of Shermans were regularly able to go directly into combat after driving for miles across France, when the tank units of any other nation would have been strung out, broken down and inoperable scattered over hundreds of miles of the road they had traversed to get there. Since I spent two years assigned to a tank battalion in the Army, it made me sensitive to that sort of thing!

Highly recommended for fans of this sort of thing. Five stars. Of course if you aren't already interested in this and probably vaguely (or more) familiar with these issues already, you will skip it, as you should!



The Titanic Murders, by Max Allan Collins

This is the last of the "Disaster Series" by Max Allan Collins. I've read several of these this year and described them here, you may remember The War of the Worlds Murder and The Hindenburg Murders, among others. The gimmick in these is that the protagonist is a real historical writer, usually a mystery writer, who has close proximity to a historical event, and is plunged Murder She Wrote-style into solving a murder mystery. Collins is big on historical detail, and the protagonist-writers were actually at or at least were near to the event described. In this case, our hero is Jaques Futrelle, author of a series of detective stories about "The Thinking Machine." I've never read any of these, but The Thinking Machine seems to be a Sherlock Holmes on steroids. Futrelle really was a passenger on the Titanic, and went down with the ship, taking several manuscripts of unpublished Thinking Machine stories with him.

The mystery is a good one, I liked it. I was able to solve a part of the mystery, but the main part eluded me till Collins revealed it. One downside to the book is that unlike most of these historical detective mysteries, Collins doesn't put much period color or atmosphere into this one. It could've taken place on any luxury liner in the Twentieth Century with minimum tweaks. I liked the book enough that I'm putting Thinking Machine stories on my "gotta try that someday" list. I was pleased with the book, but only enough to give it three and a half stars.

I've deliberately avoided my favorite books from Collins, the Nate Heller series, this year. I wanted to try some of his other work. But next year I'm getting back to Nate Heller!

This is my last book of 2013...I did start another book on New Year's Eve, but finished most of it today. So it will go on another thread for 2014. I'll post one more time to wrap up this year, and will start a new thread for 2014, probably tomorrow night. I'll keep writing these threads as long as I'm able to read, I enjoy doing them, and somebody reads them (I am consistently amazed by how many views my puffery gets!).


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## NogDog

Hey, Claw: if you liked _Armored Thunderbolt_, you might like Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II. I read it several years ago (paper version) and found it quite engrossing. In fact, at $5.99, I'm thinking of ordering the Kindle version now. 





> *From Publishers Weekly*
> Without a doubt, this is one of the finest WWII memoirs ever written by an American junior officer. Lieutenant Cooper served with the 3rd Armored Division's Maintenance Battalion and saw action from Normandy to Germany in 1944-1945. One of the army's two heavy armored divisions, the 3rd lost 648 M4 Shermans and had another 700 tanks damaged, repaired and put back in service by the time the shooting ended in May 1945. Cooper, as one of the division's three ordnance liaison officers, was in the midst of the division's tank recovery operations. He writes about the tenacity of the maintenance mechanics and their ability to improvise and devise their own policies. Cooper is unsparing in his criticism of George S. Patton and other generals whose belief in mobility over heavy armor kept the Sherman medium tank as the standard. American tank crews quickly learned that these "death traps" were no match for heavier German tanks such as the Panther and King Tiger. Cooper describes the difficult maneuvering in the hedgerow country, the confusion of the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Nordhausen concentration camp and the destruction of an entire column of tanks and other vehicles. Cooper demonstrates convincingly that it was the unheralded work of the maintenance section that allowed the 3rd Armored Division to maintain its combat effectiveness. This detailed story will become a classic of WWII history and required reading for anyone interested in armored warfare. Photos not seen by PW.
> Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


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## The Hooded Claw

NogDog said:


> Hey, Claw: if you liked _Armored Thunderbolt_, you might like Death Traps: The Survival of an American Armored Division in World War II. I read it several years ago (paper version) and found it quite engrossing. In fact, at $5.99, I'm thinking of ordering the Kindle version now.


Thanks for the recommendation, as it happens I got Death Traps pretty early in my Kindling Kareer, and like you, I really thought it was good ! If you liked Death Traps, you will like this book.


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## The Hooded Claw

http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,8145.msg368635.html#msg368635

Thanks to the search function, here are my comments on Death Traps from February 2010, just five months after buying my first Kindle! I am pleasantly surprised how consistent they are with my thoughts on Armored Thunderbolt.


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## heidi_g

Claw, what an awesome thread! Is it okay that you inspired me to do one for this year? 2014? I doubt it will be as detailed and comprehensive as yours, but I'd love to keep track and discuss. Plus, uhm… my reading list will be very different than yours, I think… pretty, sure, lol


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## The Hooded Claw

heidi_g said:


> Claw, what an awesome thread! Is it okay that you inspired me to do one for this year? 2014? I doubt it will be as detailed and comprehensive as yours, but I'd love to keep track and discuss. Plus, uhm&#8230; my reading list will be very different than yours, I think&#8230; pretty, sure, lol


Go for It! The more the merrier. My enthusiasm for writing th things up varies with the book. Do check out the 2014 thread.


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## heidi_g

Claw, thank you! I didn't realize that you'd already started a new one for 2014! I'll bookmark it!


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