A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube, by Patrick Leigh Fermor

I just finished reading A Time Of Gifts by Patrick Fermor, a 1977 book about the author's travels on foot from coast of Holland to Eszetergom, Hungary over the winter of 1933-34 when he was 19. The book ends with the author standing on this bridge watching the people entering the basilica for Easter services. A second book continues his journey to Constantinople. It is an amazing tale of a journey through Europe between the world wars, told by a man in his sixties about a journey he took over 40 years earlier. His memories of his travels through Holland, Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia as a young man, telling of the people he meets and the places he sees at the beginning of the Nazis rise to power and before the destruction of Europe by World War II, is tempered by his mature knowledge of these places and what has happened over the intervening 40 years.

The Vegetarian

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

The Vegetarian by Han Kang is about a young Korean housewife, Kim Yeong-hye, who becomes a vegetarian after having a disturbing dream about walking through a place full of meat and blood. There are three chapters each told from a different point of view: her husband, her brother-in-law, and, finally, her sister. Each tells about their interactions with her, and their stories are sequential, rather than describing the same incidents from three points of view. We watch the destructive effect on Yeong-hye as society and family fail to understand and reject her choice. As a person who has chosen to live with a plant-based diet I was attracted to this story when it was first published and am happy that I have gotten a chance to read it. It is not an upbeat, feel good novel about food choice and many will find it disturbing and even miss the point.

Ghosts

Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier

Really nice graphic novel about a girl whose younger sister has Cystic Fibrosis. They are of Mexican heritage and the novel revolves around the Day of the Dead holiday on November 1. Their family moves to a small town on the Northern California coast where people celebrate the holiday. The Ghosts of the title are the dead who are honored on this day. I am glad to have read this book on November 1 as it helped me to think about the spirits of my mother and father on this day to honor them.

Shanghai Redemption

Shanghai Redemption by Qiu Xiaolong

What I like about Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen novels is their ethical examination of modern Communist China as seen through the eyes of a poet whose Party-assigned job is police detective, but whose moral upbringing comes from the Confucian studies of his father. In this ninth and most recent book of the series Chen is removed from his job as Chief Inspector of Special Investigations for the Shanghai Police Department with a "promotion" to a new position with a substantial title but no power. At the same time someone is attempting to set him up for public disgrace or worse.
Isolated and without official resources, the feeling that someone in a high position is out to destroy him, creates an intense feeling of dread in the hero and the readers. The book can get confusing at times while he tries to figure out who is targeting him and why, but the concluding chapters are so compelling I couldn't put the book down.

Enigma of China

Enigma of China by Qiu Xiaolong

What I like about Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen novels is their ethical examination of modern Communist China as seen through the eyes of a poet whose Party-assigned job is police detective, but whose moral upbringing comes from the Confucian studies of his father. In this eighth book of the series Chen is called into the investigation of the death of Zhou Keng, the son of a major party member who was head of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee. It appears he committed suicide, hanging himself while under house arrest for his excessive life style. But like Jeffrey Epstein's death in a federal prison, the question arises: was it suicide, or an assassination made to look like suicide, to prevent him from bringing down even more powerful people with him? And how dangerous is it to investigate the cause of death in a case like this? I found towards the end I couldn't put this book down until reading the last words left me stunned and in awe. What a story! Written six years ago about China, yet so timely in the USA of 2019.

Don't Cry, Tai Lake

Don't Cry, Tai Lake by Qiu Xiaolong

What I like about Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen novels is their ethical examination of modern Communist China as seen through the eyes of a poet whose Party-assigned job is police detective, but whose moral upbringing comes from the Confucian studies of his father. This seventh book of the series takes place in the resort of Tai Lake, one of the largest freshwater lakes in China that in recent years has been plagued by pollution as the surrounding region experienced rapid industrial development. The challenge of balancing ecological concerns with the need for industrial growth in China is the background to an investigation into the murder of one of the leading polluters of the area.

The Mao Case

The Mao Case by Qiu Xiaolong

This is the sixth of a nine book series of police procedural mysteries featuring Shanghai Inspector Chen Cao. He is a complicated man who studied to be a poet with an academic specialty in modern English poetry, but was assigned by the Communist state to be a policeman, where he has risen to the rank of Chief Inspector of Special Investigations for the Shanghai Police Department. This case is especially sensitive as it involves a granddaughter of one of Mao's mistresses who may have something from her grandmother that could compromise Mao's image.

Qiu Xiaolong having grown up in Shanghai brings a wealth of detail and nuance to his depiction of life, and death, in this modern metropolis. The subtleties of a poet-inspector handling politically sensitive cases in an authoritarian regime trying to embrace change make for fascinating reading, and The Mao Case finds the author in top form. Having read all the previous volumes, I recommend this series highly and plan to read the remaining three titles.

Irene's Last Waltz

Irene's Last Waltz by Carole Nelson Douglas

Carole Nelson Douglas wrote 8 books in a series based on a minor character from the first Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia." This story contains the most memorable female character in Doyles Holmes' stories, Irene Adler, who outsmarts the famous detective and wins his admiration.

Irene's Last Waltz (later reissued as Another Scandal in Bohemia) is the fourth novel in Douglas' series featuring Irene Adler as a singer/actor who is also an amateur detective. Like Sherlock Holmes, Irene has a sidekick named Penelope Huxleigh who accompanies her and keeps a detailed journal of events. While Irene is very flamboyant and daring, Penelope is conservative and proper. It is from Penelope's long lost journals, supposedly discovered by a 20th century scholar Fiona Witherspoon, that the books of the series are drawn.

This book finds Irene and Penelope, as well as Irene's new husband Godfrey, returning to Bohemia at the request of the Rothschilds banking family to work undercover to get information on the political situation. Intrigue builds on intrigue as the threesome find themselves entangled in web of danger that is both entertaining and compelling reading.

This book and the entire series will amuse fans of books based on the Sherlock Holmes series who enjoy the introduction of a feminine and feminist point of view.

The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear

The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II

Reverent William Barber's memoir tells the story of how he started the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina and frames it as part of a much larger Third Reconstruction. Thus showing its roots in the original Reconstruction era following the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s (which he calls the Second Reconstruction). He shows how those in power use Divide and Conquer strategies, and how Fusion Politics, the bringing together of many different Social Justice movements, is the key to forming a New Justice Movement that can speak Truth to Power. This is a very good book for people who want to know the story behind the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina.

Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death

Charlie Chan in The Pawns of Death by Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann

Charlie Chan is a fictional Chinese American detective based in Honolulu created by author Earl Derr Biggers, who wrote six novels featuring Chan between 1925 and 1932. Biggers loosely based Chan on Honolulu detective Chang Apana. The character was adopted by Hollywood which produced over 3 dozen Charlie Chan movies from 1926 through the 1940s. In the 1970s Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine came into existence to publish the Charlie Chan stories of Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey M. Wallmann who were writing them under the pseudonym Robert Hart Davis. This is one of the longer stories from issue #4 of this publication, issues in August 1974, and now available on its own in print since 2002.
In this story Charlie Chan is on vacation and visiting the Transcontinental Chess Tournament in Paris as the guest of his friend Paris police Prefect Claude DeBevre. The tournament is pitting the British chess champion Roger Mountbatten against a young American challenger Grant Powell. Tensions are high between the two opponents and their respective backers Clive Kettridge and Raymond Balfour, as they all settle into the same floor of the Hotel Frontenac. When Balfour is found murdered in his bed in a room locked from the inside, Debevre asks for Chan's help in solving the mystery before the tournament is ruined.
I don't recommend this book to anyone except hard core fans of Charlie Chan. If you are interested in the famous detective, I recommend starting with one of Biggers' six novels. This is typical mystery magazine fare, light detective fiction written to amuse, and in that it succeeds. The authors of this story rely on the reader having a familiarity with the character and do minimal character development in the text.

The Third Round

The Third Round by H. C. McNeile

Originally published in 1924, this is the third of ten novels about the character Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond that were written by H. C. McNeile under the Pseudonym of Sapper. It is also the third of four of these novels that features his arch enemy Carl Peterson. The others being Bulldog Drummond (1920), The Black Gang (1922), and The Final Count (1926). While the characters make reference to their earlier encounters, there is no need to have read the previous two novels to enjoy or understand this one. After serving in World War I Bulldog Drummond finds that as a demobilised officer he finds peace incredibly tedious and would welcome diversion, as long as it is exciting.
In The Third Round the excitement starts when his wartime buddy Algernon Longworth comes to see Drummond because he is worried about his future father-in-law Professor Goodman, a chemist who has discovered an inexpensive method to make large diamonds that are indistinguishable from the mined gems. When the head of the international diamond syndicate hears about the discovery and that Dr. Goodman plans to present his findings to the Royal Society at their next meeting, he offers Goodman a quarter million pounds to suppress the information, which Goodman refuses to do. Hearing this, Drummond begins to worry for the Professor's life as the information could disrupt the entire diamond industry and fortunes would be lost. When the diamond syndicate fails to persuade Goodman, they agree to pay Peterson a half million pounds to prevent Goodman from making his discovery public. Peterson agrees to help, but sees the secret formula as something he could turn into a multi-million pound fortune if he possessed it. The excitement that Drummond needs is present throughout the rest of the story.
H. C. McNeile was a Captain in the Royal engineers or, as they were commonly known, The Sappers, who were combat engineers working on the front lines during World Was I. During the was he wrote war-themed stories under the pseudonym Sapper. After the was ended this once "unremittingly hearty man" suffered from delicate health, having been gassed and hospitalized several times during his 32 months on the front lines in France. He died at the age of 49 from terminal throat or lung cancer that could be traced back to his wartime service and the gas attacks he endured.
McNeile's Drummond is an Englishman that is typified by a "flamboyantly aggressive patriotism" towards England which is characterized by an opposition to those who challenge its stability or morality. Even his nickname, Bulldog, is symbolic of England. His English gentlemen friends, which McNeile calls "the Breed", fight a conspiracy of foreigners threatening England's stability. Most of the foreigners in the Bulldog Drummond series are villains or morally weak. While McNeile was very popular while he was alive and considered just an upstanding Tory who was proud of his country, after World War II critics start seeing signs of fascism in his writings as well as heavy handed xenophobia and anti-Semitism. In this novel this weak moral character is most obvious in the German chemist Professor Scheidstrun and his wife, who are bent to the will of Carl Peterson.

When Red is Black

When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong

When Red is Black uses the story of a murdered author of a book banned by the Communist government over 10 years earlier to describe the delicate balance and shifting forces in a Shanghai torn between its Maoist past and its commercialized future. In a city where state-run businesses find themselves having to compete with new Capitalist enterprises, and loyal Communist workers see their security and privilege stripped away by the new changes, the citizens must learn to balance their proletariat past with their open market future in the midst of rapid change.
The Red of the title refers to the state-approved behavior which in the past was tied to Communist social and economic goals. In the days of Mao, property owners and businessmen were considered Black and sent to re-education camps to learn communist values from the peasants in the fields and Red Guard educators. But in the new Shanghai, it is the businessmen who are reaping benefits of increased income and buying power, while the working class is stuck in low paying jobs in state-run industries and they cannot get the benefits of housing, retirement, and health care. Those who were once Red find they have become Black.
Inspector Chen is very adept at navigating between these different worlds and is a rising star of the Shanghai Police Bureau. However, he is taking a vacation to work for a new commercial development when Yin Lige, the author of a banned book, is found murdered in her Shanghai apartment. So his assistant detective Yu Guangming is given the case to solve but, because of the political nature of the case, he feels great pressure from Chief Inspector Chen Cao to find the killer quickly.
The story is rich in details and shows the many facets of modern Shanghai life. The police procedure almost takes a back seat to the city life of its people as we learn about housing problems, cuisine, Shanghai history, and many other aspects of modern Chinese life.

The Man With The Dancing Eyes

The Man With The Dancing Eyes by Sophie Dahl

Chef and cookbook author Sophie Dahl began her career as a model. Her first book, published in 2003 was an illustrated novella called "The Man With The Dancing Eyes", which was a Times bestselling book. It was illustrated by British artist Annie Morris. It is a "magical, bittersweet, and utterly charming" romance with end pages filled with Morris's colorful drawings of birds.

Lockdown

Lockdown by Laurie R. King

This is an unusual novel for Laurie King in format and in content. The book is mostly short chapters from a single day at Guadalupe Middle School on the Central Coast area of California. These chapter titles have a time of day and a character's name, starting with "12:13 a.m. Brendan." The book has a dozen characters who are tracked throughout the book in this manner. These include the school principal, her husband, the school janitor, the school coach, the local police sergeant, and six of the students. The combination of a chronological sequence and 12 points of view made getting engaged in the story slow for me. This chronological approach is broken up with longer chapters that provide background information for several of the main characters.
In the Acknowledgements section at the end of the story the author says that the novel is built out of short stories written as long as 20 years ago that originally had no apparent connecting theme. That theme seems to be how we can heal and grow from tragedy as a community.

We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe, by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson

Written by a UC Irvine Physics Professor and illustrated by the creator of the online comic Piled Higher And Deeper, this is a entry level account of the frontiers of modern physics that is easy to understand (very few formulas) and yet richly fulfilling for the non-initiated. With chapters on Dark Matter, Dark Energy, the Basic Elements of Matter, Mass, Gravity, Space, Time, the Number of Dimensions, Faster Than Light Travel, Antimatter, the Big Bang, the Size of the Universe, the Theory of Everything, and Life on Other Planets, this book covers most, if not all, of the puzzling questions modern physicists are working on. Cham's illustrations bring the topics to life in a light-hearted way that entertains as well as enlightens. I have not read other physics books written for the masses, but I surely did enjoy the approach this book takes and learned a lot in the process.

The Blue Flower

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald

The Blue Flower is a fictional recreation of the young adult life of Friedrich von Hardenberg before he became famous as the 18th Century German Romanticist poet Novalis. Starting with his college years, the novel gives a detailed glimpse of life in late 18th century Germany, and the development of the complex character of this Romantic mystic full of magical idealism who also develops a successful career in the salt mines of Germany. Central to the novel though is his idealized love for 12 year old Sophie von Kühn, who he hopes to marry when she turns 16. While most of his contemporaries describe her as plain and simple-minded, he sees beyond to her inner beauty.

The book opens with the young Friedrich bringing a friend home from college on Washday, the one day a year when the household washes all their linens and clothing. They have a year's worth of clothing and linens and wash them all once a year! The whole family is knee deep in dirty linens.

Families are big, and often mixed, as death comes frequently to the people of the time. Friedrich, being the eldest son and attending university, is the pride of the family and deeply involved in the philosophical ideas of the times. So it comes as a shock to his upper class family when he falls in love with a plain looking, simple-minded girl of 12 years from a large unruly working class background.

Fitzgerald mixes authentic details from letters and journals with wonderfully developed personalities of the family members to blur the distinction between biography and historical fiction and creates a world in which readers can immerse themselves. It is a small book with short chapters that is amazing and worthy of its accolades. It won the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award, and William Skidelsky named it one of the ten best historical novels in a 2012 Observer article.

Hey, Kiddo

Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Hey, Kiddo is an intensely personal coming of age autobiography in graphic novel format. Jarret is the son of a single mom heroin addict, who ends up being raised by his mother's parents while she is in jail. This is all revealed succinctly in the subtitle: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction. While the book deals with the pain of growing up in a broken, dysfunctional family, it also shows how love grows even in such inhospitable conditions. Ultimately, it is a book about healing hurts through coming to deal with them honestly and expressing them through, in Jarrett's case, his art.

300

300 by Frank Miller

300 tells in graphic form the story of the Battle of Thermopylae from the point of view of King Leonidas of Sparta who, with a small group of 300 elite Spartan warriors, held off for three days the invading Persian army of thousands at a narrow pass. Intensely drawn by Frank Miller and brilliantly colored by Lynn Varley, 300 is a a remarkable image of battle waged with with spears and arrows, which is not for the weak hearted. With chapters called Honor, Duty, Glory, Combat, and Victory, the book is a glorification of the call to battle, even against overwhelming odds and sure defeat.

Red Mandarin Dress

Red Mandarin Dress by Qiu Xiaolong

I am a fan of Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen Cao and have loved the previous books in the series. This one started off slow for me with a confusing collection of new characters, and the inspector taking time off from his work to write a paper in Chinese literature just at the time a serial killer is stalking young women in the city. However, I persisted and was rewarded in the end with wonderful comparisons between the romantic love stories he is studying, the cruel food options of Shanghai, and the motivations of a serial killer.

Kalki by Gore Vidal

Kalki by Gore Vidal

In Kalki Gore Vidal explores the end of the Age of Kali (the Kali Yuga), the last of the four stages the world goes through according to Hindu mythology. In the late 1970s an avatar named Kalki, the tenth and final Avatar of Lord Vishnu, appears in the person of an American ex-soldier and drug smuggler to announce the end of the world.
As Kalki begins to attract a huge following, Teddy Ottinger, a female American test pilot, is hired by a magazine to fly to India to interview him. Teddy is the narrator of this book, written in the White House a year after she took the job to interview Kalki. She has been asked to explain what happened since taking the interview assignment.
What happens is a riotous romp through the foibles of late-20th century America, while still providing a deep understanding of the Hindu principles involved, as only the wit of Gore Vidal could imagine it. Is Kalki a con man, a true avatar come to save humanity, a delusional psychopath set on a path of lunatic dreams? We see the tale unfold through the pages of Teddy's story.

The Mysteries of Paris

The Mysteries of Paris by Eugène Sue

I started reading the first 49 pages of this book on my iPhone in its original 19th Century English translation that is in the Public Domain. It is free online in a six volume downloadable edition, but switched to this new paperback translation by Carolyn Betensky and Jonathan Loesberg. This modern translation is much better and I highly recommend it. Reading a paper book with over 1300 pages can at times be physically challenging, but it is also available in a digital eBook edition.
The Mysteries of Paris first appeared in a serialized version in the Journal des Débats, a conservative French weekly newspaper, for 17 months during 1842 and 1843. It is a massive work of 1,366 pages that contains 167 chapters in 10 books and an Epilogue. The story follows the exploits of Rodolphe, a rich man who uses various disguises to help various people of Paris in trouble. He is a 19th century Batman without the costume saving good people facing problems and punishing evil doers, all while being pursued by his ex-wife.
Since Eugène Sue was writing the book as it was being published in weekly installments, he occasionally interrupts the story to answer criticisms of his Socialist views. These direct appeals to the readers provide an interesting perspective on the justice system and social problems of the times. The book is immense, but Sue's pacing and characterization keeps the plot exciting from beginning to end. The book paints a picture of the fabulous city of Paris as it is revealed through the eyes of characters ranging from common thieves, homeless children, teenage prostitutes, the working poor, the merchant class, and the rich nobility. I truly enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed his other major novel The Wandering Jew and the long out of print series The Mysteries of the People.