Books I Read In December

Fiction
'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman
I saw that they were televising a series of this book so I thought it might be an idea to read it. Despite being a long book not much happens. The story involves Shadow, an ex-convict who is employed by Odin to aid him in rallying other gods brought to the USA by settlers down the millennia. For much of the time Shadow lives in a small village by a lake when not being employed by Odin and encounters a range of interesting people as well as being bothered by his late wife who he inadvertently raised from the dead and who kills people who threaten him. There is an interesting concept that places and activities are imbued with belief and Gaiman features local attractions which become filled with power because people come to them. The basic concept overlaps with 'The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul' (1988) by Douglas Adams which was published 13 years earlier but relocating to dreary backwater towns in the USA gives Gaiman a chance to add the new twist of old gods against new gods of technology and other facets of contemporary society. While the plot drifts for far too long, there is a decent twist and above all, Gaiman writes interesting characters and portrays unexciting US settings well. Thus, despite the fantastical element there is a real lack of urgency about this book and it is, ironically, best read as a 'slice of life' novel. I cannot imagine this would make exciting watching unless you are a fan of Mike Leigh movies, but I see they are on to the third season of the TV series so I can only imagine they have long ago diverged from the novel.

'Now is the Time' by Melvyn Bragg
I once read an interview with Bragg in which he wished his novels were just a little more successful. He seems to get long listed for awards but very rarely wins. Having read this novel I can understand why. The novel is around the English Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Bragg shows it from various perspectives on both sides of the conflict and certainly you can learn a lot about what went on and who was involved. I particularly found the descriptions of London at the time very interesting. However, it is all written in an unsophisticated way with lots of telling rather than showing and somehow detached from the characters. Even when Wat Tyler's daughter is raped by London criminals released during the revolt, you do not feel the way you should about this. In many ways the book reminded me of novels by Henry Treece (1911-66) who wrote numerous historical novels for children. Thus, though there are points of interest, there is a lack of genuine drama in the novel and at the end you feel like you have read a lesson rather than a novel. Bragg should look to the work of Bernard Cornwell in how to add that dramatic element to scrupulously researched fiction.

'Aqua Alta' by Donna Leon
In this fifth book in the Guido Brunetti series, Leon returns to two characters from the first novel, 'Death at La Fenice' (1992), opera singer Flavia Petrelli and her female partner, archaeologist Brett Lynch. When Lynch is beaten up, Brunetti involves himself in the case which soon turns into one involving murder and faked archaeological artefacts. It is set against the backdrop of both the 'aqua alta', the flooding of Venice caused by high tides and heavy rain and the sense that those in privileged positions continue to get away with their crimes. This applies to Lynch as much as the antique collector. As noted with the previous novel, Leon appears to have got into her stride with these novels and they rise far about the first couple. The book is brisk, provides interesting details about both Venice and archaeology in China as well as setting the story in the amoral context of contemporary Italy that appears so attractive for crime novelists even those writing in English. I have five more of these novels to read. Leon continues churning them out and the 29th comes out in 2020.

'Counting Up, Counting Down' by Harry Turtledove
Around the time this book came out in 2002, I had been thinking of writing a short story about a man who travels back in time to try to improve his own life. Then I heard of the two stories at the start and end of this book, which in fact are the same story seen from the older and younger versions of the same man, Justin Kloster travelling from 2018 to 1999. The ending of these stories turns out was far more positive than the one I planned which would have ended up rather like 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) movie. It brought home to me that especially if writing in a particular genre it is easy for authors to come up with similar stories of their own accord. The two stories are reasonable if a little frustrating. One interesting things are what Turtledove (originally writing this as a magazine story in the 1990s) got wrong about 2018, i.e. The Rolling Stones are still touring, 'South Park' is still very well known even by teenagers and the fad for body piercing has not waned in the slightest, in fact it has increased.

The rest of the stories in this collection are quite a mixed bag.  Despite what I have been told about my alternate history short story anthologies, there is demand for such collections. Not all of the stories are alternate history, there is some science fiction and fantasy too. There is far more sex than I had expected from reading other books by Turtledove and with religion this is a key theme through the collection. 'Vermin' about a Christian community struggling as settlers on an alien planet is well done and highlights the grave consequences of seeking comfort just for yourself or your community. Other science fiction ones are oddities, 'The Deconstruction Gang' about philosophers discussing breaking up a road, 'The Green Buffalo' about cowboys slipping through a rift in time to kill a triceratops for food and 'The Maltese Elephant', a pastiche of 'The Maltese Falcon' (novel 1930; movie 1941) are alright but not hugely engaging.

'Ils Ne Passeront Pas' conjures up the Verdun front in 1916 very well, but then, for no clear reason, throws creatures from the Biblical apocalypse at French and German soldiers, ultimately without much changing. This like 'In This Season' a magical realist story about a small number of Jews escaping Poland following the German occupation in 1939 with the aid of a golem, again has religious elements that I probably miss out on. 'After the Last Elf is Dead' is more fantastical, but equally grim, seeing a world where the evil Dark Brother has been victorious and showing the challenges even for his loyal staff which reminded me of Stalin's regime and has a very unsettling conclusion which, though, does show the likely outcome if evil does win in a fantasy setting.

Seemingly more light-hearted than those grim stories is 'Honeymouth', a fantasy story about a disreputable rider of a unicorn and while sex features in the other stories it is right at the front in this fantasy one as the title might suggest. 'Miss Manner's Guide to Greek Missology #1: Andromeda and Perseus' is interesting in reversing the roles in the stories, but I always find attempts at humour in these situations is laboured and dates poorly. 'Goddess for a Day' despite sounding like a story title set to primary school children is the best of the fantasy stories, showing the challenges of a woman employed to act as Athena, in an actual event which occurred in the 6th Century CE.

Two reasonable stories focused on religion are set in Turtledove's Videssos fantasy setting, similar to the Byzantine Empire on which he was a scholar. The first, 'The Decoy Duck' about a missionary to a nordic style land will remind readers of a very similar sub-plot in the TV series, 'Vikings' (2013-20) and given it was written long before that may have been an inspiration for it. The second, 'The Seventh Chapter' is unexciting, largely a procedural that primarily tells us more about the world Turtledove has created and religion within it.

Of the alternate histories, 'Must and Shall' set in 1942 but one in which the Union was far harsher on the Confederate States following the shooting of Abraham Lincoln in 1864, is well done as detectives seek the German weapons being sent to southern states to trigger an uprising. 'Ready for the Fatherland' is set in 1979 in Croatia in a world where Field Marshal Manstein assassinated Hitler in 1943, held back the Soviet counter-attacks and crushed the Anglo-American landing in France so a stalemate developed across Europe with the Germans and their puppet states persisting. There is a nice reference to a scene from 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961) movie and a passing one to 'Force 10 from Navarone' (1978). 'The Phantom Tolbutkin' features another similar scenario but with Ukrainian resistance fighters in the occupied USSR and turns a good twist.

Non-Fiction
'Unreliable Witness: Espionage Myths of the Second World War' by Nigel West [Rupert Allason]

This book is probably unnecessary now, but when it came out in 1984 it proved a good corrective to the numerous books that had been appearing in the 1970s and early 1980s about spying during the Second World War. It showed me that 'Bodyguard of Lies' (1975) which I have on my shelf is riddled with errors. It also shows how without care historians can perpetuate mistakes through successive books. West looks at a number of claims in books of the time, among others, that a German spy in Orkney Islands allowed the sinking of HMS 'Royal Oak' when berthed there, that Admiral Canaris, head of German military intelligence provided material to the Allies but had also met Mata Hari, who was behind the Soviet spy ring in Switzerland during the war and whether Churchill had foreknowledge of the bombing of Coventry in November 1940. Most of the cases prove to be less dramatic than historians have made out and often came down to a combination of human, signals and codebreaking intelligence. As time had passed since the war, more identities of spies came out, also allowing corrections of misapprehensions. 

This is another book which would have been better for me to have read when I bought it 30+ years ago. M.R.D. Foot, the historian of S.O.E. (who I met once) was rather sniffy about this book, in part I think because West highlights some mistakes Foot made. Thus, you rather feel this book is a bit of revenge by West against authors who have too easily accepted certain stories without doing the necessary cross-checking. Allason himself is now 68 and Foot died in 2012 at the age of 92, so that element is largely irrelevant now. What I would suggest is that this short book (166 pages) should be given to people starting History degrees to alert them to how easily it is not simply to make errors, especially when based on assumptions, but to perpetuate them. If like me you are working your way through old books on the Second World War, it is also useful to have this as an accompanying corrective especially to the more exciting claims made in those books.

The Books I Read In July

Non-Fiction
'Dictionary of the Napoleonic Wars' by David Chandler
It might appear strange to read a dictionary right through.  However, its vignettes of individual commanders and descriptions of numerous battles plus essays on political and military trends of the time, it is an engaging book.  It was first published in 1993 (I read the 1999 edition) but the style of language is of a book thirty or forty years older than that.  Effort is made so as not to make all the accounts sound the same.  The author's prejudices in favour or against particular commanders is not muted.  What is striking is how the wars allowed men from very ordinary backgrounds to rise to the heights, especially in the French Empire.  It also highlights the hazards that they faced in terms of wounding or death.  Aside from the very partisan descriptions of the commanders, the most serious flaw is in the maps.  These have been brought over from Chandler's earlier book, 'The Campaigns of Napoleon' (1973) without modification.  Consequently the units indicated and especially the commanders shown on the maps do not correspond with the account of the battles included in this book.  As a result they add little to your understanding of the battle and in some cases simply confuse matters,  A reasonable book but one which has suffered from reusing too much material with updating it and ensuring it corresponds to being presented in a new book.

Fiction
'The Headline Book of Spy Fiction' edited by Alan Williams
I do not know what it is about spy fiction which encourages anthologies of this kind.  I read something similar back in April 2013 - 'The Faber Book of Espionage' by Nigel West (1993): see http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/books-i-read-in-april.html  This one is equally as uninspiring.  Published in 1992, it covers extracts from novels, some very short, and short stories from 1845 to 1981, though most are from the early to mid 20th century.  John Buchan features a great deal as does John Le Carré and Graham Greene.  The extracts are grouped into categories to illustrate different facets of spying as covered in fiction.  Some of the extracts are very weak, notably from Desmond Bagley's 'The Freedom Trap' (1971) which is an epitome of a pot boiler with a terrible McGuffin and a poor chase over Iceland.  The extract from 'Kim' (1900-01) is the wrong one as it covers nothing about Kim's spying activities and simply focuses on his schooling.  Overall, despite some effort at diversity the collection shows the lack of variety in spy fiction and that even seventy years on from Buchan's work it still focuses on well-off white men, facing hazards and winning through.  This sorely neglects how it was often a genre to question imperial pretensions, not simply of the UK but in part the USA and USSR too.

Books I Read In April

Fiction

‘Skin Tight’ by Carl Hiaasen

This was the last of the three books in the Hiaasen anthology I have been reading.  It features a former public attorney’s investigator, Stranahan being drawn into attempts to stop the uncovering of the true story of a 4-year old disappearance of a young woman following a visit to a cosmetic surgeon.  As with Hiaasen’s other novels it features a whole host of, at times grotesque, characters running around southern Florida.  There is an assassin who has a strimmer installed in place of his hand when it is eaten by a barracuda.  In some ways, by this stage in his writing, Hiaasen was coming to spoof his own work.  In this story Stranahan has, not one, but five former wives all bent on doing harm to him. Yet again a new woman on the scene becomes the hero’s love interest.  The novel drags on far too long and could have been 100 pages shorter.  Too many of the characters are caricatures and this one lacks the redeeming features of the other two Hiaasen novels I read.  It is not helped by me presumably missing the satirical elements about Florida/US society of the late 1980s.  Overall, an annoying book. 

‘Hitler Triumphant: Alternate Decisions of World War II’ ed. by Peter G. Tsouras

As it suggests in the title, this is a collection of counter-factual essays.  Some, such as ‘May Day the Premiership of Lord Halifax’ by Nigel Jones are quite expected, seeing Churchill’s replacement leading to a peace treaty with Hitler.  Charles Vasey’s ‘Peace in Our Time’ seeing Hitler dying in 1943 and replaced by victorious Goering is a story rather than an essay and not bad.

There is an interesting focus in the book on the Mediterranean theatre with John Prados looking at Operation Felix to capture Gibraltar from the British; Wade G. Dudley considering more effective use of the Italian Navy and David C. Isby seeing Italy being bought off by the USA from participating in the war.

Some of the essays fall victim to the over-detail which is an issue with some of Tsouras’s own books.  It can be bewildering trying to follow descriptions of individual units going different places on the battlefield to in our world.   After all the detail it is difficult to appreciate the differences of ‘To the Last Drop of Blood: The Fall of Moscow’ by Kim H. Campbell until Stalin is assassinated.  This is only a little less of a problem with ‘The Stalingrad Breakout’ by Tsouras himself.  John D. Burt’s minor alteration of the loss of Malta after one convoy fails to reach it, illustrates minimal changes leading simply to a different emphasis in the war.  It is followed by ‘Ike’s Cockade’ envisaging an Allied invasion of the Cotentin Peninsula in 1943, and proposes some similar developments to Birt's chapter.  In contrast, more fantastical are David D. Keithly’s ‘Black Cross, Green Crescent, Black Gold: The Drive to the Indus’ which has interesting stuff on Hitler’s view of Islam and ‘Wings over the Caucasus’ which sees German paratroop raids far behind Soviet lines in order to secure oil supplies. 

As so many reviewers note with books these days, especially e-books, but also printed ones like this, there are grammar errors in the book. I guess we simply have to swallow that, even in a book written as far back as 2006.  They jar with the reader, though, given how common they are in published writing, perhaps not as much as two glaring geographical errors which Tsouras, if he was genuinely editing, should have noticed.  The Cotentin Peninsula, the area of northern France which is the hinterland of Cherbourg is not in the Bay of Biscay; it extends into the English Channel. the Dodecanese Islands are in the Aegean Sea rather than the Adriatic Sea as stated in this book, the former being between Greece and Turkey; the latter between Italy and Slovenia/Croatia/Albania. 

Non-Fiction

‘The Faber Book of Espionage’ ed. by Nigel West

This book was a disappointment.  It is an anthology of extracts of books of all kinds written by men and a few women who happened to be spies for the UK in the 20^th century.  Some of what is included is fictional, a lot of it autobiographical, some of it having no relevance to spying, simply written by a spy as if that made it important.  Falling into that third category, the piece from Kim Philby is particularly weak.  Some of the extracts are exciting and some informative, though of the latter there are simply too many about the original C of MI6 and his labyrinthine headquarters.  The one thing the book shows is how inter-tangled all the British espionage operatives of the 20^th century were.  They drew from a small circle and all seem to have known or even been related to each other.  In many ways this is really a book that gives a flavour of a kind of British social class sub-set.  It shows their rather debased attitudes even when they were supposed to be guarding the UK’s security at home and overseas.  Perhaps, in many ways this was what made the deception by traitors to that cause so easy for them to pull off.  A book simply including biographies of the various characters and even family trees might have been better than this collection of extracts that only occasionally are of genuine interest.