Crusade

Crusade – by Rick Atkinson

If you took a sight-seeing vacation via automobile, upon your return, I would love to have heard about the great things that you saw on your vacation. I would not love it if you would have, instead, popped the hood of your automobile and showed me every component of your car’s engine.  If you videotaped your vacation, and had videotaped 120 hours of footage, I would like to see a 15-minute recap of the highlights, I would not like to have to sit through and watch all 120 hours of unedited footage.

I use these analogies because while I was reading this book, I sometimes felt like I was watching 120 hours of video of someone showing me every component of a car engine.  I felt like this book was simply too much, and was way overdone in terms of detail.

This book is about the 1991 Gulf War.  A war that lasted six weeks.  Yet this book is 500 pages long.  Think about that for a second – a 500-page book about a six-week war.  I’m not sure anyone could do a good job giving such a drawn out narrative about such a brief moment of time, so safe to say, I would have enjoyed this book a lot better had it been carved in half.  There’s just too much detail.  Too many descriptions of military movements, weapon specifics, battle positions, and detailed meetings of Norman Schwarzkopf constantly berating his generals.  I was just mainly bored.  This book actually took me longer to read the book than the actual conflict lasted.  I had to force myself to read ten pages every day just so I could get through with it.

Then there’s the fact that most of this book focuses on the “here and now” and not enough on the causes of the war, and the backgrounds of the countries involved in the conflict.  Some of this is here, but not enough.  Had the author given us more background of the Middle East, and the turbulent histories, it would have made a much better book.  Instead, it seems were transplanted immediately to the battlefield and we immediately start following all the tactical moves in precise detail without really knowing much about the “why”.  This would have helped tremendously since most U.S. citizens had never even heard of Saddam Hussein until Kuwait was invaded.

Then, this book was written very shortly after the conclusion of the war, so there really isn’t any opportunity to reflect back on the conflict, and see where and why things happened the way that they did, and what many of the post war effects actually were.  This probably would have been a better book had it been written five or six years after the conclusion of the war.

The author does give us some insights, however.  He does talk in detail about the “goal” of the war – which was never to destroy Saddam Hussein and his evil regime, but to simply get them to withdraw from Kuwait.  George Bush was very careful about minimizing U.S. casualties, and figured that ousting Hussein would be too costly, and wouldn’t be worth the battle.  Plus, he earnestly believed that, after the war, Iraq would then dispose of their leader via a coup, and that would free the U.S. and its allies from having to do much of the bloody work.  Of course, hindsight now tells us that such judgements were mistaken, but we don’t get to read too much of this here though because, again, this book was written so closely after the war ended.

This book will tell you just about everything that happened during the war on the battlefield, so if that’s your thing, this book gives a great synopsis.  I just wanted “more” of some things, and definitely “less” of others – such as all the meticulous detail.

The Great Movies

The Great Movies – by Roger Ebert

I confess that I’m not a big fan of movies or other forms of visual art.  It’s not that I really have anything against the medium, it just seems that my time is so limited, that I rarely want to devote several hours of my frugal day to sit still and stare at a moving picture.  I only mention this in my review because if someone such as myself can really enjoy this type of book, I would think that those who actually love going to the movies would find such a companion essential.

Roger Ebert first became a household name when he teamed up with fellow Chicago film critic Gene Siskel, and the two hosted the weekly syndicated show “Siskel and Ebert”.  On the show, they would review three or four movies per week and gave each movie a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down”.  The show was so successful that there were many copycat shows that surfaced during the 80s and 90s, but Siskel and Ebert were the originals, and the best.  Nothing was better advertising for a new movie that could bolster the moniker “Two Thumbs Up!” as part of its advertising.

As time went on, the astute learned that being a film critic wasn’t necessary a job that “anyone could do”.  In the late 80s, Roger Ebert started releasing annual books of his reviews, and one learned that the man was very insightful when it came to distinguishing great works of art from cookie-cutter exploitation.  Then, the internet came along, and one could basically read every Roger Ebert review ever printed by going to his website.  His insights and commentary were indispensable to all and he quickly became the most well-known film critic.  I was one who, every time I would watch a movie, jump on to his website and read about what he had to say about the film that I had just watched.  Most of the time I agreed with him, and he always had the ability to look much deeper and find things and see things that I could not.

That seems to be what prompted him to do his “Great Movies” series.  Unlike what many people might think, this book (and the two others that followed) aren’t actually <I>reviews</I> of these movies, but rather essays where Ebert goes a bit further and explains in more depth why these movies are, in fact, great.  It should be pointed out that when Ebert actually reviewed a movie, he tried very hard not to include spoilers.  When he writes these essays, however, he assumes that his audience has already viewed the films, or if they haven’t, would rather <I>study</I> such works and not really care that he often, gives away much of the plot.

This book of movies covers a lot of ground, and I’m sure Ebert had to be a bit selective when choosing what films to feature.  Most of the obvious ones are here (Star Wars, Citizen Cane, Gone with the Wind), but he also includes some very bizarre choices that 99% of movie goers not only haven’t seen, not only haven’t heard of, but probably couldn’t view such a film because of its limited availability.  A lot of old, silent, foreign, and/or documentaries are featured here as well the more familiar. Again, though, this really isn’t a drawback.  I imagine someone who seriously loves films would take a significant amount of time to attempt to track down all of the works that are featured here and purchase them to study for themselves.  Fortunately, things such as the internet makes such an arduous task a bit more manageable.

I really can’t think of anyone better than Roger Ebert to produce such a work as this, yet I must confess that the man’s devotion to the cinema could be rather frightening at times.  As I read this book, I often thought “Did this man ever do anything in his life <I>other</I> than watch movies?”  He would state things such as “I manage to go back and watch this film a couple of times per year”, or “I often study this movie with a film class, and we do a shot by shot analysis.”  Sheesh.  I really can’t imagine anyone devoting that much time to <I>anything</I>, let alone watching movies, but this was what made the man so respected in the industry.

As I mentioned, if one is a bit lazy, one doesn’t really need to purchase this book, as he includes his “great movies” series on his internet site.  Since many people can now access the internet via a tablet or a Kindle, one could definitely take such an advantage.  It was sort of nice, however, to have all of these narratives in one place, which was why I chose to purchase it (and the fact that Amazon was having a sale).

I’m sure I’ll not be the first person that will say this as I conclude this review, and it does sound a bit hokey, but here it goes: This book is a definite Thumbs Up.  Thumbs way Up.

The Sleeping Doll

The Sleeping Doll – by Jeffery Deaver

Kathryn Dance was a character that we were first introduced to in the last Jeffery Deaver book, The Cold Moon.  That was one of Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books, and the character of Dance was brought in to help Rhyme and company solve a case.  Dance, it seems, is a private investigator from the West Coast, who is also a “Kinesics Expert”.  What this means, essentially, is that she has the unique ability to read a person’s body language and Para verbal behavior, and tell whether or not a person is lying.  Sort of a human polygraph machine.  Her appearance in that story was welcome, as it helped keep the Rhyme series somewhat “fresh”, and since Deaver does an immense amount of research for his books, we learned a lot about the art of people lying.

It was great, then, when Deaver decide to promote Ms. Dance and make her the main protagonist for many of his future books.  This one was the first, and it’s very good.  The formula, though, really isn’t that much different from a Lincoln Rhyme adventure.  We meet Kathryn Dance, learn things about her personal life (such as she is a widow and has two children), meet some of her colleagues (that we know will probably remain as supporting actors in future books), and learn an awful lot about kinesics.

For this story, she’s sent to question Daniel Pell – a man behind bars, to see if he can assist with knowledge of a current crime.  Pell is dubbed the “Son of Manson” as his history and crimes resemble the infamous lunatic Charles Manson.  Like Manson, Pell is pretty smart, so the interrogation, in a strange way, turns out to be a battle of wits.  On a somewhat tangent point, Pell manages to escape during a prison transfer, so our main focus now is for Dance and her team to put their smarts to the test and find him.

Here is where the distinction between a Rhyme story and a Dance story can get a bit blurred.  Whereas Rhyme would find every minute piece of evidence and micro analyze it help him solve the conundrum, Dance essentially does the same thing by talking to everyone involved, and deducing the “real” truth by her gifted abilities. So, had Deaver modified this story slightly, it could have easily passed for a Lincoln Rhyme book (he and partner Amelia Sachs actually make a cameo).

We’re also allowed inside the mind of creepy Daniel Pell.  He’s able to obtain help from the outside by a gullible young woman who has fallen in love with him via correspondence, and we see how Pell utilizes his gift of controlling other human beings.  Creepy, yes, and those who followed the Charles Manson story can probably learn how such individuals are able to obtain a large amount of zealous votaries.

Throw in several plot twists, several characters who aren’t what they seem, and you have the recipe for a great Jeffery Deaver book.  I thoroughly enjoyed this story, even though I felt that I’ve read such a story many times before by the same author – even with a new protagonist.

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones (Book 1) – George R.R. Martin

I should first state that I am not a fan of the Fantasy and/or the Science Fiction genre (I only group them together because I’ve noticed that most who really love one, tend to also love the other).  The only reason I read this book was, well, the same reason a lot of people read this book, and that was because they’re a fan of the HBO series.  I actually never even started watching the show until after season five was over.  Like most, I was incredibly impressed with the series.

Watching the show, however, contained a lot of frustrating elements if you’re not a big fan of “Fantasy”.  Where does this world exist?  What is its history?  Why do the “seasons” seem to last several years instead of only a few months?  Where do the creepy White Walkers come from?  Well, these are things that you really shouldn’t try too hard to understand.  Doing such a thing takes away much of the joy, and one should just relax and be entertained.  One shouldn’t worry about, when watching “Star Wars” for example, why “The Force” can tell you when a planet is being blown up a bazillion miles away, yet it can’t tell you when you’re kissing your own sister.

The biggest frustration when watching the show is the multitude of major and minor characters that parade in and out of the scenes.  There’s so many people to keep track of, and they all have lengthy histories before the story ever even starts.  So we have to assimilate all of the different kingdoms, the different players (all with “Fantasy” names – no Doug, Skip, or Mary), all of the arranged marriages, all the incestuous relationships, all the children born out of wedlock, etc.etc.   If you’re new to the show, I would recommend watching with the Closed Caption feature turned on – it’s really helpful to keep all of the players in order when you can read all of the names as well as hear them as the dialogue is being spoken. 

Which is why this book is so handy and welcome.  Reading this book allows you to revisit the story that you already know, but at a slower pace.  I actually learned a lot about the characters that, while I’m sure the show told me, were told in such a quick manner that it was quickly lost on me.  It’s easy to follow some of the main characters – Tyrion, Eddard, Cersie, and Jamie, but when you get to all the minor ones and what their exact roles are in this epic yarn, it helps to have it all written down.  I now know, for example, a lot more about the character of Theon Greyjoy, and don’t refer to him in my head only as “the guy that looks like Mick Jaggar” - which I did up until about Season 3.

Still, though, even the book is weighted down with too many characters.  Fortunately, there is a handy “who’s who” in the back of the book that aids one tremendously, but such references are quite hard to access when reading a story on an E-book, such as I did.

The plot?  Well, from what I can tell, there are seven kingdoms in this fantasy world, but the kingdom of Kings Landing is the kingdom that rules all the kingdoms.  Obviously, all of the kings think that they’re the rightful heir to this throne, so the “Game of Thrones” consists of armies and kingdoms constantly at war, negotiating, battling and marrying their offspring to form alliances.  It’s a big complicated game, all right, and not something too different from the history of our own world.  There’s also some elements not familiar to our world that appear from time to time – we have dragons, white walkers, and “stone” people that all tend to complicate things, but make for a better overall story.

The first book is essentially season one.  The show doesn’t deviate much at all from the book, which I think is a good thing in this case.  As I’m writing this review, there have been five books written, and five seasons of the show, so I’m guessing they match up pretty evenly.

Had the show not been so brilliantly done, I don’t think I ever would have bothered to pick up the book, but there’s a reason that the series is as highly regarded as it is.  The scenery in itself is incredibly beautiful and majestic, and the acting is first rate.  Of course, there’s a lot of blood, even more violence, and even more explicit sex.  But that’s HBO for you.

If you love the show and want “more”, these books (at least volume 1) will provide it.  Even though there is very little in the books that didn’t make the cut to film, having such a book that details such fantasy worlds are welcome, if anything, to aid you in your overall understanding of this make believe place.

W is for Wasted

W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton

Kinsey Milhone is back for her 23rd crime solving adventure.  If you’ve read any of these, you know the drill.  This book was very good - not one of the best, but far from the worst.  Sometimes I wonder if Sue Grafton actually gets a bit tired of Kinsey.  I know I certainly do.  When you name your books after the letters of the alphabet, however, you probably feel a bit obligated to get all the way through the letter “Z” before you write anything else.

For Grafton’s last several books, she’s slightly altered her style and told some of the story in third person - focusing on different characters other than Kinsey.  I find this incredibly refreshing since these diversions are a nice change of pace, and leads me to believe that Grafton might actually succeed even better if she took a temporary detour from the “Alphabet Mysteries”.  I’m guessing that won’t happen, however, at least until the conclusion of book number 26.

A bit odd since the word in the title represented by the corresponding letter of the alphabet really has nothing (to my knowledge) with the story itself.  I’m not sure who, or what is actually “wasted” in this story, but it is somewhat of a moot point.  Grafton delivers as she normally does, and had this book been my ninth or tenth as opposed to my twenty-third, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it significantly better than I did.

For this book, two seemingly unrelated deaths happen before our story begins.  One death is of a sleazy private investigator (Pete) and the other is a homeless man living on the beach.  Kinsey is dragged into the saga because it seems that the unknown vagrant had Kinsey’s name and phone number in his possession when he died.  So the saga begins.

Well, the main criticism of Sue Grafton’s writing is that she goes into descriptive overload.  She spends just as much time telling you the mundane goings on of Kinsey’s day to day life as she does focusing on the actual plot.  This tends to get old.  I’l admit that Sue Grafton actually does a very good job of this.  There aren’t that many authors that can spend an entire page and a half describing someone packing a lunch and keeping the reader somewhat interested.  It’s just that after 23 books…..well…it does get a bit old.  I found myself skimming/skipping the parts of the book where such events are described.

This was a bit frustrating for this book in particular since I felt that the actual story could have been told in better detail.  By the time I got to the last 20 pages, I felt like there needed to be at least 50 more, and Grafton wraps up the story in, what I felt, was a bit of a hurried fashion since we had already passed the 400 page mark.  I felt a bit cheated since I wanted more of the actual plot.

I’m sure I’ll read X,Y and Z when they come out, but I’m looking forward to some variety by this wonderful author one day in the future.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes

The Complete Sherlock Holmes - by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This was one of the first e-books I bought when I received a Kindle for Christmas in 2012.  Because of copyright laws, it’s incredibly easy to purchase “The Complete Works of….” your favorite author - provided your favorite author has been dead and buried for some time.  I’m not sure how far back the writings have to go to qualify, nor do I know the legal logistics, but there are plenty of old authors of centuries past that you can easily procure masses of volumes in one electronic book for a very cheap price - usually from about 99 cents to about $3.99.

So I snapped this one up.  Would I enjoy it?  Would I actually read this entire thing?  I honestly didn’t know.  But for a price of $1.99 or whatever it was, I simply couldn’t pass up such a bargain.   It was money well spent, and I did end up reading all ten volumes within this e-book.  Of course, I couldn’t do it sequentially.  No, my attention span simply couldn’t stay focused in one direction for that length of time, but I slowly made my way through all of these works.  It took me about two and one-half years, and I literally read more than 100 other books during this same timeframe to keep my mind fresh.

So what does the average person know about Sherlock Holmes?  Well, they probably know that he was a famous literary detective that practiced his trade in the 1800s in London, England.  They know he wore his trademark deerstalker hat, had a pipe and tobacco that he slowly puffed while deep in thought, and had a companion, Dr. Watson, that was always faithfully by his side.  I’m guessing most have never read any of the books since these works are more than a century old.  It isn’t even necessary to read any of these works to know about Sherlock Holmes since there have been several movies, movie spin-offs, made for television movies, and even a “modern day” television show that appeared just a few short years ago.

I found all of these books to be incredibly satisfying - 4 full length novels and 6 collections of short stories.  The biggest enjoyment for me, however, was not necessarily the mysteries in and of themselves, yet the fact that these stories are told in such a rich Victorian English style and vernacular.  Most of these stories are told through the eyes of flatmate Dr. Watson, as he retells these sleuthing tales that he has recorded from his extensive catalog of notes that he jots down every time the great detective solves yet another impossible crime.

These aren’t stories that you can “match wits” with the protagonist.  The author doesn’t give you every detail of every crime being solved so you can challenge Holmes to see if you can figure out the mystery before he does.  I’m reminded of the “Encyclopedia Brown” series that I read when I was younger.  It was always fun to read and reread those stories so you could try to solve the case on your own.  No, these stories don’t quite work the same way.  Example: when Sherlock receives a visitor to his apartment requesting help to solve some sort of conundrum,  Holmes can immediately deduce much about his visitor - his background, his occupation, his nationality, etc. just by observing his visitor’s skin tone, the color of mud on their boots or how they hold their walking cane.

To be fair, some of the observations, conclusions, and methods don’t stand the test of time that well.  Anytime a suspect is a non-white European, they are immediately branded as “intellectually inferior”.   Conversely, if the perpetrator leaves a hat behind at the crime scene and the hat happens to be larger than average, that means that the suspect obviously has “above average intelligence” because, well, if the hat is large, then so was the person’s head.  There were also too many stories where characters would wear disguises to remain anonymous amongst colleagues and even family members.  It seems silly, nowadays, to believe that a man could hide his true identity from his wife by wearing some sort of silly camouflage. 

Those sins are minor, however, as the real joy is in the tone of the storytelling and not how believable everything is.  It should also be pointed out that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not limited in his literary career to just writing about this famous detective.  He had masses of other publications and narratives, and we sometimes get a glimpse of what those diversions might have been like.  For example, one of my favorite of the full length novels here was “The Valley of Fear”.  That story was told in two parts.  Holmes and Watson solve the crime at the end of part one, and part two is a narrative from the criminal’s perspective of how and why the crime was committed.  We’re allowed to take a journey several years before the crime, and even on another continent.  You could easily forget you were reading a Sherlock Holmes story during this distraction, yet the tale was so well told, that you really didn’t care.  In fact, it was an enjoyable diversion from the all-too familiar at that point.

It should also be pointed out that the last collation in this volume, “Tales of Mystery and Terror” are not really Sherlock Holmes stories at all.  Part of me thinks that they don’t belong here amongst the other stories.  There were one or two stories where Holmes “sort of” made a cameo appearance (never in person, he was just referred to in the story, although not by name), but the stories are independent of the familiar.  Again, though, there was nothing upsetting about such a diversion.  If anything, it was a refreshing detour.

It’s not necessary for one to read everything here.  If you stumble on such a collection as I did, and want to spend a mere pennies for a huge collection, you can find just as much joy and satisfaction in reading only a few of these volumes and still feel satisfied.   

I’m glad that Holmes and Watson have lived on for so long after these books first saw the light of day.

One Summer

One Summer - David Baldacci

I only read this one because, once I discover an author that I like, my anal tendencies force me to read everything by the author that has ever been published.  Although Baldacci’s main genre deals with political/government thrillers, every once in awhile he’ll take a detour and write about the sweet and sentimental.  That, itself is o.k., but unfortunately, he doesn’t really fare too well in this area.  Maybe he does fare well in this area, and it’s just that I don’t particularly like books of this nature.  I really wanted to like this one.  I really wanted him to pull it off.  I actually started out reading this book and thinking it might turn out o.k.  Even half-way through it I thought I might be able to give it at least a passing grade.  Unfortunately, the last 25 pages or so takes what is a very mediocre effort and brings the whole experience down to a category of “just plain bad and stupid.”

Baldacci has been guilty of “lazy writing” before in many of his other books.  Even some of the good ones.  This book has “lazy writing” all over the place.  By “lazy writing”, I mean that when he’s trying to advance the plot, he gets lazy and pulls things out of thin air that make absolutely no sense, nor really are believable, just to ensure that the story can keep going and moving in a forward direction.  I’ll get to that in a bit.

This story is about Jack Armstrong.  A 30 something year old man with a wife and three kids.  Unfortunately, Jack is dying.  He only has a few weeks to live when our story starts in November, and Jack is hoping to hold out long enough to celebrate one more Christmas with his family.  What is he dying of?  Baldacci never tells us.  The only thing we know is that the disease is so horrible, that Jack can’t even pronounce it.  This is the first example of “lazy writing”.  I guess Baldacci figures that if he gives us a real disease, he’ll have to do some research and explain why things might happen the way they eventually do.

One night during the hectic holiday season, Jack’s wife forgets that they’ve run out of his medication, so she heads out to the drugstore on a cold wintery night where they live in Ohio.  She’s killed in a car crash.  So now the three kids have no mom and a dad that will be dead in a few days.  Well, Jack’s in-laws are in town, fortunately, and arrangements are quickly made to permanently disperse the three kids to different relatives while Jack goes to die in hospice.  There’s a toddler, an elementary aged child, and a teenage daughter.  The teenage daughter seems perpetually ticked off at the world early on in the book because….well…she’s a teenager, and teenagers are supposed to be in a constant rebellious stage.  I guess.  The only thing she really clings to is her guitar because she’s a budding songwriter/guitar player or something.

So Jack goes to hospice to die, but (GASP!) he doesn’t die!  Somehow during the next several weeks he miraculously recovers!  So much so, that he’s able to walk out of hospice, retrieve his children (against his mother-in-law’s wishes.  Why? I honestly don’t know) and start life over again in a South Carolina beach house owned by one of his late wife’s relatives.  It seems Jack’s wife grew up in this town, and she sadly had some skeletons growing up there.  I believe she had a twin sister that died there when they were very young due to meningitis or something.  So Jack wants to start anew there, and maybe reconnect with his wife’s past.

Anyway, this is where the story really gets sappy and stupid.  I held out hope at this point  because I felt like things could have turned out o.k. story wise, but Baldacci, again, succumbs to more lazy writing.  Early on in the summer, Jack is trying to mend his distant relationship with his rebellious teen-age guitar playing daughter.  They stop to eat at a local restaurant called “Little Bit of Love” because the name of the restaurant is, according to Jack’s daughter, a “Def Leppard song” (It’s not.  Why couldn’t Baldacci pick a real Def Leppard song?  “Pour Some Sugar On Me” for instance?)  They go to the restaurant, and they meet the owner, who just happens to be a  divorced woman who, golly-gosh-darn-it, just so happens to be “good looking” and “about Jack’s age”.  This woman, golly-gosh-darn-it, also happens to have a son who is the same age as Jack’s daughter!  Her son, golly-gosh-darn-it, just happens to be a musician as well!  And the woman also has, golly-gosh-darn-it, some work at her house that Jack can do for her because, well, golly-gosh-darn-it, since Jack just moved here out of the blue, he needs to find some kind of work to pay the bills.  Oh, and also, this good looking divorced restaurant owner also, golly-gosh-darn-it, happens to be (ta-da) a lawyer!   A lawyer?  Jack doesn’t need a lawyer.  Well, because of Baldacci’s lazy writing, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he’ll probably need one sooner or later.

It would be pointless (and painful) for me to go on any further with this lousy excuse of a story.  Everything is simply too stupid and contrived.   I do remember another golly-gosh-darn-it instance early in the story:  For no apparent reason, completely out of the blue, Jack decides to show his daughter a “self-defense move”.  This comes out of nowhere, has no connection to what is currently happening, and is so ridiculously out of place, that it’s incredibly obvious that his dear daughter will somehow need  this “self-defense move” sometime before the summer is over.  I’ve seen middle school students tell a more convincing tie-in within a story.

Again, I had hopes for this one.  It really could have been so much better.  Really, the only good thing I can say about this book is that it’s somewhat short, and I think I read the whole thing in about two days.  The last 30 pages, I read in about 5 minutes, just skimming the highlights (now THERE’S a misnomer!)  Had I read it carefully, I would have become nauseous.  I really hope that all “sappy” books aren’t this bad.  Of course, if they are, I could easily become a millionaire.  And so could just about anyone else that puts a pen to paper.