The Painter of Battles, Arturo Perez-Reverte

The Painter of Battles by Arturo Perez-Reverte translated by Margaret Sayers Peden is considered a slow and rambling novel.  It is known in Spanish for its effective use of language and that must make it a very challenging thing to translate.  I'm listening to this as an audio book on my commute.

Started:  7/11/2011
Completed: 7/19/2011
Recommendation: Don't do it.  Don't go anywhere near this book.
Recommended By:  I found this book at a Quaker book sale.  The irony was too strong to pass up and the quick quotations on the back didn't hurt.


Review:


This book is slow and very, very repetitive.  The effort to instill horrifying images in your mind as you go through the book is terribly effective.  There are no characters who are ones with which I can in any way associate and the only compelling character unravels at the end and becomes a shadow of someone interesting.  I am tempted to destroy the CDs.

The book is well written and the use of language, at times, engaging.  The subject matter and character development, however, seem more suited to a much shorter medium--perhaps a novelette or long story.  The subject of the awfulness of war does deserve a serious effort, but this Hobbesian look at the human condition obstructs the productive analysis that might have benefited mankind.  The conclusion (and this may or may not be a spoiler depending on how much you like the book, so beware) argues that we are all fated to do evil because mankind is basically evil and subject to an unwritten plan that guides us down the disgusting behavior of war time.  While this could be an interesting line of analysis, the book makes only the most trivial of efforts to support or examine the implications--oddly for a retrospective, the book harps upon the very conditions from within war without much in the way of analysis for how our character flaws lead us to war or how war would ever end (or, even, pause).  SPOILER:  The girlfriend who would have left had she not been allowed to step on a land mine becomes a spokesman for the reader through the book...the reader carries a certain affection for the primary character as the book starts, but realizes that the primary character is simply a caricature of evil writ small...as such not someone with whom one would care to spend time:  Don't waste yours.

Thomas Paine, Craig Nelson

Thomas Paine by Craig Nelson is a biography of Thomas Paine.  I had picked this up many years ago wandering the discount section of a book store.  It seemed appropriate to read it after reading Common Sense. This book received the 2007 Henry Adams prize.

Started: 7/4/2011
Completed: 9/2/2012
Recommendation: You have to really be interested in Paine.  There is a huge amount of interesting information, but it is very dry.
Recommended By:  Nobody.

Words I looked Up:
jeremiad -- a long, mournful complain or lamentation; list of woes
parlous -- full of danger or risk

Review:


Thomas Paine remains a larger than life figure.  Common Sense was central to both the American and the French revolutions.  As an American, I had no idea that Thomas Paine had actually been involved in the French revolution and that he had been imprisoned (all but guillotined) in the process.  I have ready other books that mentioned what happened to his body after death, so I had a sense of how he was oddly revered.  I had a sense, as well, that he was polarizing figure, but no idea that he managed to alienate virtually all his friends given enough time.  I actually read Common Sense last summer, so I had an introduction to both how vindictive his writing could be and how funny it was.  Knowing more about the man and his life helps me to understand how he came to write such an important book and how it took over his life.  The detail in this book is pretty amazing when one considers how much time has passed, but the author seems to have been careful when identifying his sources and offers, on several occasions, conflicting views of similar situations.  This comfort with seeing both the good and bad in events and in the man rings true to me.  I think that some of the historical documents reflect seeing the same event in different ways and, frankly, I think it is fair to expect individuals to have some bias.  It was a good, if slow, read and I'm glad to have read it.

Quakertown, Lee Martin

Quakertown by Lee Martin is a novel about racial issues in 1920s Texas.  It is loosely based on a real story.  Lee Martin did not receive any awards for this book, but has received several both before and afterwards.

Started:  7/1/2011

Completed: 7/5/2011

Recommendation: Very well written, but very sad

Recommended By:  I saw this book on the shelves of Vertigo as it closed.  It just called to me.  I'm a tad put off as some friends borrowed it and said it was quite sad.

Words I Looked Up:

chifforobe -- a combination of a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.

Review:

This is a poignant heart-rending story of racial discord in 1920s Texas.  The perspective of the story shifts almost constantly from character to character and the seamless, but distinct transitions are a testament to the author's ability to create characters that are both believable and have their own voices.  The sadness that punctuates the lives throughout this story is difficult every step of the way.  The characters seem to be defined by their hard times, although there are a few good times that manage to help elucidate the nature of a character or two.  The interaction of the main characters is frequent and occasionally surprising:  From children's games to hidden meetings in a theater to murder each interaction is starkly distinct from the surrounding background and the author uses these vignettes to move the plot line forward.  I enjoyed the book despite the sadness and found the book well worth the read.

The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank, Bell Irvin Wiley

The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank by Bell Irvin Wiley is a collection of short descriptions drawn from soldier's letters during the Civil War.

Started:  6/20/2011
Completed:
Recommendation:
Recommended By:  I saw this at a yard sale and thought that it would make for good bathroom reading since the sections were short.
Words I looked up:

embrute -- To degrade or sink to the levels of a brute.
fillip -- Something that acts as a stimulus or boost to an activity.
purlieu -- The area near or surrounding a place
tippling -- Drinking alcohol, especially habitually
vitiating -- Spoil or impair the efficiency of

Review:


I will write one when I'm done.

Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer is a book about a journalist's adventure into becoming a world-class mnemonist.  I picked this up as an audio book.  I've listened to other audio books before, but this is the first I've added to this blog.  I decided that audio books should be recorded here as well.  Oddly, I started this blog to help me remember which books I'd read and when I'd read them...

Started:  5/23/2011
Completed: 7/24/2011
Recommendation: Strong recommendation to everyone.
Recommended by:  I saw this as an audio book in the library and I thought it would be a good thing to hear as I commuted to and from work.
Review:


This book reminds us why memory is valuable.  Not so much that memory is necessary in today's world, but that it has value.  The experiences of the author and his examination of memory are mildly inspiring, but his recounting of why memory has been important throughout history is without parallel in value.  I'd also throw out that learning how to memorize certainly has its place in our society and I like very much that I've learned some of the techniques just from reading this book.

The Adept, Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris

The Adept by Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris is a book that I picked up at a library book sale (I picked up several in the series).  I know Kurtz from the Deryni series which I enjoyed during my high school years.  The fact that several books in the series were published suggested to me that the books were well received.

Started: 6/5/2011
Completed: 7/1/2011
Recommendation: Probably not worth the read
Recommended By:  Nobody, just saw this series at a library book sale.
Words I looked up:


aspergillum -- a brush or instrument for sprinkling holy water
fortalice -- a small fort
garret -- a small, wretched attic
nacreous -- lustrous, pearly
Sephiroth -- a manifestation of God.
shrift -- an act of confession.  In this case, I think the word was misused as it related to removing or putting on clothing.
temenos -- a piece of land cut off and assigned as an official domain.
widdershins -- in a direction opposite the movement of the sun; counter-clockwise.


Review:


I'd like to point out that this book ends at Loch Ness.  That should be enough.  I'm likely to read the remainder of the series and it isn't that this book is without value, but, geez.  The list of cliches is long and annoying.

The City of Falling Angels, John Berendt

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt is the story of the loss of the Fenice theater to a huge fire in Venice, Italy.

Started:  February 7, 2011
Completed: October 27, 2012
Recommendation: Not recommended
Recommended By:  I found this in the office book exchange while I was waiting for coffee to brew.  The title intrigued me and my mother and sister had read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and raved about how good it was.  I figured I'd give it a try and just leave it at work to fill the spare moments while I was waiting for a meeting to start or coffee to brew.

Words I looked up:


exigent -- pressing or demanding

Review:


This book ends up being more of an adventure through Venice then just about the Fenice.  It feels to me that the Fenice story was just a short story and the author went to great pains to explore other avenues related to his tracking down the Fenice story in order to make this a book.  This is, in part, a mystery...why did the Fenice burn down?  There is a resolution to this mystery, but it seems as though the author is very much an observer.  Not a fly on the wall, but someone who recounts interview after interview without an ability to fill in most of the gaps between interviews.  It is as though we have a series of newspaper stories about an event intermingled with an autobiographical journey through Venice.  To me, it is an odd mix.

I did find out some fascinating things about Venice--things that should be obvious, I guess, but things I hadn't considered.  There are times when the canals stink and the tides cause the experience of traffic going by outside your window to be very different (the traffic can be well below you, or literally in your window!).  There are no cars, so everyone walks.  The walking causes people to interact highly and the nature of neighborhoods to be distinctly different from most other cities.  It is generally quieter without the background drone of cars moving about.  The walking is also hard on seniors making it necessary for neighbors to help out and knitting together the community a bit more.  The lack of cars also makes construction difficult as huge volumes of materials have to come by the boatload through the relatively thin canals.  Also, fires are put out using canal water (salty and sometimes muddy).

It is difficult for me to recommend this book to anyone else.  The pace was slow in both my reading and the book.  The drama that is present isn't really about the Fenice, but largely about things only slightly related.  In the end, it just wasn't that interesting and the prose was not compelling.