Uglies

George Orwell wrote his classic dystopian novel back in 1949. Back then 1984 seemed a distant future date, it is now 31 years in the past. Writers are still inventing cautionary tales about future horrors and the present novel is one of them.

This is YA literature, dialogue driven, and easy reading. It grows on one as the story progresses proving to be above average in quality. It is also well-edited, something I’ve learned not to take for granted in E-Book Literature.

The plot includes possible betrayals, love triangles, teenage angst; typical growing pains. It also explores social pressures, conventions and mores. The pressure to conform, accept certain ways of looking at things and each other. And since the title is Uglies our sense of what is beautiful and normal. There is also enough action and adventure to create excitement and suspense.

The book also ends with major plot lines unresolved leading one to buy what must be book 2 to find out the resolution. I feel ambushed.

The Sentimentalists

Most people can’t go home because of the gulf that exists between their childhood memories and reality. Many residents of Eastern Ontario can’t go home because it lies under the St. Lawrence Seaway.

War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
                    --Bruce Springsteen

In the wake of WW# 1&2 many children met their fathers for the first time at age 5: a man nervous, short-tempered, and irresolute: who had trouble getting or keeping a permanent job or completing anything he ever started.

The story ranges over the state of Maine, Upstate New York, and the Thousand Islands area of Ontario. Also Alberta, British Columbia and Fargo, North Dakota. The story ranges far and wide in between and eventually to Vietnam.

To quote Henry’s wife: “The war can’t explain you forever, you know. I think you should be gone by the time we get home.”

I had read nearly a quarter of the book before I realized the narrator was a woman, not a man.

Eventually in a book about Vets we end up in Vietnam as the point of view changes. This by way of allowing at least one Vet to talk about his War Experience. And this being Vietnam marijuana is involved. And as with most soldiers there were incidents a soldier would rather forget that continue to haunt him but about which he is reluctant to talk. Finally a man referred to as father turns out to be Napoleon Haskell.

Kikwaakew

Natives in Canada have a disproportionate amount of war service veterans among their numbers. This story picks up the life of a WW#1 amputee we first met in Three Day Road two decades later as he works his trap line and even manages snow shoes with a prosthetic limb. The title would seem to be the Cree word for wolverine. In a few short pages Joseph Boyden hits upon many of the issues facing aboriginal peoples in Canada. The dwindling resources that once supported a traditional lifestyle, inadequate health care, and the depredations of well-meaning priests in the lives of his people.

Labor Day

This is the short book upon which the thoroughly panned movie is based. There are three essential characters. A reclusive divorced young mother Adele, her teenage son Henry on the cusp of pubescence, and an escaped convict Frank they bring home for the weekend. Narrated by the boy, whatever little action there may be is constantly interrupted by his stream of consciousness ramblings. Justice is what can be proven in a court of law, no one ever claimed it was fair or just. If you’ve read The Bridges of Madison County you know how a few days a pair spend together can be life-changing. This is another such story, it takes a long time getting there but this one has a happy ending.

The Homecoming by Carsten Stroud

Carsten Stroud is a discovery for which I can thank a Toronto Star review when his first book came out. A Canadian by birth he was a law enforcement officer before writing became his full time profession. His first book, as I recall was Lizardskin. He continues to write police procedurals and his style has only improved with time. Highly recommended and highly readable. Not a genre I regularly frequent but I'll read anything that's well done.

His choice of place names and surnames: Niceville and Crossfire? This book has a dark tinge of the occult, paranormal about it. Old resident evil haunts hair-raising corners of the tale. There is demon possession. Like a lot of modern prose this book is wordy, filled with descriptions and atmospherics that do nothing to move the story along. The storyline is riddled with plots and cross-plots that make hefty demands of the reader challenging one to remember where it all began.

Further research shows that this is book 2 of a trilogy set in Niceville. The actual crime at the base of this tale was described in detail no doubt and committed in book 1. As I complete this volume I’m about to discover how much resolution is given is book 2 or if the reader is forced to buy book 3 to get the answers. Methinks a taut editing could have put the whole in one volume.

The Loop

There is no question but that the return of its top predator has been beneficial to America's Western Wildlands. No disputing the fact that local ranchers who extirpated wolves in the first place oppose their return. And since wolves can range for hundreds of miles local is a big territory and wolves are no respecter of park boundaries. They don't read maps and the ranchers whose stock they predate probably aren't excited about National Parks in the first place considering them a sop to useless city slickers seeking a bucolic vacation spot. To locals on both sides of the American border parks are lands where they can't hunt, trees are wasted for their scenic potential, mining and oil exploration are banned, and the tourists clutter their roads and local watering holes.

Its mythology makes of the wolf the stuff of nightmares. The fact that science has recorded no record of a healthy wolf attacking a human in no way diminishes the fear and loathing this animal invokes. The wildlife branch tasked with running interference for this ferocious predator have a thankless job seeking protection for a creature that is all too often its own worst enemy. That the animal is only doing what comes naturally doesn't wash well with local ranchers and their minders can't tell their charges to stay within park boundaries. Deer and moose on the contrary seem to know exactly where to go to remain safe during hunting season.

This book is the story of one such wolf/rancher encounter. It serves to make the controversy personal. That the writer lives in London probably doesn't make him sympathetic to real life ranchers. This is the second writer I've read this year who refers to a pickup truck as a car, that's like calling a fighter jet a passenger plane.

The novel begins by documenting the wolf attack and then backtracks to introduce the various players. The author has a tendency to get sidetracked spending chapters at a time in detailed the introduction of new characters before finally clarifying what they have to do with the plot.

The Loop can variously be interpreted as meaning an animal's territory, the circle of life in which the death of one creature sustains the life of another, or a cruel device designed for killing multiple wolves.

In the end it boils down to a balance between wolves doing what wolves will do and ranchers invading wolf habitat. Settlers killed off the wolves so they could run herds of cattle in their former territory. When government policy and environmental sense decreed the wolves should return to their former ranges it put them in conflict with ranchers. In a nation that exterminated and attempted to extirpate 100,000,000 indigenous peoples so they could settle the US the lives of a few hundred wild predators don't amount to much. Could we somehow make them sexy like the bald eagle?

Let us not forget that a bounty on Indian scalps matched that on wolves or that the buffalo were systematically slaughtered so that they couldn't support the Indians. Who of a certain age hasn't sheltered in a sled under a buffalo robe or kept warm in a wolf skin jacket?

The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley

In movie terms this is a high concept novel. Andrew is dead or everything in his world has died but death, a female, stalks the floors of a Roanoke Hospital somehow missing the lad. He skulks the floors sleeping in an unfinished wing, works in the cafeteria, visits patients in the pediatrics wing, shops in the gift shop, and haunts the ER where his love-ones died. The five stages of the title are those identified as the dying process in Kubler-Ross's On Death and Dying: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

Andrew is gay. He may have been driving when the collision that killed his sister and parents occurred. He frequents critical care units where patients die. He encounters other gays on staff and fellow patients. In particular Rusty who has been the victim of systemic bullying. Andrew or Ben has graduated high school and worked as a volunteer fireman/paramedic. The story is about how he resolves his issues and in particular how running from them rather then confronting them fails to help.

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

A book that should be required reading by all Federal and State Representatives and Senators and taught in all schools. It is to Aboriginal Affairs what Howard Zinn's similarly titled book is to working class Americans. Written using documents readily available it documents the Doctrine of Discovery which was seen as justifying the seizure of lands in the Americas by European colonial powers. It turns America's sacred mission to fulfill its manifest destiny of occupying the continent from Sea to Sea on its head. America was founded and expanded using a policy of extermination and assimilation of the resident aboriginal population that mirrors the Israelite's occupation of Palestine.

This is not easy reading. It sees the patriotic myths that underlie American jingoism as a cult of genocide and theft. Histories are typically written by the victors, this one was written on behalf of the victims.

The Awakening: The Vampire Diaries One

Have read one other book in the series. My motivation being a check to see if I feel it worthwhile to get interested in the CW TV Series based on the original books. Unfortunately it appears to be just another in the YA high school romance genre with Vampires thrown in. The similarities to Twilight are endless. It appears to be another opportunity to employ pretty boys and fawning girls to sell cosmetics ads and teenage fashions to a demographic loaded with disposable income.

The love triangle that forms the basis for this story is as old as history. A woman, who will not make up her mind as to which of two suitors she wants to favour turning brother against brother, friend against friend, even nation against nation. Helen of Troy; Lana Lang in Smallville; Tristan and Isolde; Joey Potter, Pacey and Dawson. None of these stories have happy endings. Of course when men do it we call it adultery, bigamy, or in male dominated societies allow multiple wives or harems. Where passion and jealousy are involved rational thought is abandoned.

Book two follows immediately even numbering the chapters sequentially.

The Guns at Last Light

Matters discussed here are all part of the historical record. Those who have not studied the history of WW#2 may find them spoilers. This is not the first history of WW#2 but it does have the advantage of using records recently declassified.

First comment from a Canadian, of course, is to highlight the fact that this History of WW#2 is written from an American point of view. The Yanks maintained their isolationist stance until December 7, 1941 when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour at which point it took another two years for them to ramp up their efforts and make any significant contribution to the war effort. Therefore the Liberation Trilogy of which this is book 3 begins in 1943, four years into the war. What the rest of us were doing until that point hardly seems to matter.

Three things stand out over and over again:

Military Intelligence. Planning depends on it and the best laid plans can fall apart when the unexpected happens and in war it usually does.

Fraticide. Before GPS finding a precise location from the air, by sea, and even on land was a tenuous process. Bombs were dropped on allied positions. Airborne troops were dropped over open ocean or miles from their intended drop zones. Fire missions hit wrong targets. Troops got lost or advanced into friendly fire and were landed by boat on the wrong beachhead.

Transport. An army marches on its belly. Landing troops is one thing. Keeping them fed and in ammunition quite another; motorized equipment cannot run without fuel. Air fields and ports become critical for materiel transport. Battles were won or lost by Quartermasters. Soldiers can't fight once they run out of bullets.

Of concern to the supreme commander, Eisenhower, was the need to mollify the egos of the generals who held command of the armies of the various combatants: Britain, France, Canada, and the US. Each wanted their opportunity to win glory and felt slighted when deprived.

The author continues to give historical background to the locations where engagements occur and to introduce new personalities as they appear. Attention is paid to both the Allied forces and the German leadership.

With the liberation of Paris High Command and Logistics move there. High Command balloons to 24,000 staff. With that many they could well have transported Gerry Cans of fuel across Europe by bucket brigade. To keep equipment fueled it took 1.5 gallons of aviation fuel to fly 1 gallon of truck or tank fuel. Supplies involved 800,000 separate items ordered from half way round the world for troops ever on the move that took up to 4 months to arrive. Imagine keeping several million men fed and in toilet paper. Americans are noted for prodigal wastage, they lost their guns, their ammo, their grenade launchers at ridiculous rates. Tires were shredded on tossed ration cans. Not only did they bomb Europe, they trashed it as well.

After Monty's Market Garden design fails he continues to be an exasperating egotistical little peacock planning pushes into Germany while neglecting to clear the approaches to Atwerp. While troops are forced to stand fast for lack of supplies ships lay anchored offshore for lack of berths to unload and supplies lay waiting in America for lack of transport. Meanwhile Monty fumes that sufficient resources are not being allocated to his schemes. Attacking Germany is sexier than clearing ports so his troops can have supplies.

Given Hitler's decrees that German soil be defended to the last man to the last bullet cities such as Aachen were pulverized building by building right down to their basement foundations.

In Band of Brothers a general is quoted as saying: “Flies spread disease, keep yours closed.” Venereal Disease is one of the dirty little secrets of war. The lack of proper clothing, malnutrition, and the spread of disease among men in close quarters lacking clean water and proper sanitation created more casualties than the actual fighting. Maladies of neglect such as trench foot invalided hundreds of thousands. None of this touches the psychological affects of endless warfare.

My pacifist leanings will become apparent. When the state sanctions the killing of their own citizens they call it capital punishment. When the state sanctions the mass-murder of the citizens of another country they call it war. Whatever jingoistic terms are used to pretty it up soldiers kill other human beings. Once that taboo is broken putting limits on the means used to do it seems specious. Until the American Civil War soldiers lined up on the battlefield and shot at one another. When labelling another the enemy makes killing him legitimate how do you define atrocity? Can there be gentleman's agreements as to the limits of barbarism.

Canadian Documentary Film Makers named McKenna were vilified by Veterans for portraying the Canadian War Effort in less than glowing lights. This author describes Bomber Harris and his bombing of German Civilian Targets in similar fashion. Some people seem to get a charge out of killing their fellow creatures. Military training instills that killer instinct for the murder of their fellow human beings. What the military has yet to deal with is deprogramming for a return to civilian life. How do you turn that off?

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The decisions generals make gets their own men killed as well as the enemy. When generals make bad decisions their own men die needlessly and/or without accomplishing any useful objective. The exercise of that kind of power requires a certain amount of ego, some are better at keeping their egos in check than others.

In the end the Allies won the war because the Germans ran out of cannon fodder first. Wars are lost not won and in a war of attrition the loser is he who runs out of men and materiel first. This history makes it plain that this war was not lost because the Allies possessed such superior military skills. One of its strengths is the fact that it makes no effort to hide the blunders made by both sides.

One such blunder is known to history as the Battle of the Bulge. Allied intelligence believed that only a madman would initiate an all-out offensive in December 1944 but they discounted the fact that the orders were given by Hitler, not his generals. When their leaders make mistakes, soldiers die.

As portrayed Monty was an egomaniac who refused to follow orders and kept insisting that he be put in charge of all troops in the European Theatre. Problem being that this was Ike's job and the Generals in his fellow Allied Countries found Monty impossible to work with and assumed an either he or I stance. Once more Monty dithered and failed to act in time prevent German Troops from retreating when the “Bulge” failed them. His public statements antagonized British Allies. The writer is an American. It would be interesting to see how a British Historian would interpret the same set of facts. It is also obvious that the subject of this “History” is dead. To quote Churchill: “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” Lovers quarrels are part of Love.

The final sections of this book dealing with the discovery of the Concentration Camps is not reading for the faint of heart. Reading these books will have you reaching for your dictionary more than once. New words were coined to describe this war and new meanings given to old ones. The author uses some rather arcane language at times.

Mr Midshihpman Hornblower

If you’ve seen the mini-series starring Ioan Gruffuds this is the first in the series of Hornblower books upon which it was based. In the age of wooden sailing ships and iron men the officers of ships of the line commanded sailors recruited by press gangs from local jails and bars in port. Callow 17-year-old midshipman were officers in training giving orders to men twice their age.

The setting is a British man of war at the turn of the 18th Century. To be learned was the art of commanding men, the mechanics of cannon firing, the art of navigaion, the handling of sail, and manoeuvring a ship under sail. Advancement was as much a matter of luck as it was intelligence, keeping a level head and learning quickly under pressure. Cannon balls and grape shot are no respecters of rank or privilege. The art of leading men involves keeping a level head and knowing your own limitations so that you delegate authority to those who know their business. The captain of a ship must be seen to know all in order to keep the confidence of his men.

Written at the turn of the 19th Century the author appears to know his seamanship creating a series of historical novels set at sea that follows the career of a navy brat from midshipman in this first of the series through the ranks in succeeding novels all the way to Admiral. At a time when military officers purchased their rank rather than earning it competence was not guaranteed. This young officer learned his trade working his way up through the ranks. Beginning as a navy puke who became seasick in harbour getting rowed out to his first boat he gains his sea legs and the confidence of his men.

If you enjoy adventure at sea and the thought of hanging onto ratlines a hundred feet above a heaving deck doesn’t make you turn green then you’ll enjoy this series.

Borstal Boy

So I've watched the movie multiple times. Reading the book is somewhat spoiled for me and the differences made in the adaptation are immediately apparent. The picture on the cover clearly shows that Shawn Hatosy is far better looking. Whatever ratings the movie is given the book is not G rated.

Remember the it describes prison life. The language is of the lowest form of Cockney/Irish/English dialect laced with enough profanity to make a dockyard stevedore blush. These aren't choir boys. Fully half the book deals with his stay in the English Prison System before he is ever sent to Borstal.

The reading is rather tedious being excessively wordy. Eight people tell one another good night rather than putting it as I just did. We are given the words of the author's extensive repertoire of Irish ditties in Gaelic as well as English. The movie cast obviously weren't singers.

On the other hand to say that the movie version of this book is a loose interpretation is to understate the case. Behan's book may have been partially fictionalized but the script writers altered the facts presented here so radically the author would not have recognized himself were he alive today.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue

The Raven Cycle takes fortune telling for granted. A principal character is a ghost. A group of private school boys are searching for an ancient king who lives in a magical realm situated on a line of power. If you accept these little details it's not a bad tale. It does require a fair dose of imagination and a great deal of suspension of disbelief. Oh, and we learned in book one that one of the boys will die before the year is out and Blue has been hearing as long as she can remember that if she kisses her true love he will die.

There's Richard Gansley III who lives in the converted factory he owns.

Noah Czerny, the ghost who lives in a room there.

Another Roommate, Ronan Lynch who has a younger brother Matthew and an older, Declan. Ronan has a pet Raven and in book 2 we learned he can dream things into existence—his father in fact dreamed his mother into existence.

Adam Parrish, the victim of child abuse who lives in rooms above a parsonage. A townie he lacks the other's financial resources.

“The students kept coming in. Adam kept watching. He was good at this part, the observing of others. It was himself that he couldn't seem to study or understand. How he despised them, how he wanted to be them.” (p. 63)

And Blue Sargent who lives with her Mother Maura, her Aunt and several other relatives and friends who make their living as psychics.

Book three tends to drag, it just hasn't grabbed my interest quite the same as books one and two. The private school boys have a sense of entitlement. It is taken for granted that what they want they'll get. When Gansley joins Adam before the judge the two are practically on a first name basis. The results are so foregone they aren't even mentioned.

Stuck Together

Third in a Cowboy Romance Series entitled Trouble in Texas. Set in the imaginary frontier town of Broken Wheel near Palo Duro on the Texas Panhandle in the mid-1800's. The story centres around a group of Northern Civil War Veterans whose bond was forged in the worst of circumstances in The South's most notorious prison. Luke Stone returns home in book one to find his father murdered and a stranger living on his spread. His buddies are Darius Riker the town's unofficial doctor, Jonas Cahill town preacher, and Vincent Yates town lawyer. This being a romance series in book one Luke marries a gal he rescues from a river flood. In book two Dare, the doctor marries Glynna adopting her teenage son and daughter after she takes over the town restaurant. Life is complicated when Jonas' sister arrives unannounced and as this book gets underway Vince's family arrives in town: ageing father, senile mother, illegitimate daughter—Vince's half sister and a fox hound. Vince's romance with his buddy Jonas' sister Tina is well telegraphed so that leaves Jonas to hook up with Melissa the new arrival. If this sounds like a spoiler the storyline is that obvious. Getting there the principals will lurch from disaster to disaster.

Mid-way through the book matters transpire exactly as predicted.

The Promise

I started this book which is number five in a series because of the number of plot lines left unresolved in book four. As the book begins it introduces an entirely new character and so far is silent on the subjects that interested me. As before, the population of Thunder Point keeps growing. And as it turns out the simple solutions are always the easiest.

Children graduate high school and leave home for college. In Canada it's grade 12, in America they're Seniors and go to fancy Proms and attend Fall Commencement and/or Homecoming. I graduated high school before the results of my provincially graded exams had even arrived. Deputy Yummy Pants becomes Lieutenant. Life continues and the drama of their lives lurches on from crisis to crisis.

The plot lines continue to be predictable and the characters petting, tonsil hockey, fore-play, and bedroom gymnastics remain a prominent part of the telling. There are three more E-books in the series and another in the works. Were I not reading them for free I would not have gotten past book one and as it is will not be going any further.

Go Set a Watchman

(Isaiah 21:6) For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman; let him declare what he seeth:

This verse quoted from the prophet Isaiah would seem to be the source of the title. Chapter 7 in the book.

The adult Jean Louise returns home from New York to the community Scout grew up in, seeing it with adult eyes. There are frequent flash backs to her childhood experiences inspired by what those eyes now see.

The traumas she experienced listening to school yard gossip and picking up miss-information she lacked a mother to correct continue to haunt her.

(1 Corinthians 13:11) When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a (wo)man, I have put away childish things.

The genie is out of the bottle but part of Scout would love to put it back.

This is a woman who smokes and defies convention by walking around in public in pants.

Those who are disturbed by this book have probably never read To Kill a Mockingbird, knowing it only from the romanticized movie version, a common error in this post-literate society.

Just a Minute More

If the vignettes in the previous two books in the series were read on air in one minute then Ms. Boulton started talking much faster as the set in this volume are at least half again as long. She still continues to make history interesting but this set of stories seems to feature events more than individuals and the people she talks about often don't live happy lives.

The Chance

Follows directly from The Hero incorporating people we've already met. Still set in Thunder Point, the community just keep growing. I've never been a fan of Romance Novels but this series just seems to keep growing on me. Book four in the series ends with many plot lines unresolved making it imperative I read Book five.

Fired Up

Follows directly from book one in the Trouble in Texas Series that began with Swept Away. Once more Cowboy Romances superior in nature to anything written by L'Amour or Zane Grey but with no pretensions of being great literature. As is written of many B-movies, okay time-wasters, or a pleasant way to curl up in an easy chair when you don't want a challenging read. This is not to say that they don't confront difficult issues.

White settlers laid claim to the Mother Earth native peoples felt no one could own and hunted the Buffalo on which they depended to near extinction. The Texas Longhorn Cattle, descendents of escaped Spanish herds developed immunity to diseases that plagued most other cattle whereas native peoples' numbers were decimated by European Diseases.

Texas at the time this story is set was a land before the law and legal statutes held sway. Hence we have a lawyer who had no degrees, a doctor who hadn't studied medicine and a restaurant owner who couldn't cook. What we do have is a confraternity of men whose attitude is us against the world.

Though I realize it may be a challenge to make day to day drudgery sound interesting this book seems to go to the other extreme of piling disaster on disaster. To put it more plainly I preferred book one in the series to this one.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Second in JK Rowling's booklets this one a text book for a course taught by Hagrid at Hogwarts owned by Harry Potter. There are 1000's of weird and wonderful critters on this earth and in its ocean depths. To look at your own skin under a microscope is a scary prospect. Legends of even more mythical creatures whose existence is in doubt persist in popular culture. Dragons and unicorns exist in song and on English Heraldry. There are also supposed sightings of sea monsters, creatures that live in deep lakes such as the Loch Ness Monster or Ogopogo, and wild men of the mountains variously called Yeti or Abominable Snowman. JK Rowling builds upon these mythical creatures and adds ones of her own.

The Hero

Book 3 of this series that numbers 9 at present begins with a minor character. What's important is the fact there may be minor characters but in Carr's world there are no unimportant ones. As new people arrive in this town of 1500 the ones we already know are not neglected; they just meet new people. This continues to be a good read with some bedroom gymnastics thrown in for those who need the titillation.

Quidditch through the Ages

Describes and gives rules of an imaginary game played with enchanted balls by players on flying broomsticks. The full list of fouls is not available to the wizarding public lest it give players ideas.

Just Another Minute

Reportage on the just finished, July 2015, Pan-American Games in Toronto aside Canadians have rarely been noted as being bullish on Canada or blowing their own horns. Marsha Boulton's three books in this series feature historical vignettes of Canadian events, accomplishments, and people who should be famous but remain unknown to most Canadians. These “Canadian Minutes” first aired on CBC Radio.

My Life with the Walter Boys

Jackie Howard, a girl who has spent most of her growing years in a private girls school loses her New York City parents and older sister in a terrible car accident and moves to live with her guardian on a horse ranch in Colorado. Her guardian has 12 sons—well one of them is her husband and there is a single tom boyish girl—Parker who gets little mention.

Living with 12 tall, blonde, blue-eyed hunks may sound romantic but the sight of dirty boxer shorts in the washroom and on the wearer first thing in the morning? For the reader the challenge is keeping track of all these people. The writer seems to see no difference between a pick-up truck and a car.

A seventeen-year-old Lothario who looks hot, knows it, and flaunts it can be tough to live with. God's gift to women can be just a touch insufferable. How do you cope with girlfriends who would just die for his attentions?

I downloaded this book out of pure curiosity. I continued reading it because it's just darn well written.

The Newcomer

A brief read of the continuing saga of Thunder Point makes it sound like a daytime soap opera but I was curious to try one more outing. The community of Thunder Point is styled as an isolated self-sufficient burg where everyone knows everyone else, people mind everyone's business but their own, but also take care of one another. Being Deputy Sheriff Roger MacCain in that context means knowing implicitly who the troublemakers are and otherwise protecting drunks from themselves and keeping partying teens safe.

Being identified as Deputy Yummy Pants hardly makes an officer the object of respect. But with all the objectification of good looking women why shouldn't female writers play tit for tat. In Big Stone Gap Adriana Trigiania refers to a handsome man as having a figure that made Levis sing. Pity that hunk was gay.

Started reading this book purely out of curiosity and was instantly hooked. If you don't mind the bedroom gymnastics these books are a good read. Covered is teenage sex, sexting, and the recently defined online practice of ghosting. Definitely written from a woman's perspective.

Isaac's Storm

Isaac's Storm because he was the meteorologist in Galveston in 1900 and storms were not named until 1953. Galveston in 1900 was built on a sand bar an average four feet above sea level, eight feet at its highest point. A one foot rise in tides covered 1000 ft of beach front. Little was understood about the formation and mechanics of hurricanes at the time. Hubris and one-up-manship completed the picture. Hurricane storm surge can exceed thirty feet. To say that residents had no clue what was about to hit them is an understatement.

The book goes back to basic principles describing Isaac Cline's training as a weatherman, Christopher Columbus' and other mariner's first encounters with cyclonic storms and even the original scientific discoveries about air—that it has weight, that moving air, wind, has force and that large storms move in circular patterns.

Back in 1900 meteorology was in its infancy and weather forecasting was an inexact science, many would say it still is. Modern technology made the collection of weather data possible but it wasn't until the advent of computers that complex modelling of weather systems became possible. Little was known about the development and behaviour of hurricanes and since they form over large bodies of water data collection was hit or miss. What was known about hurricanes was considered proprietorial information and little shared. Because hurricanes remain unpredictable and the work was a male domain until recent years hurricanes were given female names. Add professional jealousy to the mix and the fact that a dangerous, deadly hurricane was crossing Cuba was knowledge that could not be shared due to blockage of transmissions.

Whylah Falls

My reason for buying this book of poems by an Afro-Nova Scotian writer fifteen years ago is lost to me now. Probably a review I read in the Star Book Section, something the advent of a computer in my life caused me to cease reading on a regular basis.

A book of 200 pages has a 30-page introduction written by the author. Whylah Falls is a home lost in memory, a place that never existed but not unlike a home one can only return to in memory because the home remembered no longer exists in reality.

Cape Breton Highlands Nation Park: Guide

Clarence Barrett's “Companion” is one part guidebook, one part memoir of his travels in the park, and one part scientific journal. If you travel the park counter-clockwise as I did you don't get an opportunity to pick it up until after you've driven the entire highway through the park. It should be available at the Ingonish end. The book is well edited and exhaustive in its coverage of hiking trails, official and unlisted. Ideally the book should be read before one enters the park gates—there aren't any; as I peruse it becomes an exercise in armchair travel and self-education.

The practice of giving the people whose homes were expropriated to create a park first priority in job hiring ensures that park staff have a certain love-hate relationship with the place.

There is a section of colour photographs at the centre of the book on polished paper. I do with the author had opted to show half as many photos in half page blow-ups as the present collage style doesn't due justice to his photography. One or two full-page portrait oriented photos would have been nice as well.

The Wanderer

So, the preview looked good and the book was available from the library for free. The plot is rather predictable but with enough extras thrown in to keep it interesting. I've driven through and spent some time along the Oregon Coastal Towns that form the setting. Only a few editing gaffs make this a better than average e-Book. First in a series set in a small made-up community on the coast.

This author has that rare gift that cannot be bottled and sold of making the reader feel they are present hearing the surf crash, the gulls scream, and smell the salt ocean air. Her plots may be predictable but her characters come alive on the page in a way that makes them real for the reader, that puts you there on the page with them. Their lives matter and one feels compelled to read on to see whether the outcomes you expect come to pass and how the characters get themselves out of the scrapes in which they find themselves.

Yes, this is a Harlequin Romance and the characters do have rather torrid sex. I don't personally read books like this for vicarious titillation and wouldn't be reading this one if those rather detailed scenes were protracted and appeared to be the only object of the writing. The author makes the reader care for her characters and feel present in the scene with them, there are no cut-out single dimensional background figures. The book ends suddenly without any happily ever after scenarios the next book in the series picking up the story seamlessly where this one left off.

The Dream Thieves

Seemlessly takes over as volume two of the Raven Series from book one The Raven Boys and is followed by Blue Lily, Lily Blue, book three. The offer of Book one for free is a ruse to get one to buy the other two unless one can borrow them for free from an E-book Library. That crab aside as YA occult romance fiction these aren't bad stories. Well written and well edited, things I no longer take for granted where e-books are concerned.

The Birthday Letters

Ted Hughes threnody for his former wife Sylvia Plath published 35 years after her death by her own hand. A case of can't live with her, can't live without her; mental illness made life with her difficult. The poems are highly personal and often difficult of access. Bought this book when it came out in 1998 just six months before the author's death and just now reading it. Hughes was harshly judged as an unsympathetic serial lover until these poems saw the light of day.

Swept Away

Written by Mary Connealy who authored the Kincaid Brides Trilogy which I also enjoyed. Book One of Trouble in Texas is offered free once more to hook the reader on buying the other two. The author writes Cowboy Romances heavier on action-adventure than on Romance. The books are well edited and engage the reader from page one. Mind you it's a cliché that the men must be handsome, tall and strong, broad-shouldered, slim-waisted; the women diminutive and pretty. This series is set in Palo Duro on the Texas Panhandle in a time before law arrived so gun-play is an essential part of the scene. As it happens Luke Stone's sister happens to be one of the Kincaid Brides in Colorado. Cowboys ride horses and fight range wars. They also have raging hormones but their amours are handled tastefully.

The Brothers

What led a pair of brothers to bomb the Boston Marathon in 2013? The author did exhaustive on the ground research in Chechnya, Dagestan, Stalin's Gulag, and the Boston area in writing a forensic account of the family's background. The book is well edited and presented but reads like a detective's field notes giving us the facts of the case with no sense of empathy for the objects of her investigation. One senses that the many people who were interviewed must have been left with a sense of having being used.

This was a family who fled Russia because they were victimized there due to their ethnicity, religion, and culture only to arrive in America at a time when the War on Terror made all things Muslim suspect. When we grant refugees asylum they are often confronted with a language in which they cannot communicate, a bureaucracy they don't know how to navigate, customs and morays foreign to them, and a system seemingly designed to act as a barrier to their success. All too often the American Dream becomes a nightmare and children of such immigrants fail to flourish in an environment that seems fashioned to put them down and keep them there.

The story has played out in the lives of Vietnamese refugees supported with limited success by religious groups in the US and Canada. In the life of Omar Kadhr. Having extended the hand of friendship we feel betrayed. Stories such as this present the details of frustrated hopes and dreams and hint at the temptation to exact revenge and descend into lives of crime and drugs. What they fail to suggest is the motivation that led to such bad decisions or the changes that should be made to make the asylum process more humane and workable for those forced to go through it. Explaining what led to the crime in no way exonerates the perpetrators nor does it lead to solutions for preventing its recurrence.

Individual rights to freedom, security and privacy seem to be the first victims of the War on Terror. The fact that the acts of two individuals could lead to an entire city being under lock-down speaks for itself. Could it be that the reactions of security forces are far worse than those of the terrorists who provoked them. Is this akin to burning a house down because there is a mosquito inside. If you provoke your suspects into a shoot-out they spare you the bother of proving them guilty in court and the protracted appeal process that follows a capital sentence.

After reading this book the only thing I'm certain about is that bombs went off in Boston. The recipe for the creation of a pressure cooker bomb was available by direct link in a magazine posted in Wikipedia. That's hardly a spoiler. I'm not so certain as to who set them or why. I do know that police tactics and the court of public opinion probably played a big role in motivating whoever did. Executing a young man over a decade from now may create a martyr but will do nothing to make things better and may even worsen them.

Texas Jack

Like so many books I've been reading lately this one jumps around in time and place mid various generations of the same family. We see Jack as a 10-year-old, as a teenage jock, and as a parent with a son of his own. No one would accuse this of being great literature but the book is well-edited and although at times pedestrian has a certain familial appeal. It gives one an insiders view of a family's life. At times the shifting point of view leaves one wondering who's doing the narrating. The book confronts issues of alcoholism and child neglect. The book has a ready for Hollywood ending.

Saint John: Facts and Folklore

The 190-page book is a series of vignettes and brief articles often a single sentence rather than a history. Goss needs to fire his editor as the book is littered with spelling mistakes and contains boners such as the plague marking the Trafalgar Stairs and a suburb performance. The resulting gaffs have a comedic effect that may not be the intended approach. Many of the allusions are probably of more interest to native Saint Johners than to outsiders such as this reader.

An American Outlaw

Army Vets from Lafayette, Louisiana. Terlinga Texas, been there no reason to return. Alpine--jumping off point for Big Bend. Flashbacks to service in Iraq. The story told from the point of view of former soldiers on the lam after robberies and that of law enforcement tracking them. Bad grammar intentional dialect and poor editing. Despite poor choice of changes to first person the story holds the reader’s attention. Shifts from the Vets to Law enforcement and the past in Iraq can be confusing. What comes through to this reader most clearly is the futility and waste that war represents and the lasting damage it does to the individuals who wage it.

The Raven Boys

Made it fifty pages into this book before I bogged down. The writing style is reminiscent of a newspaper report and the author seems to lack any sense of tense for the verbs she uses making for reading discomfort. The subject matter is fantasy and ESP but the writing style serves to destroy the reader’s suspension of disbelief and therefore fails to draw one in .

I aver this book was severely edited and reissued since I last tried reading it.

How to describe The Raven Boys. The boys of the title attend a swank private school for boys. The book combines elements of teen romance, paranormal, murder mystery, fortunetelling, and even a ghost who seems almost live. Somehow the author pulls it all off and makes it seem plausible.

Little Brother

This review does not contain spoilers.

First off I should thank the author, Cory Doctorow for offering this book for free download. The book is meant to be disturbing. It is a cautionary tale of Security Forces run amuck. Media coverage of terrorist events have bred a sense of apprehension in the populace which is empowering repressive security agencies to infringe on individual rights and freedoms such as privacy, presumed innocence, freedom from search without just cause. The electronic devices which have come to make our lives so much more convenient also leave us vulnerable to government surveillance.

It has been known for years that checking certain books out from the library will trigger a report to the FBI or similar agencies. Police are supposed to get a court order before they wiretap your phone or obtain a phone log. However we are learning that our online activities and E-mail seem to be fair game for any domestic spy agency with a desire to track us. The transponders that allow us to cross bridges and use toll roads leave a record of our travels. Credit card records tell another tale and store loyalty cards add a wealth of information on our preferences. Electronic health and pharmacy records add more details. Transit passes reveal our every move. Red light cameras track who crosses an intersection and security cameras are everywhere--smile for the camera. Cameras in space can determine the denomination of a coin dropped on Red Square. The computer in your car can reveal the speed at which you’ve been driving and how often you’ve used your brakes in panic mode.

It is little comfort to be told that you’ve nothing to worry about if you’ve done nothing wrong. Tell that to black teens in any major American City. Bill C51 is presently before the Canadian Senate and would grant authorities sweeping powers to surveil electronic communications. Who is reading your E-mail? What happens if some functionary decides you fit a dangerous profile?

Post 911 $635,000,000,000 has been spent on security in the US. Cross any border and learn the sweeping powers of border agents. Board any plane and feel treated like a criminal. Know that most of this so-called security is mainly for show and does little to make us safer. In Canada we are still dealing with the fallout from head taxes for Chinese immigrants, WW#1&2 internment camps for Japanese and German citizens, residential schools for Native Canadians, disputes over expropriation. Do we really trust the government to protect our rights given that track record?

Reading this book is meant to leave you feeling uncomfortable and looking over your shoulder. What percentage of eligible voters exercise their franchise? Can we afford to be complacent?

I’m assuming that most of the grammatical errors were intentional to represent youth speak. I think it’s great the author acknowledges great bookstores though putting the descriptions at the head of each chapter somehow distracts from the flow of the narrative. Including Chapters/Indigo and Amazon among the independent bricks and mortar stores whose demise they are causing some may find disconcerting. Amazon has no base from which to stage a face to face book signing.  

[Spoilers Follow]

This is a book aimed at a younger audience. In explaining computer and internet technology in some detail it may leave those of us of an age scratching our heads. I’ll leave defining that age to others. The biggest surprise comes when the ending that seems inevitably foreshadowed is abandoned in favour of a typical “Hollywood” happy ending. This was the one sour note in an otherwise well constructed plot. Forgive the irony here.

Historic Saint John Streets

My first surprise was the fact that the authors supplied no maps to locate the streets they were talking about. The book is useless for anyone intent on taking a walking tour because the entries are in alphabetical order meaning that there is no logical order for locating the streets on the ground by neighbourhood. Unless you already have a fairly good working knowledge of the city the book leaves you lost. In spite of this with a map of the city in hand the book gives you a sense of the history of the city and its constituent parts. Street names occur up to three times around the various former communities and no attempt by common council has been made to harmonize this confusion.

Collected Poems of WH Auden

This is not a deluxe edition of the poems though at nearly 1000 pages one that gave each poem its unique page would create a wrist sprainer or require two volumes. Nevertheless there are times when the poems feel crammed. Any time one starts reading a new poet understanding his/her handling of the language, their allusions and metaphors is a challenge. Any writer is a child of their own era. Auden is a master of poetic language, his lines read so naturally one can forget they are actually rhyming but the ideas expressed go far beyond prose expression. Since my reading is not for academic purposes but rather for pleasure I don’t feel obligated to comprehend every allusion. After reading Ginsberg the expression of romance and love here is not lascivious or crass and the points made far less brash and strident.  Unlike a similar volume of WB Yeats I’ve assayed this one lacks any annotations so none of the allusions and dedications are explained. In the later poems he starts to use arcane and made-up words that have the reader reaching for a dictionary or going online to research the derivation of words no longer in common useage.

Roses are Difficult Here

W. O. Mitchell is the writer of Jake and the Kid. He writes about small town and rural prairie life but his modest settings belie a social analysis as sophisticated as that of the sociologist that in this novel is studying the people of Shelby, Alberta. The book is filled with the kind of characters that thrive in small towns and also the claustrophobia that such a closed environment can lead to. But there is also comfort in small town life.

Hate List

The story of a high school mass-murder suicide told from the point of view of the perpetrator’s girlfriend in its aftermath. Two things stand out as I read this book. The need to fight bullying and name-calling in our society and in our schools in particular. And the heavy price America pays for making guns readily available.  As one who was bullied and called names in school I can understand the wish to strike back. Not everyone is able to slough it off with the knowledge that they are better than the miserable cowards who feel they have to engage in such behaviour because of their own feelings of inferiority and lack of self-worth. I don’t condone murder but I can sympathize the feelings that motivated it. Did those kids who engaged in ridicule and bullying get what they deserved? Was revenge worth losing one’s life or wrecking it? Should we think twice before we marginalize and ostracize others?

The Big Rock Candy Mountain

We all know guys like Bo Mason. Whether products of their upbringing or their inborn nature they aren’t specifically lazy or shiftless, they just feel cooped up working inside and feel the need for open spaces, they tend to rebel when authority figures try to tell them what to do. That said it doesn’t make them easy to live with or particularly dependable. They tend to move around a great deal.

We all know guys like Bo Mason. Whether products of their upbringing or their inborn nature they aren’t specifically lazy or shiftless, they just feel cooped up working inside and feel the need for open spaces, they tend to rebel when authority figures try to tell them what to do. That said it doesn’t make them easy to live with or particularly dependable. They tend to move around a great deal.

Wallace Stegner’s book becomes quite readable after one works one’s way through the first few pages. The family moves to the Saskatchewan Prairies. WW#1, wheat farming, weather, the influenza epidemic, prohibition all figure in the storyline. Since Bo is ever restless and always looking for the main chance no matter what side of the law it may take him the family is always moving. He operates best in places the law hasn’t yet reached. In Salt Lake City they change houses 8 times in 4 years. Should we be surprised that when it comes to his son Chet the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree?

"Big Rock Candy Mountain", first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, is a folk music song about a hobo's idea of paradise,....

 One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Besides the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There's a land that's fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go
Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain't no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.
....
I'll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

[Fortunately Anon cannot sue for copyright infringement.]

The Orenda

The Life Force in Wendat. Religion is tied to a people’s world view and forms part of their cultural experience. It is expressed in the language of the people who live it. In bringing a theology born of a foreign culture to aboriginal peoples I question whether missionaries did them any favours. It served to make them uneasy and out of step with their way of life. By living among them the Crows or Black Robes brought European disease to Native Peoples that decimated their numbers and caused further break down of tribal life as it attacked the strongest in their prime of life.

The book is written from the point of view of one of the Crows Father Christophe, Bird--a tribal warrior, and  Snow Falls--a girl he captures on a raiding party. The setting appears to be a thinly disguised St Marie Among the Hurons.

As mentioned in other discussions these people lived a brutal lifestyle in which the torture of one’s enemies formed an integral part. Death was by exsanguination, starvation, or blunt force. The body’s intinct for self-preservation betraying the desire for release from pain. The authour uses his tribe’s own words for people and place names.

The Purchase

The players

Daniel--the father
Rebecca--his wife who died in childbirth

Ruth Boyd--the orphan housekeeper taken as Daniel’s wife at 13 or 14
Mary--eldest daughter and surrogate mother to:
Isaac--9 years old
Benjamin--4 years old
Jemima--2 years old
Joseph--the baby

Miss Patch--a chestnut mare
Mulberry--a lesser lame mare

Tick--the cow

Onesimus--the slave, an inadvertent purchase at auction 13?


Ostracised by his Quaker community when a housekeeper remains under his roof after the death of his wife Daniel takes his family into Western Virginia by wagon.

Owning a slave presents problems for a Quaker not least of which are the moral issues. Simus breaks his leg needing the aid of a native healer from an adjoining farm. Then the girl gets pregnant those parts of the lad seemingly working just fine.

The book demonstrates the cruelty and injustice of slavery poisoning the lives of both owned and owner. It also points the finger at Christianity that observes the letter of the law but shows not love.

The Boundless

The Boundless is another fine product of Kenneth Oppel’s fertile imagination. Cornelius Van Horne, Donald Smith, and Sam Steele are historical figures and Smith’s flubbing of the Last Spike on the CPR line through the Rockies at Craigellachie were real events. Sasquatches remain mythical creatures and it is doubtful a single-engine train the length described ever made it through the inclines of the Rockies. Oppel is probably too young to have known that first class cars were normally placed at the rear of a train away from the noise, smoke and dirt of the engine and tender cars and the freight cars up front, the reverse of his description. The tension between a son’s dreams and a father’s expectations is a universal story.

All the Light We Cannot See

Begins in Jacques Cartier’s home of Saint-Malo, Brittany, France as the island fortress is about to bombed into oblivion. Having begun near the ending the book retraces its steps to document the lives of people resident on the island at the time. There are two principal characters, blind Marie-Laure, daughter of a museum curator in Paris; and Werner who with his sister Jutta is a German orphan. It seems to be out of fashion to tell a story from beginning to end these days. This one jumps regularly from childhood memories to adulthood and points in between and from place to place. Somehow it is easier to follow than most I’ve read lately. What is most poignantly evident here is the utter futility of war and the unspeakable things people will do to survive. Living or dying is random. The story is well told, the content can be rather harrowing.

Wild

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Setting out on a strenuous 1100-mile wilderness trek as a means of finding oneself seems a rather capricious thing to do. If nothing else one will find out things about oneself. Muscles you didn’t know you had, blisters and calluses, and aches that shouldn’t appear until decades hence. As one who walked for a living it amazes me that people who have never walked any distance on flat ground or camped in other than an organized park set out on these challenging treks. Little wonder emergency staff frequently have to rescue these less than intrepid hikers.

The book begins by introducing us to the writer’s family and spends the first chapter describing her Mother’s death from Cancer. A 22-year-old doesn’t expect to be burying her 44-year-old mother. The next four years it would seem disappeared in a haze before jumping off in the Mojave Desert. Five hundred miles on and 70 pages from the end of the book the lass is at a rest area along the trail tarted up and looking for casual sex.

The author rages at her mother for dying, for the mistakes she made in life, all the while making many of the same. These passages are not the strongest sections of the book. She looks at a handsome male and can’t seem to resist fantasizing sex with him. The fact that men find her attractive seems to re-enforce her sense of self-worth. Or to put it another way her self-esteem is at a low ebb.

The 323-page book is well-edited and for the most part eminently readable. Once the reader gets started the text seems to flow. Your personal feelings about casual sex will colour your opinions about the book, I expect my own are obvious.

The Book Thief

--Spoiler Alert--

Takes a while to warm up to this book but then the reader has 433 pages to do so. Takes even longer to figure out exactly what is happening, who is doing the acting, and to whom it is happening. The narrator would appear to be the Grim Reaper who continues the story throughout. Just what part the book thief plays in all this is not immediately apparent. Transpires we are transported to a small working class enclave in a suburb of Munich at the outset of WW#2. Hitler’s treatment of the Jews plays a large part in the story. Interesting to learn the experience of ordinary German citizens during the Allied carpet bombing of Germany. The writing style and formatting would probably be best appreciated in hard copy rather than as I read it in e-Book format.

The Burning of Brenham by Sharon Brass

Essentially a boosterish history of 19th Century Brenham, Texas, the great fire of 1866 being a significant milestone. Texas was not the site of fighting during the Civil War but having fought on the Confederate side it came under Federal Reconstruction, The Freedman’s Bureau, and Federal Troop occupation. To this day Texans do their best to ignore the existence of a Federal Government and the imposition of Sheridan’s Black troops was not well received.

The success of any community depends on existence of men who can make things happen and rally others behind them. In Brenham the name Giddings stands out. The Railway they helped build gave local products access to a world market. The system of cisterns and fire-fighting was ahead of its time and a model that has yet to catch on in the rest of Texas. The local newspaper man is a model for many a frontier movie opus.

It is obvious that the writer had access to and permission to use well-preserved archives. This 70-page booklet stands out among so many examples of its genre in having been printed in colour. The quality of the reproductions is exemplary.

When Everything Feels Like the Movies

Cross-dressing Jude/Judy’s Mother is an exotic dancer with enhanced bosom. His step-father doesn’t get Jude and favours Ray the son he fathered. When Jude isn’t spaced out on alcohol and drugs he lives in an imaginary world in which he is a film star. He shares his basement bedroom with a pet cat name Stoned Hairspray. The book is written from his point of view and makes extensive use of movie references and hip language that will probably date quickly. It fantasizes sexual encounters and has other adult situations and some violence. 

Boy Toy

The book begins with 13-year-old Josh Mendel playing spin the bottle in a basement closet, the girl bolts when Josh gets aroused. Five years later cut to Josh decking his baseball coach. The background is of a boy molested by his middle-school teacher. Josh, a senior of above average intelligence, narrates the story.

In the arrogant, self-centred, naïveté of childhood the victims of sexual abuse often hold themselves responsible for their sufferings just as the children of divorce often blame themselves for their parent’s breakups. Every boy should have a best friend as understanding and loyal as Zik and a girl friend willing to wait 5 years for their beau to get over himself. The book tackles a delicate subject with deep if rather mature understanding. It is rather full of baseball statistics for anyone lacking the interest but otherwise it is well-written. It seems to be current style to write stories in a non-linear fashion but given Josh’s costant flashbacks it seems only appropriate and here it is easy to follow.

The Day of Battle

Atkinson spices up what could be a dry military history with biographical information on the principal players, historical background on the lands they invade, and notes from diaries, letters, and memoirs that draw on the experience of the people back home. Ike’s chief challenge was running interference between Monty and Patton, FDR and Churchill. To quote one of his generals: Running a war seems to consist in making plans and then ensuring that those destined to carry them out don't quarrel with each other instead of the enemy. Reading this account one comes to understand that ‘military intelligence’ become a term of derision. In so many ways this became a war of attrition in which men’s lives were thrown away in battle plans that had little chance of success. The terrible human cost of war both to the soldiers who fought and the civilians whose homes were the battleground is made plain. Even in WW#2 the financial costs of war are staggering. When an artillery captain reported that one million dollars worth of ordinance had been thrown at the enemy he was reportedly told to throw a million more. Those were 1944 dollars, today a single jet costs $20 million. Interesting to read that racism made black soldiers a rarity whereas today poor blacks complain that war is a black man’s trade as white boys evade service and draft boards. Everything old is new, Allied troops killed by their own mine fields and by friendly fire.

We know the outcome of the battles described here but even so the author manages to generate suspense in describing them. The overall impression the reader receives is one of the futility and terrible human cost of this campaign. Hundreds of thousands of lives were thrown away in a war of attrition in an effort to divert German troops from the Eastern Russian Front and the eventual D-Day invasion of Western Fortress Europe. The Generals who oversaw this campaign learned on the job at the cost of the lives of the men they led. Those who had fought in North Africa were unprepared for the mountainous terrain that was the Italian Boot where uneven ground made the use of tanks ineffective and the shock and awe bombing campaign used later by a general named Schwartzkopf less devastating. I would not presume to claim that reading the 677 pages that constitute the account equates with the emotional impact on the men who suffered disease, hunger, bombardment, injury, emotional stress, and death but no caring individual can read this account and not feel its effect. Those who ignore history are fated to repeat it.