Berty Reads Books

2009 Reading List

I Really Loved These

Fate Is the Hunter

Ernest K. Gann

Fantastic. Totally awesome. This is the second time I've read this, and I still love it.

From Wikipedia: “Captain Gann flew for American Airlines and later, when a portion of American and other U.S. airlines were absorbed into the U.S. Army Air Corps Air Transport Command during World War II, flew DC-3s, DC-4s and C-87s, the cargo version of the B-24 bomber. These trips took him across the North Atlantic, Africa, South America and India, among others. His travels worldwide would become part of his many novels and screenplays in the years to come.”

Want to know what pilots faced when airlines were just starting out? Read this. Gann puts you in the cockpit and describes how it feels to lose an engine (or two) or fly through icing conditions. If you have a passing interest in aviation, this book won't let you down. If you are a pilot and you HAVEN'T read this you should be shot.

I am cold and there is a strange ache in my belly when we approach thirteen thousand feet with the ship still pointed down. Our lateral gyrations now become extremely violent. Tossed beyond its limits, the artificial-horizon instrument “tumbles” and becomes therefore useless. Ross is forced to fly on only turn indicator and air speed, an arduous commitment in such rough air. I prefer not to look back at the wings, even if I could see them. Some things are better unknown.

Our ascent slows and I breathe a sigh of relief which is cut short by a head-on collision with an express train. All previous noise is now insignificant. We are in hail.


Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe

Laurence Bergreen

Fantastic.

I'm a little embarrassed to say that I didn't know that Magellan failed to make it around the world. One of the five ships that started the 3 year journey did, but Magellan was killed in the Philippines. In fact the only thing that I did know was that his first name was Ferdinand.

If you are ignorant like me, you will love this book.

Bergreen covers it all—Magellan's struggles for backing from the King of Portugal, his eventual sponsorship from the King of Spain, outfitting the ships, picking the crew, the long journey, the mutinies, the executions, scurvy, disease, starvation, meeting natives, finding spices, and the final return.

Of the five ships and 260 crew members that started the trip only one ship and 18 men made it back.

Begreen kept my interest the entire time, and I highly recommend this one.

Magellan had succeeded in terrorizing all the men under his command, captains and commoners alike. In his letter of March 22, 1518, King Charles gave Magellan complete authority over everyone in the armada; this was the “power of rope and knife.” He had demonstrated that he had, as his orders indicated, the power of life and death over all those who served under him. As brutal as his conduct sounds, the Captain General was well within the rights granted to him by King Charles. But Magellan took his authoritarianism to an extreme, refusing to share power or even give the illusion of power to his captains, and they communicated their dissatisfaction down the chain of command to ordinary seamen, making rebellion and its hideous aftermath—torture—inevitable.


A Man on the Moon

Andrew Chaikin

Outstanding.

Widely known as the book to go to if you want to know all there is to know about what it was like to be an Apollo astronaut.

Chaikin spent eight years researching through interviews with the pilots/astronauts and support people and makes you feel like you right there in the command module or the lunar lander.

In the foreword, Tom Hanks writes about the task of putting Apollo 13 on film: “When there was a question of accuracy or accomplishment, someone on the staff always asked the most obvious question: “What does Chaikin say about this?”

If you want to focus only on the Apollo missions, and read great background info on the astronauts, then pick up this book.

Fifty feet above the moon. Now thirty. Eagle was drifting slowly backward and Armstrong did not know why, but he knew he must not land while he could not see where he was going. He pulsed the hand controller, struggling to arrest the unwanted motion. He was displeased with himself, sure that he was not flying Eagle smoothly. He wished he could buy more time, but he was too low on fuel to slow the descent any further. Twenty feet to go. He'd stopped the backward drift but still wrestled with a sideways motion that had crept in. They were flying the dead man's curve now, too low to abort if the engine quit, but in the back of his mind Armstrong knew that if that happened they'd be okay, they would just fall onto the moon. Dust blew furiously. Once more, words of caution came from earth: “Thirty seconds.” Then Buzz Aldrin said, “Contact light.”


The Given Day

Dennis Lehane

Lehane just keeps getting darker and darker.

His first books, though maybe a little dark, had some pretty sarcastic and humorous characters with Boston private investigators, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. Then he wrote two stand alone books that had a totally different feel and were even more serious (and were turned into two movies).

Now he drops a 700 page epic with this historical novel that is set in Boston at the end of World War I. It focuses on a young black man trying to survive in a white world, and a young white cop who is thrust into the unionization of the Boston Police Department. Oh, and Babe Ruth makes a few appearances.

A few words that you will find in all of the reviews pretty much say it all…passionate, powerful, stunning, detail-rich, and a human meat grinder of a book.

As much as I liked this, I wish he would go back to writing about Kenzie and Gennaro. I loved those characters.

The yellow slip of paper said “See Bill,” and that was all, but Luther felt something in those words that made him reach below his bench and pick up the beat-on leather tool bag and carry it with him as he crossed the work floor toward the shift supervisor's office. He was holding it in his hand when he stood before Bill Hackmann's desk, and Bill, sad-eyed and sighing all the time, and not so bad for white folk, said, “Luther, we got to let you go.”

Luther felt himself vanish, go so damn small inside of himself that he could feel himself as a needlepoint with no rest of the needle behind it, a dot of almost-air that hung far back in his skull, and him watching his own body stand in front of Bill's desk, and he waited for that needlepoint to tell it to move again.


I Liked These A Lot

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

Nathaniel Philbrick

A great history of the Pilgrims and the Plymouth Colony.

Philbrick explains it all, from the start in Europe, the voyage across the Atlantic, erroneously landing near Cape Cod instead of New York, to the end of it all with King Phillip's war.

Anybody who loves American history will love this book.

On Friday, March 16, they had yet another meeting about military matters. And as had happened the last time they had gathered for such a purpose, they were interrupted by the Indians. But this time there was only one of them atop Watson's Hill, and unlike the previous two Indians, this man appeared to be without hesitation or fear, especially when he began to walk toward them “very boldly.” The alarm was sounded, and still the Indian continued striding purposefully down Watson's Hill and across the brook. Once he'd climbed the path to Cole's Hill, he walked past the row of houses toward the rendezvous, where the women and children had been assembled in case of attack. It was clear that if no one restrained him, the Indian was going to walk right into the entrance of the rendezvous. Finally, some of the men stepped into the Indian's path and indicated that he was not to go in. Apparently enjoying the fuss he had created, the Indian “saluted” them and with great enthusiasm spoke the now famous words, “Welcome, Englishmen!”


The Gate House

Nelson DeMille

It's the sequel to The Gold Coast, and DeMille admitted that he needed to be convinced to write it. I'm glad he did.

John Sutter is back in New York, it's ten years later, and he's almost drawn back into working with the mob again. At 674 pages it will keep you entertained for quite a while and you won't want to put it down because you want to read 674 pages of incredibly sarcastic comments by Sutter. I laughed my ass off quite a few times. I was a little bummed that DeMille pretty much rehashed a lot of the story of The Gold Coast and would have liked to see less of that. It's a fun read and you won't be disappointed if you enjoyed the first book.

William the Color Blind was wearing silly green trousers, an awful yellow golf shirt, and a shocking pink linen sports jacket. Charlotte had on pale pink pants and a puke green blouse, and they both wore those horrid white orthopedic walking shoes. I'm surprised they were allowed to board the aircraft.

William, I noticed, really hadn't aged much in ten years, and he had a full head of hair and was still using the same hair coloring. Charlotte's face had aged a lot, with a network of deep wrinkles that looked like cracked house paint. She'd let her hair go naturally bright red, and she was wearing earrings, a necklace, and a bracelet all made of coral and seashells, giving her the appearance of a dry aquarium. Neither one of them had gained much weight, and both of them were amazingly pasty-faced for golfers, as though they used whitewash for sunblock.

I said to them, “You're both looking very well.”


Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II

George MacDonald Fraser

The writer of the Flashman novels gets serious (sort of) and tells the story of his war during World War II—specifically the Burma Campaign.

Since I pretty much had no idea what went on with the British army's fight against the Japanese in Burma, it was both informative and humorous.

I laughed a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed the account.

The artillery opened up behind us with a thunder that made the ground shake, every gun in the 17th Division throwing its high explosive at the Japanese positions far ahead; the green lines stirred and the bush-hats tilted back as everyone craned to see what was happening beyond the haze, with the ritual murmurs of “Send it doon, David!”—whoever David might be. The bursts were invisible, but the rumble of the distant explosions came back to us in a continuous wave of sound. For five minutes the barrage continued, and as it died away Nine Section expressed their appreciation.

“Is that a', fer fook's sake! Christ, Ah could 'ev farted better than yon! Aye, weel, that's a' we're gonna git—an' nae air coover, neether! Sod that for a game o' sojers! Bloody madness! Gooners, Ah've shit 'em!” etc. etc. Actually, by their standards it was practically a hymn of gratitude.


Neuromancer

William Gibson

I'd give this a 5 for incredible originality, but a 3 for storytelling and dialogue.

Neuromancer was Gibson's first novel and it won the science-fiction “triple crown”—the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Hugo Award. It is often considered one of the more famous early cyberpunk novels.

Gibson's imagination is fantastic, and he is credited with creating the word “cyberspace.”

The main character, Henry Case, is a former hacker that had his central nervous system damaged by his former employer (who found out that he was stealing from the company). This prevents him from using a brain-computer interface to jack into the global computer network in cyberspace.

Neat.

He is recruited by this bad-ass named Armitage (along with an augmented “street samurai”) who promises to cure him if he will do a job for him.

He agrees. Let the journey into the dark sinister world of cyberspace begin.

The world Gibson created is amazing, but I was often re-reading paragraphs of dialogue to try to piece together all of the slang that Gibson had his characters use. That was a little distracting.

I'll probably read it again to see if it will sink in.

Case punched for the Swiss banking sector, feeling a wave of exhilaration as cyberspace shivered, blurred, gelled. The Eastern Seaboard Fission Authority was gone, replaced by the cool geometric intricacy of Zurich commercial banking. He punched again, for Berne.

“Up,” the construct said. “It'll be high.”

They ascended lattices of light, levels strobing, a blue flicker.

That'll be it, Case thought.

Wintermute was a simple cube of white light, that very simplicity suggesting extreme complexity.

“Don't look much, does it?” the Flatline said. “But just you try and touch it.”

“I'm going in for a pass, Dixie.”

“Be my guest”

Case punched to within four grid points of the cube. Its blank face, towering above him now, began to seethe with faint internal shadows, as though a thousand dancers whirled behind a vast sheet of frosted glass.

“Knows we're here,” the Flatline observed.

Case punched again, once; they jumped forward on the face of the cube.

A stippled gray circle formed on the face of the cube.

“Dixie…”

“Back off, fast.”


City of Thieves

David Benioff

This will most probably be a movie in a few years, if it isn't in production already.

From the back cover: “By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.”

The book is set during the time of the Nazi's siege of Leningrad. The main characters, Lev Beniov (based on Benioff's grandfather) and Kolya Vlasov, are arrested by police officers on trumped up charges and taken before a Soviet colonel. The colonel will let them go and clear their records if they find a dozen eggs for him to use in his daughter's wedding cake.

Together the shy teenager, Lev, and the cocky soldier, Kolya, set about their task to win their freedom. If they fail they will most likely be executed.

It turns out better than you think it would. On one page it will make you laugh and then on the very next page shock you with sobering accounts of the conditions of that time and place.

Two guards—one of them holding an oil lamp, the prettiest light I ever saw, better than any sunrise—escorted a new prisoner, a young, uniformed soldier who glanced around the cell like a man viewing an apartment he's considering for rent. The soldier was tall and stood very straight; he towered over the guards, and though they had pistols in their holsters and the soldier was unarmed, he seemed ready to give orders. He held his Astrakhan fur hat in one hand and his leather gloves in the other.

He looked at me just as the guards left, shutting the cell door and bolting it from the outside, taking their light with them. His face was the last thing I saw before the darkness resumed, so it stuck in my mind: high Cossack cheekbones, the amused twist of the lips, the hay-blond hair, the eyes blue enough to please any Aryan bride.

I sat on the bed and he stood on the stone floor and from the perfect silence I knew neither of us had shifted position—we were still staring at each other in the darkness.


Altered Carbon

Richard K. Morgan

It's a Phillip Marlow set around 500 years in the future.

Great cyberpunk. Personalities and memories can be stored digitally and downloaded into new bodies, called sleeves. If you're rich you can pretty much live forever. You have your body cloned and just keep resleeving your “stack” into a new body.

Laurens Bancroft (a dude who is rich and working on his 300th year or so of life) appears to have committed suicide, completely destroying his stack. He resleeves from a backup but has no memories of his actions during the previous 48 hours (he only back up his data every 48 hours). He thinks that he was really murdered and hires an ex-military bad-ass named Takeshi Kovacs to investigate his death.

Cue the violence, throw in some virtual torture, and hang on for some fun.

“Mr. Kovacs.”

I paused.

“There shouldn't be any major problems with adjusting,” she said. “This is a healthy body, and you are…used to this. If there is anything major, call this number.”

I put out an arm and lifted the little rectangle of card with a machined precision that I hadn't noticed before. The neurachem was kicking in. My hand delivered the card to the same pocket as the rest of the paperwork and I was gone, crossing the reception and pushing open the door without a word. Ungracious maybe, but I didn't think anyone in that building had earned my gratitude yet.

You're a lucky man, Kovacs. Sure. A hundred and eighty light-years from home, wearing another man's body on a six-week rental agreement. Freighted in to do a job that the local police wouldn't touch with a riot prod. Fail and go back into storage. I felt lucky I could have burst into song as I walked out the door.


The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Stieg Larsson

A good story with interesting characters.

As advertised on the back cover, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into a complex and atmospheric novel.”

I liked it.

Salander devoted a week to planning Nils Bjurman's demise. She considered—and rejected—various methods until she had narrowed it down to a few realistic scenarios from which to choose. No acting on impulse.

Only one condition had to be fulfilled. Bjurman had to die in such a way that she herself could never be linked to the crime. The fact that she would be included in any eventual police investigation she took for granted; sooner or later her name would show up when Bjurman's responsibilities were examined. But she was only one person in a whole universe of present and former clients, she had met him only four times, and there would not be any indication that his death even had a connection with any of his clients.”


The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life

Alice Schroeder

Oh my God this book is so freaking long.

I read the paperback, “updated and condensed” version, and it was still 707 pages long. With an additional 78 pages of footers (which I did not read).

The author spent more than 5 years interviewing Buffet, both in person and on the phone. Additionally, she interviewed 250 of his friends, family and associates.

You want to learn about Buffet? Read this book.

Buffet pretty much obsessed about money and details of businesses he invested in. This book details all of it. We learn about his childhood, schooling, family life, and business life.

It's all that you could want, and more. It's just long.

“Stocks are things to own over time. Productivity will increase and stocks will increase with it. There are only a few things you can do wrong. One is to buy or sell at the wrong time. Paying high fees is the other way to get killed. The best way to avoid both of these is to buy a low-cost index fund, and buy it over time. Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy, but don't think you can outsmart the market.

“If a cross-section of American industry is going to do well over time, then why try to pick the little beauties and think you can do better? Very few people should be active investors.”

If there is any lesson the life of Warren Buffet has shown, it is truth of that.


One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khruschev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War

Michael Dobbs

Good stuff. From the inside front cover flap: “Dobbs takes us inside the White House and the Kremlin as Kennedy and Khrushchev—rational, intelligent men separated by an ocean of ideological suspicion—agonize over the possibility of war.”

Dobbs provides great detail about Khrushchev's plan to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo; the accidental overflight of the Soviet Union by an American U2 plane; the location and movement of the nuclear weapons around Cuba; and the behind closed doors discussions of Kennedy and his staff, as well as Khrushchev and his cadre.

The Crusader roared over the camp at nearly 500 knots, too fast for Coffee to get much sense of what he was photographing. He made a hard right, and fell back in behind his lead pilot. The pilots gave each other the thumbs-up sign, switched on their afterburners, and flew back northward across the Florida Straits.

It would take many weeks for the young Navy lieutenant to realize the significance of what he had just photographed. In due course, a letter of appreciation arrived from the commandant of the Marine Corps commending Coffee's “alertness in a rapidly changing situation.” The letter went on to praise “the most important and most timely information for the Amphibious forces which has ever been acquired in the history of this famous Navy-Marine fighting team.”

Coffee did not know it yet, but he had just discovered a new class of Soviet weaponry on Cuba.


Flashman

George MacDonald Fraser

Quasi-historical fiction and pure entertainment.

Flashman recounts Harry Paget Flashman's adventures as a young adult (1839-1842), from being kicked out of school for drunkenness, to “enlisting” in the British Army and then participating in the First Afghan War.

Flashman is a coward that turns tail at any serious conflict, but somehow gets credit and heroic status for things he never does. Written as if it is a memoir (that was found by accident), it is humorous, bawdy, and a fun way to learn history.

No doubt Thomas Hughes would find it significant that in such a disaster I would emerge with fame, honour, and distinction—all quite unworthily acquired. But you, having followed my progress so far, won't be surprised at all.

Let me say that when I talk of disasters I speak with authority. I have served at Balaclava, Cawnpore, and Little Big Horn. Name the biggest born fools who wore uniform in the nineteenth century—Cardigan, Sale, Custer, Raglan, Lucan—I knew them all. Think of all the conceivable misfortunes that can arise from the combinations of folly, cowardice, and sheer bad luck, and I'll give you chapter and verse. But I still state unhesitatingly, that for pure, vacillating stupidity, for superb incompetence to command, for ignorance combined with bad judgement—in short, for the true talent for catastrophe—Elphy Bey stood alone.


Faceless Killers

Henning Mankell

Kurt Wallander, a Ystad police inspector on the verge of becoming an alcoholic, investigates the brutal murder of an elderly farmer and his wife.

It had great characters, and interesting story line, and moved along quickly.


These Were Okay

Blood and Bone

William Lashner

I've totally forgotten what this was about.

Something about a son who never knew his father, was a slacker, and is thrown into a murder investigation while being the target of a lunatic hit man.

It was something to read on an airplane…and I think I liked it.

Who knows.


Turbulent Skies: The History of Commercial Aviation

T.A. Heppenheimer

I read this when it first came out in 1995 and just re-read it again. I thought it was much better back then.

Heppenheimer provides fabulous background information about airlines during the early years when passenger service was just getting started. I enjoyed the history of each airline and key players within them, especially the descriptions of Juan Trippe and the early assignments of routes by the Postmaster General.

The history of airplane design was interesting as well…though a little dry at times. I started to yawn a lot when I was about three quarters of the way through the book.

On March 30, 1934, the Post Office put up new contracts for bids. The ban on the blackballed executives was still in force, and no company holding a canceled Brown contract would be allowed to bid. Even so, Postmaster General James Farley let the airlines know that they could avoid this second restriction through little more than name changes. Thus Clement Keys's two airlines, TWA and Eastern Air Transport, became TWA, Inc., and Eastern Air Lines. American Airways became American Airlines, and so it went. When the new routes were awarded, the resulting airline map bore an astonishing resemblance to the old one. The Army flew its last mail flights on May 7, and the airlines resumed their regular service the following day.

A few new faces were at hand, as the founders of Braniff Airways and Delta Air Lines won their first routes. Yet despite all the passion that had been directed against Brown, his basic principle was vindicated: that the airways should belong to a few large, well-financed companies through which aviation could grow.


The Blight Way

Patrick F. McManus

A light-hearted comic mystery.

Blight County Sheriff Bo Tully, along his 75 year old father (the former Sheriff of Blight County), investigates the murders of three men.

The author, McManus, is an outdoor writer, humorist and long-time columnist for Outdoor Life and Field and Stream. The book is written in a style “that brings to mind Mark Twain, Art Buchwald, and Garrison Keillor.”

Pick it up if you want a light read that will make you chuckle.


Island in the Sky

Ernest K. Gann

During World War II the Army Air Transport Command was created, primarily composed of pilots and aircraft contracted from U.S. civilian airlines. It focused on the transportation of troops and supplies from the East Coast to the UK, Africa and India, across the North and South Atlantic and then eventually across the Pacific to Hawaii and the South Pacific to Australia.

In Fate is the Hunter, Gann wrote about a mission where one crew encountered a snowstorm, took off in a Northwesterly direction over northern Canada, and crash landed. He then described the subsequent search and rescue. It was one chapter in the book.

Island in the Sky is the fictionalized account of this event. It was one of the first books to be written about the Army Air Transport Command, and was even made into a movie that starred John Wayne.

It wasn't as riveting as I thought it would be. Still good though, and worth a glance if you happen to run across it in a used book store or a the library. BD King Press has bought the rights to it and is publishing it again, should you want to buy a new copy of it.

Yet within the front could lurk the one thing that Dooley feared the most. The Corsair, like every other thing that flew, was poorly equipped to fight it. Dooley and crew, the engines, cargo, and the heavy gasoline, were supported in the atmosphere only by the Corsair's wings. They were shaped with the utmost care. Nothing else kept the Corsair from the surface of the earth. Dooley was not flying in a magic metal construction but on an exact mathematical formula. Even a little ice would force Dooley to increase his gasoline consumption. The Corsair would grow heavier. It would vibrate viciously—but that was unimportant. The shape of the wings would change, the formula upon which Dooley depended for his very existence in the air would be altered. It would depend, in part, on how much ice there was. The rubber de-icing boots along the leading edges of the wings were a feeble defense. The factors meshed in together like a pair of clenched fists. Dooley was very worried about ice.


The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I didn't feel it. I wasn't overwhelmed by “one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature.” I enjoy reading Fitzgerald. I have a book of his short stories and marvel at how he writes.

Don't get me wrong. Nick was cool, Daisy was crazy, Tom was a jerk, and Jordan was Jordan. Extraordinary people wanted to be ordinary and ordinary people wanted to be extraordinary.

But that dude Gatsby was a little unbelievable.

Maybe I just need to read it again. Or I could get the CliffsNotes on it and see what I am supposed to be getting out of it. I definitely wouldn't rate it one star and whine about it on Amazon or anything.

I did learn two new words…hauteur and echolalia. And the last sentence is fabulous.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It ended us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.


Agent to the Stars

John Scalzi

After reading Lisa's review, I found the book online and read it for free off Scalzi's web site. That's pretty cool that he allowed this to be read for free. If you read the back story on his site, you'll see that this was a book that he wrote just to see if he could write a book (in time for his ten-year high school reunion).

Aliens from another world decide to make their presence known to earthlings, but unfortunately they aren't the most attractive. They “look like snot” and they “smell like dead fish.” But they are good aliens, with peaceful intentions. And after monitoring earth's radio broadcasts for quite some time they realize that the best way to be introduced to mankind is to get a good agent.

It's humorous science fiction, and it doesn't pound your head with tons of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo. It's light and fun. And after reading it, I will probably buy a few of Scalzi's other books.

Joshua and I were sitting at my dining room table. More accurately, I was sitting at the table; Joshua was sitting on it. Between us was a Pizza Hut carton and the remnants of a large pepperoni pizza. Joshua had eaten four slices. They lay, haphazardly, near the center of his being. I could see the slices slowly disintegrating in an osmotic haze. It was vaguely disturbing.

“You going to eat that last piece?” Joshua said.

“No,” I said, turning the carton towards him. “Please.”

“Great,” Joshua said. A pseudopod extended, folded around the crust edge, and withdrew back into his body. The slice was surrounded and joined its brethren. “Thanks. I haven't had anything all day. Carl thought it might be upsetting to you to see food rotting away in the middle of something that looked like dried glue.”

“He was right,” I said.


The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler

Detective Philip Marlowe, Los Angeles, the late 1930s. It was made into a movie twice (1946 with Bogart, and 1978 with Mitchum), and is considered by some to be the book that invented the detective novel.

Unfortunately every time I read certain parts of it I kept thinking of the Naked Gun and Leslie Nielson (Read the excerpt on the right and you'll see what I mean).

Since it was written in 1939, the book will make you chuckle at the slang used during that time. References to things no longer in existence—like morning, afternoon and evening editions of the newspaper—will also bring a smile to your face.

I didn't say to myself that I needed to immediately go out and find and read all seven of his other books, but I did hear that The Long Goodbye is supposed to be good and will probably check it out from the library,.

I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble. She was stretched out on a modernistic chaise-lounge with her slippers off, so I stared at her legs in the sheerest silk stockings. They seemed to be arranged to stare at. They were visible to the knee and one of them well beyond. The knees were dimpled, not bony and sharp. The calves were beautiful, the ankles long and slim and with enough melodic line for a tone poem. She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. Her head was against an ivory satin cushion. Her hair was black and wiry and parted in the middle and she had the hot black eyes of the portrait in the hall. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full.

She had a drink. She took a swallow from it and gave me a cool level stare over the rim of the glass.


Gods of Tin: The Flying Years

James Salter

It didn't thrill me, but it was interesting.

I never read anything by Salter and am not familiar with any of his eight other books. This book actually takes excerpts from three of those books, as well as a journal that he kept during the Korean war.

Salter writes of his time in an F-86, flying over Korea—describing parts of flight school, training flights, and different missions and dogfights with MIGs. He puts you in the cockpit, makes you feel like you were there, and describes what goes through a fighter pilot's mind in flight.

The fact that a lot of this was taken from different sources doesn't really make it read well, and if you approach it as a book to pick up every now and then over a period of weeks it will probably be more enjoyable than trying to read straight through.

Suddenly, MIGs called out along the river. Then Low calls them at 30,000, heading along the Yalu. We drop tanks and begin climbing through a layer of scattered cirrus. All at once the MIGs are on us, coming in from 8 o'clock, slightly high. Cope is on my right. We break into them. They pass behind us and are immediately lost from sight as we continue to turn and roll out at 20,000.


The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World

A.J. Jacobs

Funny stuff. Light reading…pretty much the humorous Cliff Notes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Wanting to start and finish something that his father failed to, Jacobs orders and reads the EB from beginning to end. The back cover describes it as “an ingenious, mightily entertaining memoir of one man's intellect, neuroses, and obsessions, and a struggle between the all-consuming quest for factual knowledge and the undeniable gift of hard-won wisdom.”

That about sums it up. Jacobs takes you along his journey from A to Z and then summarizes specific sections while adding humorous commentary. He also describes the problems of trying to read the EB and what it does to your home life. You'll laugh a lot and learn quite a few things in the process.

Madonna

The Britannica just added Madonna to the edition this year, and you could tell the editors wrote the entry while wearing one of those sterile full-body suits people use when containing an Ebola outbreak. It's wedged in between write-ups for the first Madonna and British legal historian Thomas Madox, and contains sentences like this one: “Her success signaled a clear message of financial control to other women in the industry, but in terms of image she was a more ambivalent role model.” In Britannica, that roughly translates to: “Madonna is a whore. A very dirty whore.”


A Hostage to Fortune

Ernest K. Gann

I was shocked to learn that one of my favorite aviation authors only really flew the line at an airline until he was 38.

Fate is the Hunter was fabulous so I wanted to learn a little more about Gann. In his autobiography he lays it all out and you get a great recap of the fascinating life of a pilot, sailor, filmmaker, fisherman, and author.

It makes me want to read more of his other books. Unfortunately, most of them are out of print.


Fieldwork

Mischa Berlinski

This book comes highly recommended by Stephen King…and I first heard about it when reading an article by King that detailed some of the best books he's read in the past year.

Berlinski's girlfriend gets a job in Thailand teaching the first grade and he goes along with her. He meets up with an old friend that tells him of an American anthropologist that commits suicide in a Thai prison, where she had been serving a life sentence for murder.

The book is the story of Berlinski's search for the truth and/or story of what really happened. It delves into the lives of Thai hill tribe members, missionaries, and anthropologists.

So if you are any one of those three, you'd probably find it fascinating.

I thought it was a good story, but was secretly counting the pages left to go so that I could get on with reading a different book.


The Pyrates

George MacDonald Fraser

Imagine The Princess Bride focusing solely on pirating exploits, but with no Fred Savage or Peter Falk.

The pirates are loosely based on real individuals (Captain Blood, Calico Jack, Blackbeard Teach), and their character's exploits and mannerisms are grossly exaggerated.

As one reviewer put it, “A sort of Christmas pantomime which incorporates every pirate story and nearly every period melodrama ever written in a huge burlesque.”

I laughed out loud during some parts, but oddly fell asleep while reading others. Beside the one or two times I was a little tired and dozed off while reading, I thought it was a fun read.

Blood, following more cautiously, paused to blink appreciatively at the wide-eyed Vanity, slipped a protective arm around her waist, and got his face slapped for familiarity. He would have protested, but at that moment the powder keg exploded under the rudder, blowing half the bottom off the galley, and causing some confusion. Akbar and Avery were fencing away like crazy, jumping on the furniture, exchanging defiant remarks like: “Your sands are run, Muslim beast!” and “You've come to Nottingham Castle once too often!” (no, sorry, wrong period, but you get the idea). To and fro they stamped and slashed, Akbar gnashing desperately, for his constitution, undermined by dancing girls and rahat lokum, to say nothing of the crunching low tackle from Vanity, was no match for the finely-tuned agility and perfect timing of his clean-living opponent.


How the States Got Their Shapes

Mark Stein

Yup. That's pretty much what the book is about.

Each state. How it “got” its shape.

If you are a big fan of the Nootka Convention, or were just curious in general, you may find this fascinating. If you were looking for a riveting read, you might want to pass it up.

There were some really neat facts in the book—one is that Ellis Island is in New York, but made with dirt and fill dredged from New Jersey…so it actually belongs to both states. But, overall it was pretty dry with only a few instances of humorous anecdotes.

The following year, when Idaho proposed dividing its territory, the residents east of the mountains chose Judge Edgerton to represent them in the creation of what became Montana. Not only was he a former congressman, he was personally acquainted with President Abraham Lincoln. Edgerton went to Washington with $2,000 in gold packed away. Somehow, he derailed Idaho's proposed Continental Divide boundary, pushing the line back to the crest of the Bitterroot Mountains. Thus, Idaho's eastern border is, in part, an enduring monument to the fact that a single person can change the course of history. But the person has to know how to pack.


These Were Not My Thing

The Brass Verdict

Michael Connelly

Mickey Haller (the Lincoln Lawyer) inherits a ton of cases from a former colleague that was murdered.

Harry Bosch is assigned the murder case.

I was hoping for another great book from Connelly but was a little dissapointed. I envisioned two different stories in one; Haller trying the case and all that is involved with that, and Bosch investigating the crime.

Instead it was mainly a story about Haller with occasional appearances from Bosch.

The book was flat for the first three quarters but the action picked up around page 400 or so. Not worth the price of the book, but Connelly fans may want to check it out of the library.

And what the hell is up with the new paperback formats that publishers are using? The book I bought has the regular page width of a paperback but is about and inch and a half higher than normal. Is this the new look of the mass market paperback?

They bump up the size of the font, make the book taller, and charge you 5 extra bucks for it. That's pleather.


Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

Dava Sobel

A little bit of a letdown. I totally enjoyed The Planets and thought this would wow me as well.

Sobel tells the story of English clockmaker John Harrison. A man who, with no formal education or apprenticeship to any watchmaker, constructs “a series of virtually friction-free clocks that require no lubrication and no cleaning and that kept their moving parts perfectly balanced in relation to one another” in an attempt to solve the problem that has been vexing travelers for centuries—how to accurately and easily determine your longitude.

It was interesting, but I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone.

I really started to enjoy it near the end, but the beginning and middle parts just kind of sat there.

In these late-night tests, the Harrisons' clocks never erred more than a single second in a whole month. In comparison, the very first finest quality watches being produced anywhere in the world at that time drifted off by about one minute every day. The only thing more remarkable than the Harrison clocks' extraordinary accuracy was the fact that such unprecedented precision had been achieved by a couple of country bumpkins working independently—and not by one of the masters such as Thomas Tompion or George Graham, who commanded expensive materials and experienced machinists in the clock centers of cosmopolitan London.


Dear American Airlines

Jonathan Miles

From the inside front cover: “Bennie Ford, a fifty-three-year-old failed poet turned translator, is traveling to his estranged daughter's wedding when his flight is canceled. Stuck with thousands of fuming passengers in the purgatory of O'Hare International Airport, he watches the clock tick and realizes that he will miss the ceremony. Frustrated, irate, and helpless, Bennie does the only thing he can: he starts to write a letter.”

And the book is just that—one long letter that starts off with “Dear American Airlines, My name is Benjamin R. Ford and I am writing to request a refund in the amount of $392.68…” and ends with what I call the non-ending, kind of like The Lady, or the Tiger. Bennie makes a decision about his life (after recounting his troubles with marriage, jobs, and alcohol) but you never really find out what happens when he finally makes it to his destination.

It's definitely a different type of book than I thought it would be, at times humorous, at times incredibly sad. Check out all the reviews on Amazon to decide whether you would want to check this out from the library (I definitely wouldn't buy it).


Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book For Smart People

Ken Watanabe

Boring.

Sorry Ken, but I didn't enjoy it.

This book apparently started out as a simple guide to teach Japanese schoolchildren critical thinking skills, but became a best seller as different companies adopted it and asked their employees to read it.

Since I was bored, I will not be able to solve problems. Because I stopped reading it about three quarters of the way through.