Recent Reading

Fiction

After Lonesome Dove last year, the finest novel I've read in a while, recent fiction reading pales in comparison. 

A Murder in Springtime by Martin Walker, is the 19th in his series about Bruno, Chief of Police, in the Vezere Valley of Dordogne, our favorite spot in France.  It continues the decline in quality of his more recent work with poor plotting, a lot of lecturing, and lazy characterizations.  As much as I enjoy the region, that's it for me - no more Bruno. 

Philip Kerr has a series about Bernie Guenther, a Berlin police detective during the Third Reich.  Bernie is opposed to the Nazis but keeps getting roped into situations that require him to cooperate to some extent, while simultaneously trying to expose them.  A Man Without Breathe, the second Bernie book I've read, is set around the 1943 discovery by the Germans of Stalin's Katyn massacre of thousands of captured Polish officers.  While the situation is intriguing and I keep wanting to like these books, I don't think they are well written or plotted.

In Los Angeles, Michael Connelly is still trying to find a lead character as compelling as Harry Bosch, who has aged out.  Ironwood, set on Catalina Island, is his latest attempt.  A good, but not compelling read.  At this point, I prefer Robert Crais' series with Joe Pike and Elvis Cole when it comes to LA crime stories.

I am looking forward to the release of Robert Harris' next historical novel in August which is about Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa.

A couple of weeks ago Mrs THC and I watched the Lonesome Dove miniseries.  While it could never match the novel it was still quite the experience; enjoyable, funny, moving.  Tommy Lee Jones is excellent while Robert Duvall is just astonishing. Followed the book very closely, taking much of the dialogue directly.  The only significant deviation was the final scene. I can understand why the change was made as the novel ends on an ambiguous and abrupt note, which I preferred but it would not work on TV. 

Non-Fiction 

The first three attempts to climb Mount Everest in 1921, 1922, and 1924 are the subject of Wade Davis in Into The Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.  All were British expeditions.  At the time Everest was inaccessible via Nepal, so the three British led expeditions, all went from Sikkim into Tibet, which at the time was an independent country, to approach the mountain from the north.  Most of the climbers were World War One veterans, most of whom were fully immersed in the horrors of that conflict, and Davis does an excellent job tying their experiences into the attitudes they brought to the expeditions.

The expeditions were permitted by the Dalai Lama and supported by Tibetan porters and Sherpas and Davis spends considerable time explaining their culture and religious beliefs. The first expedition traveled hundreds of miles and had to find out how to get to Everest in a way that would allow for a climb to be attempted.  Given the lack of equipment and clothing that is common today for climbing, along with the lack of oxygen, it is surprising so much was accomplished on that first try. The second expedition saw six Tibetan porters die in an avalanche, while the third climaxed with the disappearance of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine near the peak of Everest. Mallory's body was found in 1999 while part of Irvine's was discovered in 2021.  An incredible tale, well told.

The tale of Coronado's expedition (1540-42) into what is now the American Southwest and Great Plains is the subject of The Lost Cities of El Norte by Peter Stark.  While I've read other accounts of this exploration, this is the best, in part due to Stark being a fine writer.

I read Julian Jackson's biography of Charles De Gaulle in 2024 and just finished France on Trial, his account of the trial of Marshal Petain in 1945 at which the 89 year old head of the Vichy Regime was convicted of high treason and conspiracy to overthrow the Republic and sentenced to death, a sentence commuted by De Gaulle. Jackson explores the complex factors behind the trial as well as the day to day details. Interesting probably to a very limited audience.

The Witches by Stacy Schiff covers what is known as the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which resulted in the hanging of 19 convicted witches, but which actually grew to engulf more than twenty Massachusetts communities with more than 700 people accused in those months.  My interest was triggered by the recent discovery that Mrs THC is not only descended from John and Priscilla Alden of the Mayflower voyagers but from individuals who were accused of being witches in 1692 as well as others who were accusers.  Before reading Schiff's book I only knew about the events of 1692 at a very general level.  She does a good job laying out how the hysteria erupted and grew and I had no idea of the extent to which it infected the colony.

Palestine 1936 by Oren Kessler and Anonymous Soldiers: The Struggle for Israel 1917-47 by Bruce Hoffman deal with aspects of the struggle over the fate of the Palestinian Mandate held by Britain from 1922 to 1948.  Although there were outbreaks of Arab violence against Jews in 1921 and 1929, it was only with the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 that the British became seriously entangled in the disputes over the Mandate.  The Arab Revolt, the subject of Kessler's even-handed account, while initially directed toward Jews eventually focused on the British, triggering massive crackdowns and reprisals.  Though the revolt was eventually crushed it had longer consequences, prompting the British to propose a partition of the Mandate, a plan reluctantly accepted by the Jews and rejected by the Arabs, and, in an attempt to pacify the Arabs, for the British to radically restrict the number of Jewish immigrants it would allow into Palestine, at a time when many European Jews were trying to flee Hitler.

Hoffman writes of the Arab resistance to the Jews and even more so, on the eventual emergence of Jewish groups, primarily Irgun and Lehi, which actively sought retaliation against Arabs, including at times innocent civilians, and against the British military.  He explores the sometimes murky connections between the Irgun (which from the early 1940s on was led by Menachem Begin, who proved to be a brilliant strategist) and the Haganah, mainline Jewish military organization, in which they sometimes cooperated and sometimes fought each other.  Overall Hoffman judges Irgun's approach, under the direction of Menachem Begin, who proved to be a brilliant strategist, to be the critical element in getting Britain to surrender its Mandate.  Palestine 1936 was very good but I found Anonymous Soldiers to be particularly informative.

An Abundance of Caution by David Zweig was an infuriating read.  Not that it was a bad book.  In fact, I highly recommend it.  It is a detailed, well-researched, and accurate account of the decisions to close schools and keep them closed during Covid.  Zweig lived in suburban New York with his young children and grew increasing frustrated with the actions of authorities at the local, state, and federal level, prompting him to dive into the available data.  What is infuriating about the book is reading how available information was repeatedly ignored by American authorities, even though by the spring of 2020 European data showed school posed no greater risk than staying at home.  I'd been aware of some of the research Zweig references but he pulled together a lot of additional information I'd not been familiar with.  What America did with children and Covid is a disgrace and resulted in both short and long-term damage.  I will definitely write a longer account on this topic.