MarysLibrary

H L Mencken on Government

All government, of course, is against liberty. 
            H L Mencken

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More Books I Read in 2011

A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd.

This book was one of the Time Magazine Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2011 and a Publisher's Weekly's Best Nonfiction Title for 2011. I'm not sure why. The book was interesting but it didn't have the spark to light my biblio-fire. Here's what the publisher says:

 A Book of Secrets is a treasure trove of hidden lives, uncelebrated achievements, and family mysteries. With grace and tender imagination, Holroyd brings a company of unknown women into the light. From Alice Keppel, the mistress of both the second Lord Grimthorpe and the Prince of Wales; to Eve Fairfax, a muse of Auguste Rodin; to the novelist Violet Trefusis, the lover of Vita Sackville-West—these women are always on the periphery of the respectable world.

2011  No 188

Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and Lessons for Global Power by Niall Ferguson. I thought it was brilliant. Here's what Library Journal had to say:

First published in England last year (with the shorter subtitle How Britain Made the Modern World), this is intended as a cautionary tale for the United States. In this sweeping narrative, British historian Ferguson (economic history, NYU; The Pity of War) eloquently addresses the origin, scope, and nature of the British Empire. He confronts the negative aspects of the empire-suppression of native populations, involvement in the slave trade-but also examines the idealistic mission of the British and offers valuable insight into the expansion of the empire in India and Africa. Ferguson effectively weaves economic analysis into his history, presents fresh observations on the American War of Independence, and charts the empire's decline. He gives the British high marks for spreading the concept of "liberal capitalism" and democracy throughout the world while acknowledging its failure "to live up to its own ideal of individual liberty."

2011  No 189

The House of Windsor by Antonia Fraser and Andrew Roberts. From the publisher:

The House of Windsor has undergone profound changes since its inception in 1917. Their tenure has seen two world wars, an abdication, and undreamed-of social change, but still the monarchy prevails. Andrew Roberts traces their history to the tragic death of the Princess of Wales and its aftermath.

2011  No 190

 

The Pre-War Protests of George Orwell

Facing Unpleasant Facts, 1937-1939 by George Orwell. This volume of The Complete Works of George Orwell, which is edited by Peter Davison, includes his letters, journals, essays, book reviews, and two timelines of news leading up to the war in Spain and World War II.

Orwell was alert and observant and when commenting on politics and as fair as any writer I've encountered. He was a dedicated socialist and was vehemently anti-war after his return from fighting in Spain. He escaped from that country only steps ahead of the Stalinists who arrested most of his friends and fellow-soldiers. It was this experience that changed his outlook and made him a convinced anti-Communist and eventually led him to write Animal Farm and 1984.

Orwell was in Spain from January to June 1937, returning to England to escape the purge in Barcelona and to recover from a wound he suffered at the front. He was shot through the neck; the bullet managed to clip one of his vocal chords but did no other damage. Shortly after he returned he began hemorrhaging from what was first thought to be tuberculosis but then was diagnosed as bronchiectasis. He spent six months in a sanatorium and then was told by his doctors to go to southern France or North Africa for the winter. He and his wife went to Marrakech.

Orwell told his friends he was glad he was out of the country during the crisis of September 1939 when Chamberlain made his now infamous peace treaty with Hitler in Munich. He was until just before the war broke out in early September 1939, a pacifist, predicting if there was a war England would become a fascist country. His friends were therefore surprised, not to say shocked, when on 8 September, five days after the war began, he applied to the government for war work. His health being extremely fragile they did not take him up on this right away but eventually they found a way to use his talents. The next volume in this 20-volume collection is call, A Patriot After All.

Here is a quote from a piece about his experiences in Morocco that Orwell wrote for John Lehman's New Writing in December 1939. It's a bit long but it is quintessential Orwell - he is attentive to detail and brutally honest about himself:

Every afternoon a file of very old women passes down the road outside my house, each carrying a load of firewood. All of them are mummified with age and the sun, and all of them are tiny. It seems to be generally the case in primitive communities that the women, when they get beyond a certain age, shrink to the size of children. One day a poor old creature who could not have been more than four feet tall crept past me under a vast load of wood. I stopped her and put a five-sou piece (a little more than a farthing) into her hand. She answered with a shrill wail, almost a scream, which was partly gratitude but mainly surprise. I suppose that from her point of view, by taking any notice of her, I seemed almost to be violating a law of nature. She accepted her status as an old woman, that is to say as a beast of burden. When a family is travelling it is quite usual to see a father and a grown-up son riding ahead on donkeys, and an old woman following on foot, carrying the baggage.

But what is strange about these people is their invisibility. For several weeks, always at about the same time of day, the file of old women had hobbled past the house with their firewood, and though they had registered themselves on my eyeballs I cannot truly say that I had seen them. Firewood was passing - that was how I saw it. It was only that one day I happened to be walking behind them, and the curious up-and-down motion of a load of wood drew my attention to the human being underneath it. Then for the first time I noticed the poor old earth-coloured bodies, bodies reduced to bones and leathery skin, bent double under the crushing weight. Yet I suppose I had not been five minutes on Moroccan soil before I noticed the overloading of the donkeys and was infuriated by it. There is no question that the donkeys are damnably treated. The Moroccan donkey is hardly bigger than a St Bernard dog, it carries a load which in the British Army would be considered too much for a fifteen-hands mule, and very often its pack-saddle is not taken off its back for weeks together. But what is peculiarly pitiful is that it is the most willing creature on earth, it follows its master like a dog and does not need either bridle or halter. After a dozen years of devoted work it suddenly drops dead, whereupon its master tips it into the ditch and the village dogs have torn its guts out before it is cold.

This kind of thing makes one's blood boil, whereas - on the whole - the plight of the human beings does not. I am not commenting, merely pointing to a fact. People with brown skins are next door to invisible. Anyone can be sorry for the donkey with its galled back, but it is generally owing to some kind of accident if one even notices the old woman under her load of sticks.

 2012  No 27

The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan

Sherlock Holmes stories and novels by Conan Doyle are among those "classics" that one never wearies of re-reading. But once a year is enough. What are we Sherlockians to do with the other 50 weeks of the year?

We read pastiches, and among the most charming of those is a series of children's books by Nancy Springer starring Sherlock and Mycroft's much younger sister, Enola. Particularly clever is the donee, as Henry James would put it (if he were a Holmes fan - I wonder if he read Conan Doyle.) The problem of the books is the attempt to send Enola to a finishing school at the age of 14 and her determination to avoid it. Mycroft, who is Enola's guardian in the absence of her mother who has run away in mysterious circumstances, is particularly emphatic that the girl has to be given an education that will make her more attractive in the marriage market. Sherlock goes along with him.

So Enola also runs away and how she supports herself, her attempts to find her mother, the codes (the language of flowers, fan signals, cyphers) her mother has taught her, and her many disguises contribute to her ability to elude her brothers.

In The Case of the Peculiar Pink Fan Enola is doing some routine detective work (finding a lost lap dog, locating a misplaced ruby, returning an amputee's leg bone) when she encounters Lady Cecily Alistair, a former client, in London's new public rest room for ladies. Using her fan, Lady Cecily alerts Enola to her desperate situation. She is being held captive and is about to be forced to marry against her will.

The game is afoot, and Enola as usual can be counted on to figure out who is responsible for these nefarious doings and to work out a way of saving her friend. The fast-moving story is delightful, moving us quickly from an attack by a mastiff, a flock of scruffy orphans, an encounter with her guardian and another with Sherlock, and a particularly clever rescue just in the nick of time.

This is the fourth in the Enola Holmes series and I've been warned that there are only two more books to come before the series ends.

2012  No 26

Dean Davis photographs the Palouse Hills

Dean Davis is a local Spokane photographer who does mostly commercial photography. But once in a while he can't resist taking pictures of old buildings, abstract designs made by shadows, and of course landscape, like this photo of the Palouse. You can see more of this particular shoot and sign up to get Davis' Shot of the Week here.

Betrayal of Trust

Betrayal of Trustby Susan Hill. This latest Simon Serrallier mystery starts with a violent rainstorm, resulting local flooding, and the uncovering of a skeleton. Chief Superintendent Serrallier hopes it will turn out to be a Roman soldier, but it's not. It's the remains of a teenager who disappeared 15 years before and this discovery reopens a cold case. A chief superintendent doesn't usually take on such a case but Serrallier is particularly interested and hopes to be able to solve the crime, especially when a second skeleton is unearthed nearby.

One of the things I like about the Serrallier books is the integration of Simon's work as a policeman and his work as an artist with his sister, Cat's, work as a doctor and her family life without her husband. Cat has become increasingly interested in hospice care and cut back on her office hours in order to spend more time at the local hospice.

But there are budget cuts everywhere and that is producing problems for everyone in our story. Serrallier has a single assistant in his "team" and Cat is faced with the closure of a wing of the hospice. The father of the missing girl whose skeleton has now been found is the chair of the hospice committee and he and Cat identify a doctor who is opening a small facility for Alzheimer's care as a possible fund raiser.

Meanwhile we are following a woman who has been diagnosed by Cat with motor neurone, the generic term for conditions such as ALS. She wants to commit suicide before her condition deteriorates to the point where she can do nothing, but the various alternatives are not attractive. Her plight is treated with a great deal of sympathy in the book. The opposition to assisted suicide is voiced well and vehemently by Cat.

A computer imaging of the skull of the second set of bones, a music teacher who is facing the problems of a partner with dementia, and the unearthing of a witness to the disappearance of one of the victims 15 years before lead Serrallierto a sad and inconclusive solution to his cold case.

2012  No  25

Dead End in Norvelt

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos. Children's books have always been didactic, since books expressly for children surfaced in the 17th century. They have been used to teach children to read and to entertain them and the temptation to teach lessons has often been irresistable. Fairy tales, Hans Brinker, Heidi, Uncle Remus, Pinocchio, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Rabbit - all reinforce the lessons adults want children to learn. Unselfishness, generosity, religion, truthfulness, obedience, and there's no place like home. And these are only the famous books. Many others taught these virtues as well as courage, responsibility, self-reliance, respect for adults, and patriotism.

 Today's children's books are no different, but now they teach sensitivity to racial minorities and to the disabled, suspicion of authority, multiculturalism, and in the case of this book, which was given this year's Newbery, anti-imperialism, suport for working people who "always share the same history of being kicked around by the rich," socialism, reliance on government, shame for America's history, and worship of Eleanor Roosevelt and by extension the Democratic party.

I'm not making that up. Read the book.

2012  No 24

The Body in the Transept

The Body in the Transept by Jeanne M Dams. I found The Body in the Transept . . . no, let me rephrase that, I found Jeanne M Dams' mystery through a useful service the Spokane Public Library provides through their catalog (see yesterday's post.) I had not heard of Dams, though she has been writing since the mid-90s. And I'm glad to hear of her now as this, her first Dorothy Martin mystery, is quite good.

Dorothy is an American, a widow who has moved to a cathedral town in England. She knows a handful of people from the days when she accompanied her husband as he did research at the local red brick university. But now she feels a bit isolated, is not really making friends, and is still grieving for her beloved husband.

After midnight services at the cathedral a man who was seated next to her during the service offers to walk her home and while he is off to find her coat and scarf she stumbles over a corpse, in the north transept. The man turns out to be Chief Constable Alan Nesbitt, a widower.

At first Dorothy talks to her acquaintances about the murder - it of course turns out to be a murder. But she soon finds the likely suspects are among her few acquaintances in town and she begins to dig deeper into the case in hopes of finding that these people have alibis or that their motives are weak.

Dorothy Martin has a good deal of charm and is clever and discerning. As she decides to stay in England at the end of the book we readers feel confident that she is beginning to make friends in her new home. Let's hope not too many of them are killed off in the forthcoming books in this series.

2012  No 23

The Increasingly Useful Library Catalog

Spokane Public Library South Hill Branch

The Spokane Public Library, (and perhaps your library also), provides more services all the time. The ones I find particularly useful are these:

• Refereed reviews from Publisher's Weekly, School Library Journal, Library Journal Review and others.
• Fiction & Biography, which lists the book's characters, genre, topics, setting, and awards
• Goodreads reader reviews
• NoveList recommendations for other books in the series
• NoveList recommendations for other, similar books
• NoveList recommendations for other, similar authors
• NovelList's list of awards the book has won
• NextReads' newsletter of similar books
• A summary of the novel
• A link to the library's holdings of that author

And there are more. I've used various of these tools to find new writers and other books that fit into categories I particularly like or need. Here's one recommendation:

"If you enjoy 'The body in the transept,' you may also enjoy 'The burglar on the prowl.' Both are character-driven and witty Cozy mystery stories, Gentle Reads, and mystery stories about Murder investigation."

I particularly like that "Gentle Reads" category, which assures me there will not be small children and animals slaughtered in hecatombs and will probably spare me a car chase at the end of the book. Sometimes one needs a Gentle Read.

You, too, can harvest all this information by searching the Spokane Library catalog. You need not have a library card unless you want to borrow a book. And of course Spokane is not alone. My old library system, Virginia's Fairfax County Library has a catalog also run by SirsiSynix and offering many of the same goodies. Also useful are the Boston Public Library, Seattle Public Library, and for that matter, the Manchester (England) Public Library.

Is Jeffrey MacDonald Guilty?

Fatal Vision by Joe McGinniss. Jeffrey MacDonald used to be a household word in the US in the 1970s. He was an MD, an army captain whose wife and two children were murdered. He was in the house when the murders took place and he had minor injuries whereas the attacks on the others were brutal. This is about all that everybody involved can agree on.

MacDonald claimed three hippies did the murder; the initial US Army investigation concluded that MacDonald had killed his own family. He was found not guilty in an army hearing but after an extensive civilian investigation he was found guilty. He's been in and out of jail since then, mostly in since he lost his last appeal. But the controversy has not gone away.

McGinnis' book has been just as controversial. He befriended MacDonald and his team of supporters and lawyers and led everyone to believe he was convinced MacDonald was not guilty. Indeed, he probably did think so until late in the appeal when he changed his mind. Meanwhile he had gathered an enormous amount of information with the help of the team. The issue of journalistic ethics was widely discussed.

MacDonald is probably guilty, but there is a window of doubt through which one might glimpse innocence. In any case, the book is very well written and the whole case is fascinating even four decades later.

2011  No 185

The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm. Janet Malcolm's book about the MacDonald murders is an examination of the ethical issues of journalists lying to subjects to get them to share information they otherwise would not want the journalist to know. She sees the conduct of Joe McGinniss as he was writing his book about the case, Fatal Vision, as unethical.

2011  No 186

 

 

 

Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders by Jerry Allen Potter and Fred Bost. From the book jacket: ...a well-documented argument for the other side of the Jeffrey MacDonald case--an argument that the prosecution mishandled key crime-scene evidence, withheld potentially exculpatory material, and even discounted confessions from other suspects. Whether you change your mind about MacDonald's role in the murder of his family, you will learn much about the case that puts it in a new light. For example, the army narrowed in on MacDonald as their prime suspect very early in the investigation, and discouraged the FBI from developing alternate theories. And the judge in the case, Franklin Dupree Jr., appeared to have been biased in favor of the prosecution. Janet Malcolm, the New Yorker writer who wrote The Journalist and the Murderer (about MacDonald's relationship with McGinniss), called this book "quietly convincing."

2011  No 187