The Silent Death by Volker Kutscher

4 Stars

"Why shouldn't the Commies and the Nazis bash each other's heads in?" one of them asked. "It would save us a lot of work."

The Silent Death is the second in the Gereon Rath series set during the Interwar Period in Berlin. The period markers between the World Wars are really well done, integrated into the storyline perfectly. 1930 and talkies are taking over the cinema leaving behind one art form for another. The conflict, the change in equipment, and shooting strategies are all touched upon throughout as Rath follows up on a homicide.

Rath has the ambition and personality to create waves and ruffle feathers. His transfer from Vice to Homicide hasn't changed that; he's still rubbing colleagues the wrong way and aggravating his boss, DCI Böhm. Rath gets himself into hot water multiple times, yet manages to find a way to flip the tables. Question is, when will his luck run out?

This is definitely a new favorite series, so I'm glad to see that Goldstein was just released in English (British) translation.

Equoid (Laundry Files, #2.9) by Charles Stross

3 Stars

Bob gets mucky in this one. The most Lovecraftian work I've read by Stross. To be fair, I've only read three short works and one full length novel, but this wins hands down. I've visited Sussex, it seemed like such a nice place, not here. Bucolic charms are twisted into a rather gruesome tale of grotesque glamour.

Do not trust unicorns. If you wish to remain a devotee of the sparkly joyous version of the species, do not read this. Yikes.

The League of Regrettable Sidekicks: Heroic Helpers from Comic Book History! by Jon Morris

3.5 Stars

A quirky collection of odd bits lurking in comic book history.

Zeitgeist abounds with Super-Hip from The Adventures of Bob Hope whose weakness is Lawrence Welk music. Not sure how poor Frobisher from Doctor Who got in here; doesn't seem right. The Doctor's companion can be anything. The oddity of penguin form selection and unexplained yet hinted at sad backstory seems more tragic than regrettable. Just straight up winner for WTF goes to Elf with a Gun from The Defenders, a randomly appearing psycho who kills people and disappears, with no connection to the ongoing plot line of that issue.

There's the unexpectedly hilarious Agatha Detective Agency who partners up with Captain Future. Somehow, Captain Future's secret identity Dr. Andy Bryant gets hooked into helping his girlfriend's aunt by following a case into a Turkish Bath. The things you do for love.

Nameless in Metal Men epitomizes a big problem with women in comic books, or females. Nameless was built by Tin, a member of Metal Men who falls in love with her. Relationship develops, trauma ensues, and in the end she sacrifices herself to save them.

Then there's instances of the not quite thought through to the end before introducing the sidekick, like Comet the Super-Horse who's reincarnated from an ancient Greek centaur and can turn into a human when a comet passes through the solar system. Not a bad idea, right? Until masquerading as bronco rider Bill Starr he dates Supergirl. Hmm...yeah, Supergirl's relationship with Bill becomes problematic when he turns back into Comet. You can love your horse, but you can't love your horse.

This is one of those fun books to leaf through. I plan on giving it as a present because 1) snort-worthy, 2) interesting compilation of just odd lots.

Glasshouse by Charles Stross

3.5 Stars

I can be very creative when comes time to get violent.

Hmm... bit of a sleeper. Starts off with the gorgeous, wild panorama of unbridled awesome futuristic visions and then veers wildly into archaic visions--visions much more like now. Don't be fooled, it's just lulling you into complacency. Stay alert, and read on.

Leans towards geeky tech speak, the fact that I actually followed along means I've been infected. It's hard for me to judge how geeky, I spend most of my time with people who have advanced degrees in engineering and computer science, and trying to explain that while I'm really interested in this work they've been doing, that no, I don't have the horses to follow their tensor mathematics. All of this made sense to me, but not sure if that's everyone's takeaway.

I also wonder if dudes read this and go, that's interesting, and chicks go, let me out--let me out!

Commentary of society and technology. Reward mechanisms of societies, how states use power to control, kind of Marxy. Examination of gender roles, sexuality, and free agency. IF all our dreams of technology were to come true, and there were no longer enforced mortality or scarcity would we be better? Would we? Or would we still be kicking the same problems down the road? Different can, different street.

[A]n island of thinking jelly trapped in a bony carapace endless milliseconds away from its lovers, forced to squeeze every meaning through a low-bandwidth speech channel.

3.5 / 4 stars: Didn't write like I was an idiot, decent execution, but nothing I haven't seen before. Nicely wrapped though and I laughed, usually at all the inappropriate times, so keep that in mind when considering my rating.

The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente

4 Stars

Flickering through recycled realities, losing myself in myself, over and over.

The Refrigerator Monologues is a mashup of The Vagina Monologues and comic book history. Valente uses some pretty well known female comic book characters and riffs off them. Each character's place in Deadtown is introduced and then she shares her origin story and how she got "refrigerated", written out.

Trouble is, my story is his story. The story of Kid Mercury crowds out everything else, like Christmas landing on the shops in August while Halloween tries to get a bat in edgewise.

It's funny, and a great rage read that makes you laugh even though some of it makes you want to cry at the same time. If you can't laugh it's just sad. Right?

It always stings when there's this whole story going on and you're really just a B-plot walk-on who only got a look at three pages of the script. 

I like an outraged political statement that's thirty years out of date. If they'd had one that said Warren G. Harding Is the Anti-Christ, I'd have grabbed that one, too. Occupy Yesterday, baby!  

I called him my manic pixie fucktoy.

Yeah, we've all pick up toys and realized we should have left them on the shelf. Plenty of reasons to throw him back, let someone else have that "catch".

But the longer I'm dead, the more I think the universe is a big blackboard with the rules scrawled all over it in chalk and stardust and it's just that the damn thing is flipped over and turned away from us so we can't see anything but the eraser, which is death, hitting the floor. Write out your life one thousand times, kid, or you'll have to come back and finish tomorrow.

Valente's knowledge of ancient Greeks is evident throughout the story, but I guess I just really love how she describes the Hell Hath Club and Deadtown because they sound exactly like shades. The dead are jealous of the living for precisely this reason:

Everthing tastes a little thin, a little slight. It's more like we were buried with the memory or the idea of hunger, and now it's stuck to us like old toilet paper.

Also, calls Odysseus a dick--knew I loved this writer for a reason. Yes, if you follow my reviews every time he appears I will totally call him out for the liar and thief he was--he's not a hero; he's an asshole.

The underworld's come a long way since Helen and Medea and Iphigenia and Clytemnestra painted the town black--the original Hell Hath Club.

As women we keep saying that, but when do we get to the end of road? Why aren't we there, yet? Anyway, highly recommend this book if you can comprehend the amount of suppressed frustration and rage women carry around with them or if you do.

Drawing Words and Writing Pictures by Jessica Abel

5 Stars

This is actually incredibly insightful with short lesson/information section followed by exercises for both groups and individuals without critique/collaborative feedback partners. If you don't have the resources or opportunity to take an art class then this is a fantastic substitute. It addresses everything an interested comic book artist could want from materials to layout to narrative to technique. I am legit impressed. Granted this isn't my particular cup of art, hence why I'm reading it--can't help it, I'm naturally curious. I would buy this for an emerging drawing artist as a resource.

Comet the Super-Horse

Not difficult to see why this plot line died quickly. Supergirl can love her horse; she can't love her horse. The backstory of Comet being a reincarnated centaur from ancient Greece--pure gold. Hard to see how this one will be beat for Best Regret.

Captain Future Takes One in the Turkish Bath

This is the opener for The League of Regrettable Sidekicks.

Down on the Farm (Laundry Files, #2.5) by Charles Stross

3 Stars

In usual backwards style, I saw this cover while perusing my library and decided to read it even though I've never read anything by this author. Going in blind, and it was entertaining in its 'low man on the totem pole' gets stuck with the job no one wants and discovers some rather disturbing things even for his odd line of work. Geeky with Lovecraftian elements and terrifying Nurse Ratchet Daleks.

Sold me on reading the series, now. Good job, short story.

Love that cover. Love it.

Trick or Treat

Overtime (Laundry Files, #3.5) by Charles Stross

3.5 Stars

I was going to save this for Christmas, but since I have no self control...Done!

Oh my, Bob. This is a funny take on holiday traditions from childhood to office. 

Whoever sat on the copier lid that time did not have buttocks, hairy or otherwise--or any other mammalian features for that matter. What I'm holding looks to be the business end of a giant cockroach.

Again, a certain Lovecraftian charm/terror, whatever you want to call it. Only thing missing were the Christmas crackers.

The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien

4 Stars

I finished this as the grey light of morning waned and gold pierced through the fog. The Fall of Gondolin tells of the downfall of last enclave of Noldoli, Deep Elves, who escaped Melko after the Battle of Unnubmered Tears. Christopher Tolkien has taken on the monumental task of trying to piece together the fragments of a multitude of versions pertaining to Gondolin and Tuor, hero who's line will yield both Elrond of Rivendell and Elros, the King of Númenor.

Beside the insight into the creation process of Tolkien, I really enjoyed The Fall of Gondolin more than Beren and Lúthien because of Ulmo's major role. As God of Water we get many descriptions, those along the sea I loved most and I think anyone who has ever heard the call whispered upon the waves understands this:

Eärendel is born, having the beauty and light and wisdom of the Elfinesse, the hardihood and strength of Men, and the longing for the sea that captured Tuor and held him for ever when Ylmir spoke to him in Land of the Willows.

I think that if you are not heavily invested into the mythos and history of Middle-Earth, then this is not a book I recommend. While the weaving of the versions, observing the changes between them and how they evolved, and what was cut and what was not is fascinating, if one does not have at least a moderate understanding then it will be needlessly complex. This doesn't mean that C. Tolkien does a bad job, but rather it circles back again and again and if one doesn't like to see how sausage is made then best to just read the first version and call it quits.

J.R.R. Tolkien did not want to publish The Hobbit's sequel, Lord of the Rings without publishing The Silmarillion, he intended it to be the Saga of the Jewels and the Ring, but postwar Britain being what it was in the fifties with shortages and rationing that was not practical. He held out, but eventually, he gave into the publisher: "Years are becoming precious. And retirement (not far off) will, as far as I can see, not bring leisure but a poverty that will necessitate scraping a living by 'examining' and suchlike tasks."

I feel a compulsion to read the Silmarillion and reread the Lord of the Rings again in order, which is rather frightening because that should be close to a million words--and there are so many things I haven't read. But, I feel like I've done this all wrong and I don't like it one bit and the only way to right it is to reweave the stories as they should have been in my mind. *sigh*

Seriously, there's indications that Legolas unless it is a different Legolas is elder to Elrond. Legolas retreats with Elrond's father, Eärendel, as a babe from Gondolin.

A Story Within a Book

There's a different space that can be found inside of shared books. Whether it's a library book or one picked up used, there are often echoes of the people who have read it before you. This can be interesting, a conversation across time and space. Or, it can be wildly distracting if someone has gone wild with a highlighter. And then, there's the instance where you find a whole different narrative, a story within a book.

That's what this post is about. A narrative within a library book. The book is Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul, copyright 1965. Also critical is that this library book is part of Los Angeles County Public Library and Compton Library collection. Why that is useful information will become obvious.

Regardless, while I'm not a proponent of defacing library books this feels like a message in a bottle. A voice speaking out whether or not anyone is listening, but no doubt, hoping.

 

Reading through the comments, it appears that they were made in the mid eighties. I am not critiquing the comments or the book, but merely sharing this message in a bottle.

In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World by C.J. Moore

3.5 Stars

This is one of those little books of curiosities. A lingual wunderkammer, an armchair traveler's delight. Short and easy breezy fun to pick through, and a perfect selection for times of constant interruption. Arranged geographically for the most part except for a section that just pulls out ancient languages. I think the advantage in this is brevity that avoids making it seem like reading a dictionary--which I totally did as a child.

Basque akelarre, 'the meadow of the male goat' or a nighttime gathering of a coven of witches.

German, way too many to choose from with their ingenious compound words, but drachenfutter, offering of errant husbands, literally dragon fodder.

Czech litost, "a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery".

Swedish bejaka, seems a more difficult one to grasp, but it seems to be along the lines of an optimism, acceptance of life and its vicissitudes.

Norwegian nidstang, a runic cursing pole used for vengeance. Hmmm... yes, like voodoo dolls, but instead of weaving the cursing in a totem you get to carve it deep. This is appealing, unfortunately, I live in less arboreal clime. Seems to be a variation of disturbing the earth spirits, like Icelandic's alfreka.

Tshiluba (Rep. of Congo) ilunga, "describes a person who will forgive any transgression a first time and then tolerate it for a second, but never for a third time".

Chinese gagung, "bare sticks" or "bare branches" are males who won't marry because of the one-child policy and gender imbalance result.

Japanes yokomeshi, "meal eaten sideways" or the stress of speaking foreign Western language with its horizontal layout.

Gaelic sian, haunting music heard from fairy hills, soft, sorrowful and enchanting.

Tierra Del Fuego mamihlapinatapei, shared look in a private unspoken moment, romantic, funny, or understanding.

Rating this seems odd. I liked the layout, it worked well. Some languages there were few words that I wasn't familiar with; Moore selected terms that have been incorporated into English and so those entries seemed weak by comparison.

The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke

3 Stars

As part of my Kubrick Oktoberfest, I read The Sentinel to compare it to 2001: A Space Odyssey. And this is why short stories make the most satisfying movies; they give indelible frameworks from which the director/screenwriter/crew can embellish, provide a variation on a theme if you will. Clarke cowrote the screenplay with Kubrick. I prefer adaptations that are changelings and not mimics, and Kubrick did a brilliant montage from Clarke's inspiration.

The Sentinel is the discovery of an extraordinary object found on the lunar surface. It is the perfect opening for existential questions and Kubrick takes a fantastical tangent. I heartily agree with the most obvious difference, the change in the object's shape between the story and the movie, adroitly sidesteps hackneyed speculation and focuses the viewers' attention of where Kubrick wants you to look not irrelevancies.

Much shorter than I expected. I feel rating this might be unfair because I came to this after seeing the movie, which is a much more expansive narrative, but I admire the springboard that it provided.

Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History by Catharine Arnold

4 Stars

This is a chronological retracing of the Spanish flu progression 1917-1918. Depends heavily on witness and survivor stories from medical records to diaries. Arnold uses these accounts to give voice to it, to take it out of the medical jargon and relay the human effect. The pandemic swept up victims indiscriminately from the rich and famous: Gandhi, Lloyd George, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lillian Gish, who were all fortunate, to those who died without anyone to identify them listed in registries as Polish woman, girl.

In northern territories the frozen ground made burial impossible, so to keep them from predation they stacked them in cabins like corded wood, but '[s]ome corpses were wrapped in sheets and placed on rooftops, creating a vista of ghostly shrouds until they could be buried in the spring.'

'When their lungs collapsed, air was trapped beneath their skin. As we rolled the dead in winding sheets, their bodies crackled - an awful crackling noise which sounded like Rice Crispies [sic] when you pour milk over them.'

[S]ix-year-old John Delano [...] lived down the block from an undertaker, and he began to witness coffins piling up on the sidewalk outside the morgue. As the piles of the coffins rose, he and friends played on them, jumping from one to another: 'We thought - boy, this is great. It's like climbing the pyramids. Then one day I slipped and fell and broke my nose on one of the coffins. My mother was very upset. She said, didn't I realize there were people in those boxes? People who had died? I couldn't understand that. Why had all these people died?'

Egon Schiele's portrait of wife Edith as she lay dying.

He died a couple days after her.

[A] little boy who, feeling the pinch of hunger, went to ask the butcher for some meat. He then asked the butcher how to cook it. The butcher asked why his mother wouldn't be cooking it. The little boy replied that his parents had been asleep in bed for two days. The butcher accompanied the lad home to find that they were asleep permanently.

As might be expected, this had a profound effect on witnesses and survivors. Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel includes a vivid description of his brother's death. Katherine Anne Porter's short story Pale Horse, Pale Rider was inspired by her own near miss. 

Fast and deadly, the round of flu that swept through the autumn of 1918 killed people within the day of falling ill. I spent most of the time that I was reading imagining the consequences in today's numbers, but the real 1918 numbers were frightful enough; Persia was estimated to have lost 10% of its population. 

10%. TEN PERCENT. That's decimation.

If that were the US today that would 32.7 MILLION people.

This is powerful and terrifying to read. I thought Mozart's Requiem the perfect accompaniment, if morbid considering he died while writing it. If you want the human experience, then this is a good selection. 

The View From the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction by Neil Gaiman

4 Stars

An assortment of eulogies, book introductions, speeches, articles, interviews, and general ponderings on a great many things. Reading this is a way to understand Gaiman beyond his fiction. In the meager number of his works that I have explored, I've felt an underlying connection which I wasn't sure how precisely to interpret. My brain likes to file things in very specific ways, and it was as if it kept wandering from one aisle to the next trying to determine where to place Gaiman.

And then I read this book, and I knew.

Wandering through these thoughts, the long and short, I came to realize that we wonder about and appreciate very similar things. That's what was familiar and the thread being plucked as I tried to understand why I like Gaiman as much as I do with as little as I've read.

"Sometimes fiction is a way of coping with the poison of the world in way that lets us survive it." 

"Subject matter does not make genre." 

"The forms of tales that work survive: the others die and are forgotten." 

"Children are a relatively powerless minority, and, like all oppressed people, they know more about their oppressors than their oppressors know about them."

These all told me things that I aligned with, but perhaps since my grasp of fantasy literature is shallower I didn't understand until Gaiman spoke about music and film. Then, I knew. He wrote about his Sundance experience and his surprise and love for Kung Fu Hustle, a movie when I spotted it I made everyone important at the time watch because it was magical and unexpected, that we shared a connection. And the same when he mentioned Tori Amos.

Traveling still now: passing a sudden thunderstorm in the hills of New Mexico; then the stately California windmill fields and hills signal that the train is leaving real America and entering the world of imagination.

We do dream life into existence everyday between sundrops and landshakes. Surrealism is what makes California wonder-filled.

During his interview with Lou Reed there is the most perfect summation of being an artist.

Some people are forever in the Velvet Underground thing, or the Transformer thing, or the Rock N Roll Animal thing--someplace around there. They'd like it to still be that. But I was only passing through.

I think that if you love Gaiman, then you'll love the peeks inside. If you love art, you'll love how he talks about creation. Some of these are short and I skipped because I had no frame of reference for them, others I read anyway and enjoyed how Gaiman addressed the subject. Clearly, those that I knew, had an emotional investment, were the most satisfying to read.

Fig, Manchego, and Cracked Black Pepper Water Cracker

Tumbled upon this combination the other evening and it is an autumnal delight. Violette de Bordeaux fig, slice of aged Manchego atop a cracked black pepper water cracker. The sweet jammy taste of the fig combined with the smooth saltiness of the cheese and refreshing bite of pepper makes for divine hors d'oeuvres or after dinner cheese platter. Pair it with a nice pinot grigio. 

October is Kubrick Month

Stanley Kubrick is a genius. To celebrate October, I will be watching and comparing Kubrick's movies to their source materials. I start with three of Kubrick's most highly regarded works:

2001: A Space Odyssey, based on the short story The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke

The Shining, based on the novel by Stephen King

Barry Lyndon, based on the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray

If time allows, then I will be reviewing A Clockwork Orange. Just for viewing since Kubrick wrote the screenplays I'll also watch Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Full Metal Jacket. 

The Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodwiss

2.5 Stars

My rating remains unchanged after this reread. I first read it when I was approx. eleven years old. While I like the medieval period enormously, the Norman invasion and the shifting politics, I still have parts of the story that don't quite work for me.

Aislinn is the daughter, only child, of the Lord of Darkenwald when Norman invaders take over, killing her father, and raping her. Yes, this is an old school bodice ripper, so it is problematic in many ways by today's standards. You could have many discussions about consent: rape, forced submission, abuse of power, and even pleasure's complication in understanding that it does not denote consent.

I'm not going to dissect or complain about that in the review. I guess my main grievance with the story is the version of miscommunication, here. To be fair, the power imbalance of conqueror and conquered creates a whole slew of issues from loyalty to honesty to trust that hinder communication. Add in stoicism and past abuse and you have limited characters abilities to interact in a healthy manner. And this is why this book rates three stars for me and not lower.

There is an intrinsic difference between tattling or failing to resolve your own problems and safety and welfare. Aislinn, even after being told directly and indirectly, refuses or is unable to address issues with Wulfgar regarding not only her own personal well being, but Darkenwald's as well. Frankly, the first failure I get. The second, which is Aislinn's main motivation for remaining after the invasion, to care for the inhabitants is an enormous fail. She fails personally and as a leader, and all the small individual triumphs of her actions are overshadowed. Ugh.

Wulfgar, a bastard son, raised by others as was the custom in training young men has understandable and formidable emotional issues. He has no ability to interact beyond contracted male/female roles. He has the emotional age of maybe nine years old, and compounded by abuse and abandonment means he's raw and has to learn not only how to behave with Aislinn beyond sexual congress, which he is surprisingly good at for someone with little regard for females, but also understand his own feelings.

Hampered protagonists trying to fight their way to love from an inauspicious start. Fine. This might be a bit belabored, but it is realistic in timescale. The part that made it feel really slow was all the countryside wandering, I guess there needs to be something going on while Wulfgar and Aislinn are trying to figure things out. The mismanagement of risk assessments I suppose is what really didn't work for me. It allowed problems to fester and grow and become huge and potentially catastrophic.

The Song of Roland by Unknown

2 Stars

I am Oliver.

I'm a big fan of heroic literature, but The Song of Roland is not my favorite. Honestly, this is very much 'For the Glory of God', a crusader's epic poem. Not a great fit for me thematically, but I really wanted to have this piece of the puzzle slotted in for my understanding of heroic poetry. This is so different than The Illiad, The Odyssey, Táin Bó Cúailnge, Y Gododdin, and Beowulf.

Roland desired goal of martyrdom requires the sacrifice of tens of thousands of his men for NO REASON. I test as Field Marshall or Architect on the Myers-Briggs, to give some perspective of where I'm coming from reading this. Hence, I'm Oliver. Dutiful, yet pragmatic. It's not that I don't understand dying for a cause. If you don't know what you're willing to die for, then you don't have any idea how to live; it's stumbling around in the dark. That said, while I know why I'm willing to die, and even that which I would condemn others to death who have sworn like goals, this is moronic. Roland didn't need to be martyred to achieve victory; therefore, it was a phenomenal amount of resources squandered. Forget Roland. What about all the other men who followed him? To what purpose?

Even if you say death and awaiting paradise is far better than here and now, an early exit is the easy way out and not heroic.

Heck, I understand Tierris, Charlemagne's proxy against Pinabel to avenge Roland's death and condemn Guenes for his treachery. All that aside, this was very repetitive with never-ending descriptions of the next warrior to fall, golden hauberks and helms galore. Add on that Roland dies about 50% of the way through and then we get to go through round two made it a bit slow. Think Charge of the Light Brigade at 1/50 speed.

I think I had a very outdated version so forgive the oddities in spellings.

Rollant est proz e Oliver est sage / Roland’s a hero, and Oliver is wise

It did inspire a haiku review, so there's that.

Cry 'Monjoie', gallantly
Broken hauberk, gold helm falls
Red poppies, Roland

Small Gods (Discworld #13) by Terry Pratchett

4 stars

"It's not my fault if people misuse the--"
"It is. It has to be! If you muck up people's minds just because you want them to believe in you, what they do is all your fault." 

Fun, fun, fun.

I loved the premise of what happens to small gods; gods that either lose their followers or only had a few to begin with? Om is such a god with only one believer left. Ignominy and the dire consequences of losing one's last devotee leads to much elbow shoving and jockeying.

But no tortoise had ever been a god, and knew the unwritten motto of the Quisition: Cuius testiculos habes, habeas cardia et cerebellum.

This tickled me silly. Absolutely irreverent and utterly amusing.

VI. This is Religion, Boy. Not Comparison Bloody Shopping! You Shall Not Subject Your God to Market Forces! 

Decided to skip the library queue

California, Clean Your Beach!

Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina

4 Stars

Brutally honest and stark. This isn't pretty prose. It's fierce and blunt. Alyokhina gives a firsthand account of her view of protest from Pussy Riot performances to her imprisonment.

I think about fate. About how many prisoners who protested have died and now lie in the ground. It is just an illusion that you go on hunger strike to achieve results. Yes. that's how it begins but, later, you realize that it's not for the imagined outcome, but for the very right to protest. A narrow sliver of a right, in a huge field of injustice and mistreatment. You also realize that your right will always be just a narrow sliver in the field. Not there, with the majority. But I love this sliver of freedom, however little it's noticed by those on the other side of the wall. [172]

For those who are unfamiliar with the strategies of totalitarian regimes it will seem like fiction written for movies.

Defense lawyer: 'I summon the witnesses for the defense.'
Prosecutor: 'Objection. I request that the summons be denied.'
Judge: 'Every one of them?'
Prosecutor: 'Every on of them.'
The judge bars the witnesses for the defense from entering the courtroom and orders that those who are already present be removed by the Spetsnaz team. [100]

The most important takeaway for me was the importance of protest and how a society is judged and should be judged by its handling of them.

California Tiki: A History of Polynesian Idols, Pineapple Cocktails, and Coconut Palm Trees by Jason Henderson

3 Stars

Broader conceptually than you might expect. Yes, it covers the historical significance: the reaction of post-WWII and Korean war veterans rewriting their experiences to deal with both PTSD and reintegration into society by sublimation and subversion. It addresses music (Exotica and Surf), bars and Tiki lounges, movies, television programming, demise with the rise of Vietnam War due to the discomforting similarities, and the resurgence again in the 90s. Henderson also presents the sides and interpretation of fantasy versus appropriation inherent in Tiki. Overall, a solid overview of California Tiki to give readers a basis for understanding, a deeper read will require use of the extensive footnotes.

Things I Didn't Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet Ran

3 Stars

Very lyrical and smooth reading in this small compilation of Hikmet's poetry. His communist affiliation is evident in many pieces, most obviously his prison pieces feature it prominently. Born at the turn of the twentieth century in Thessaloniki what was still the Ottoman Empire, but which is now Greece and not Turkey. You live long enough and everything changes hands. He spoke in his poem entitled Autobiography that he writes of absences, and there is a poignancy to his writing that is palpable. He presents sentiments simply and beautifully.

I Stepped Out of My Thoughts of Death 

I stepped out of my thoughts of death
and put on the June leaves of the boulevards
those of May after all were too young for me
a whole summer is waiting for me
a city summer with its hot stones
and asphalt with its ice-cold pop ice cream
sweaty movie houses thick-voiced actors from the provinces
with its taxis that disappear suddenly on big football days
and with its trees that turn to paper under the lights of the Hermitage garden
and maybe with Mexican songs of Ghana tom-toms
and with the poems that I’m going to read on the balcony
and with your hair cut a little shorter
a city summer is waiting for me
I put on the June leaves of the boulevards
I stepped out of my thoughts of death 

24 May 1962

Babylon Berlin by Volker Kutscher

4 Stars

"Sometimes I have the impression that A Division devours CID officers like Cronos did his children." 

As a new DCI for the Vice Division, Gereon Rath soon finds that his aspirations have landed him right smack in the middle of a knot of twisted connections and questionable allegiances. Babylon Berlin starts out with Gereon (and us) as the new guy in town. Quickly, things are happening and finding one's balance is soon a rollercoaster ride of pornography, nightclubs, drugs, and dead bodies. 

In Homicide, he had known why he worked for the police. But Vice? Who cared about a bit of pornography every now and then? Self-proclaimed moral apostles perhaps, for they too had found their place in the Republic, but Rath didn't count himself amongst them.

I can see why this was made into a tv series; it has more happening in it than a lot of books get to in three. This is chockfull, well-plotted, and has enough intrigue to highlight just how political police work really is.The Interwar period is one of my favorites and definitely made this more interesting. The details of Berlin from the architecture, cars, new department stores to the more obvious communist and growing nazi elements in the city are so unobtrusively relayed that you feel enveloped as the reader rather than a distant observer. This is rather gritty and I really really liked it.

Stephan Jänicke sat on the rear seat with the type of frozen face only an East Prussian could achieve. There wasn't the slightest trace of emotion in it. Rath knew that the rookie hadn't exchanged a single word with the doorman in the last half hour. Not even the East Westphalians with whom Rath worked with in Cologne could manage that.

It will be interesting to see where the series goes from here. The english translation for the second in the series, The Silent Death, is due this winter and I am eager. Please note that it is British English not American English.

Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin

4 Stars

"Oh, never and forever aren't for mortals, love."

Le Guin writes wonderful women and stories that honor them. Lavinia is a whole book written from the perspective of a character that never utters a word in Vergil's epic, The Aeneid. It tells of all the life that happens between "the glorious battles", the farming, the herding, hunting and reading of the auspices, caring for the hearth gods, weaving, songs and observances -- the reasons we war in the first place. 

I think if you have lost a great happiness and try to recall it, you're only asking for sorrow, but if you do not try to dwell on the happiness, sometimes you find it dwelling in your heart and body, silent but sustaining.

Lavinia is presented as an ideal female: a faithful daughter, dedicated wife, and strong mother. The transitions between those phases is beautifully narrated. I especially found the duties depicted, the rituals so natural and comforting. I was wondering how I managed not to have any knowledge of Latium, honestly, I was disappointed in myself, and was relieved to read in the Afterword that there is indeed little to no record of the original Latins. Etruscans, yes and Magna Graecia too, of which I have some understanding. The auspices were rightfully given to an Etruscan character to read, but believably Latinus, Lavinia's father received omens from his forefathers in the sacred places. Overall, it was a delightfully woven tale of life in pre-ancient Rome.

All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers by Larry McMurtry

2 Stars

The door to ordinary places was the door that I had missed.

Good lord, this is a wandering tale of a naive and rather stupid young man, Danny Deck. It's non-stop grasping at straws--straws being women, women that he fucks and loses. Over and over again. I think part of this is very much a time piece, and I get that it's suppose to be this spectacle of characters, but the characters are too much of a spectacle. Yes, everyone is lost and broken--you're not unique, Danny. Anyway, the characters read like stereotypes. 

Danny has one moment of true action, self-motivated direction instead of aimlessness and it made me laugh. Go all in.

"Where's Geoffrey?" he asked.
"I just threw him off the patio," I said.

Needless to say, I didn't enjoy this. I kept hoping that it would have this great reveal moment, but that never happened, for me at least. Maybe I was disillusioned too young, I came out of the crucible, hammered into steel, and wonder at these sorts of stories. Then again, I can see relatives in it. That said, I really like the writing. This was my first McMurtry novel and I think I should have started somewhere else. Perhaps, I'll try Lonesome Dove or Terms of Endearment because the style is good, but I just was not fond of the content. I think I had different expectations from the title.

Scorpio Hates Virgo by Anyta Sunday

2 Stars

Wow, underwhelmed.

Could be me, could be the book--probably more me, but this was blahhh... First, there is no hate. Percy and Cal have this faux rivalry thing going on, for years and way past its expiration date. Second, both guy's communication abilities suck--and not the good kind. If they were ten years younger, I'd be more understanding. Third, they are too old and have too many maturation events in their histories to be this immature (grad school, divorce, family deaths, etc.) It makes them seem like idiots not cute.

I know I'm the big bad ogre for saying I didn't like it because not liking these characters, who are so gosh darn adorable and lovable, is akin to saying, 'please drown these unwanted kittens'.

(\_/)
(O.o)

Sidenote: There were some super weird word choices made, too. One does not schlepp into a shower. There were others and while they weren't constant; they popped up often enough that it was eyebrow exercises.