British murder spree! part 2

Like Laurie R. King's Mary Russell novels, time and place are central to Elizabeth Peters' novels featuring Amelia Peabody. Like Russell, Peabody is fiercely independent and confident in her abilities, in spite of having spent much of her life under the thumb of her domineering father in 1880s Victorian England. In Crocodile on the Sandbank, Peabody immediately sets out for Egypt, determined to see more of the world after her father's death. Immediately at home in the Valley of the Kings, Peabody sets to work 'assisting' Egyptologist and bachelor Radcliff Emerson, much to his displeasure. Their work is soon interrupted by the appearance of a mummy that drives away all the Egyptian workers and threatens the lives of Peabody and her companions. I found the mystery to be a little hokey (the rampaging mummy kept bringing to mind the Brendan Fraser film The Mummy) and an annoying damsel in distress that everyone would probably be better off without. But Peabody herself is a plucky, appealing character, and her battles with Emerson are enjoyable to behold, even if you already know who's going to come out victorious.

It's not surprising that Peters also did quite a bit of work in romance fiction, as the strength of her book lies not in the mystery (which is quite easy to figure out), but in the sparks between her characters. Originally published way back in the 1970s, Crocodile is the first of Peters' long Peabody series, all set in colonial Egypt. The exotic time and place of the series is also one of its draws, and the fast moving plot and romantic undertones makes Peters' detective an appealing read.

British murder spree! part 1

Okay, so this post's title is a rather devious attempt to make this post seem more lurid than it actually is. True, I've been indulging in my taste for British murder mysteries, so there are quite a few bodies turning up, but to term it a spree is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, it's murder, but this is civilized killing, thank you. So put on your tweeds, make some tea and curl up while these people go about nicely dispatching each other.

I had previously written about Laurie R. King's The Beekeeper's Apprentice featuring Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell, enjoying King's creation of a feisty, liberal partner to Holmes' Edwardian coolness. Continuing with A Monstrous Regiment of Women, King focuses more on developing Russell's character, as Mary delves into the inner workings of a women's organization in which various members have been dying suspicious deaths. Holmes is mostly offstage during the investigation, but never far from Russell's mind as she finds the detective playing a larger role in her life. I've read a few more of King's series, and her strongest abilities lie in the interplay between Holmes and Russell, similar to that of Sayers' Wimsey/Vane novels, and her depiction of post World War I Britian. As her series moves along, I found King's plots to be more tangled, something that wasn't as much the case in the earlier books, were the emphasis was more on suspense rather than unraveling the mystery.

More bodies to come...

I really should be less cynical about book reviews.

Everyone is in love with Frank Portman. Every review that I've come across for Portman's first novel, King Dork, has been in raptures about Portman's take on high school life since it first appeared earlier this year. So of course, I'm immediately skeptical, as usually happens when something appears to be too good to be true, especially in the case of young adult lit, which more often than not can have adults swooning and teens passing.

King Dork meets this challenge head on, poking fun at that Holy Grail of teen lit, The Catcher in the Rye, turning its subject of teen angst on its head. The anti-Holden Caulfield here is Tom Henderson, a mostly rational and thoughtful human being who has the misfortune of attending high school with a bunch of psychotic normal people. As such, Tom (or Chi-Mo or King Dork), spends most of his time trying to avoid abject humiliation from students and staff alike, while attempting to set up a rock band with his friend-in-the-alphabet, Sam Hellerman. When Tom stumbles upon some of his dead father's books, it opens up a mystery surrounded by codes, fake people, questionable pronounciation and what really happened to his father during his high school years. There's no way that I can really do justice to the whole arc of the plot, only to say that I laughed out loud at many of Portman's perceptions of high school. His depiction of Tom's equally clueless ex-Hippie parents is hilarious, a sly commentary on how adults want to perceive their teen children, and just how much teens can see through such b.s. The only complaint I have is that such a twisted storyline takes its time building up, but Tom's such a good observer that those sticking with him will be well rewarded by the conclusion.

Portman, himself a member of the rock group the Mr. T Experience, laces King Dork with references to various rock groups, completes the book with a glossary of terms and misprounciations from the book, and a list of the devil's head incarnations that Tom's band goes through. There's some sex, which might put King Dork at risk for challenge, but if it is it would work to the book's favor in getting it more attention. Not that getting teens to read it should be difficult. I liked VOYA's little blurbette: "King Dork...will appeal only to...teens with an interest in...oral sex..."

Well, who am I to argue with that?

Manga meets meditation.

I do not claim to know anything about Buddhism, graphic novels or, for that matter, formatting photos in Blogger (my apologies for the above arrangement), but that did not keep me from pushing through all eight volumes of Osamu Tezuka's imaginative and epic retelling of the life of Siddhartha. And I do mean epic: ranging across the foothills of the Himalayas thousands of years ago, Buddha has a huge cast of characters and enough raging battles, miracles and doomed love affairs to make any Charleton Heston flick pale in comparison. This isn't an accident; Tezuka takes definite liberties with the historical record, creating characters and events that help to define his vision of Siddhartha's journey to enlightenment, with a great deal of pulpy action and adventure thrown in. The result is a mostly fast-paced, sometimes irreverent romp through ancient northern India, as Siddhartha slowly becomes Buddha and develops his insights that would become the religion of Buddhism.

Handsomely published in the U.S. by Vertical, the real star of Buddha isn't the story, but Tezuka's vibrant artwork. Best known for his Astro Boy series, Tezuka's take on Buddha is sort of manga for adults--but with all the same visual appeal as his more popular work. The settings allow for some beautiful and suprisingly detailed panoramas, and the violence is simply but effectively portrayed in a spray of ink. Probably the most effective aspect as I read along was Tezuka's ability to depict the emotions of his characters: a devious look instantly establishes a character's untrustworthy nature, and the full impact of Siddharta's inner struggle is telegraphed over his features.

That the visual is so well done works well in Tezuka's favor, as the weakest point about Buddha is the sometimes painful dialog. Do not expect great monologues to complement the great art. But the dialog does have the benefit of making each volume a pretty fast read (each averaging around 350 pages, a volume can be finished off, at most, in a few hours). Other quibbles: the height of the story, I felt, came in the middle of the set (v. 3-5), with the story tending to drop off a bit in the concluding installments. And given how much of Buddha is imagined, it was rather disappointing to see most female characters relegated to passive slaves or victimized royalty. As an introduction to the work of Tezuka, Buddha might not be representative, but it does mark an interesting blend of the serious with a popular art form gaining in respect.

After the levees broke.

Like most Americans, I was sickened by what I saw happening in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. After the images of suffering in the Superdome, and bodies left to rot in the streets of New Orleans, it was hard to imagine it getting any worse. As the storm surge subsided, a flood of books has appeared, attempting to explain just what transpired in late August 2005. Among the hefty (The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley), the scientific (The Storm by Ivor van Heerden and Mike Bryan) and the official (A Failure of Initiative by the select committee appointed by the House of Representatives), I went with Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horne. Metro editor of the Times-Picayune, Horne is well-versed in New Orleans' culture and politics, elements just as important to the course of disaster as weather reports and evacuation plans.

Mixing personal accounts with commentary, Horne creates a vivid portrait of a city ill-served by its elected officials well prior to 2005, and fully documents the continuing failures after the storm. Harshest criticism is reserved, of course, for the inept bungling by FEMA and the Bush Administration, but the Army Corps of Engineers, mayor Ray Nagin and the Orleans levee board each receive damning evidence of misplaced priorities or downright fraud. Horne also dispels many of the misconceptions created by the media, calling into doubt the images of rampaging gangs bent on looting any and all stores, and the supposed lawlessness at the Superdome and Convention Center.

This isn't a book to read if you want something calming--I often found myself wanting to throw it through a wall in frustration at the ineptitude of those in charge. But Horne also includes stories of perserverance--the ordeal of Patrina Peters, who survived on the roof of her flooded home during the storm, heroic efforts at isolated hospitals, the grassroots effort Common Ground which stepped in when the Army and the aid organizations refused. Most of the second half of the book is an examination of the efforts to determine which direction the new New Orleans needs to go. This part lags a bit in terms of storytelling, but represents the more important questions resulting from Katrina: is it right to allow people to rebuild New Orleans as it once was, even when the previous chapters revealed a city seriously in need of reform and overhaul? Horne makes the case for a new city, but for New Orleans to rise again, the events recounted in Breach of Faith demonstrate that it will be a long, drawn out prospect, requiring much more than staunching holes in the levees.

On the trail of Revolutions.

When it first appeared in print over 500 years ago, Nicolaus Copericus' magnum opus De revolutionibus orbium coelestium libri sex (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres) revolutionized the budding science of astronomy. Its publication in 1543 was the death knell for the thousand-year old notions of Ptolemy's Earth centered universe, heralding the dawn of a new, empirical method of doing science. Or did it?

Challenged by a historian's claim that no one read the watershed book when it was first published, Harvard astronomer and historian Owen Gingerich went to epic lengths to track the impact De revolutionibus had on scientists of the sixteenth century. To do so, he undertakes the task of locating and examining as many first and second editions of the work all over the world. Conducting a book census sounds about as interesting as watching a bookworm chew through a dusty tome, but in The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus, Gingerich finds that a seemingly straightforward task can lead into unknown corners of historical record and the modern book trade.

Gingerich discovers richly annotated copies of De revolutionibus that quickly settle the question of whether the book was read when it was first published, but raise other issues. What impact did the Catholic church's censorship of De revolutionibus have on the book's readership? Who bought the expensive book and why? How did scientists spread across Europe communicate with each other over the ideas in the book? The questions are not limited to issues of the fifteenth century: Gingerich finds himself testifying in court over a missing De revolutionibus, puzzling over rebound and fake copies, and navigating hostile Soviet bureacracy to reach copies behind the Iron Curtain.

Weaving astronomical history in with the pursuit of rare copies, Gingerich's volume is as likely to appeal to bibliophiles as to astronomy buffs. For those not entirely familiar with such history, parts of Gingerich might be hard to follow--many names sound similar and some are almost entirely obscure. Perhaps a brief collection of biographical sections at the end of the book would make it more approachable, but as it is, Gingerich simply includes notes and an abbreviated version of his final census. For the casual reader, perhaps something like Timothy Ferris' Coming of Age in the Milky Way would offer a better introduction to astronomy history. In terms of sheer persistence and bibliographic sleuthing, Gingerich's chase of Copericus' revolutionary book is a worthy example.

What rhymes with Bush?

In spite of my best efforts, I’m not the sort of person who would just willingly sit down with a volume of poetry. Nor am I one to spend precocious reading time with any political diatribes masquerading as rational thought. So why exactly did I pick up Calvin Trillin’s new volume A Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme? Well, in part due to Trillin’s recent appearance on The Daily Show and previous familiarity with some of Trillin’s essays, but mostly in an attempt to feebly laugh at what has become a scary situation.

As poetry, Trillin is more Ogden Nash than Byron, but his limerick-style is suited to the nonsensical subject matter. Redundant sounds and forced rhythms make A Heckuva Job downright annoying to read straight through, but Trillin isn’t interested so much in proper placement of stresses as he is in driving home his political barbs. This he does with a wry tone, covering the misadventures of Iraq , the war on terror, and the sluggish Katrina response. A stanza from The War in Nine Stanzas is indicative:

Though nothing showed Iraq had played a part,
That’s where some hawks thought vengeance ought to start.
(Then terrorists could count on what we’d do:
Attack us, we’ll strike back, though not at you.)
We toppled first that band of Afghan loonies
Who’d let bin Laden hide out in their boonies.
The Taliban were smashed in one fell swoop.
Bin Laden, though, had plainly flown the coop.
Bush then forgot that name, and said, “In fact,
Iraq’s the place that has to be attacked.”
The war, Rove thought, with this one course correction,
Could still endure until the next election.
(August 15, 2004)

The types and subjects of the attacks are nothing new, and over the course of the volume, Trillin tends to repeat himself. As any good roast needs to be, though, each poem in A Heckuva Job contains enough truth to hit home. In the case of Dubya's policies, that might mean more of an occassion to cry, but at least Trillin's poesies add a little bit of comic relief.

A scientific dispute for the ages.

As a graduate who has earned a degree in the humanities, I tend to regard those in the sciences as having a considerably easier task in tracking down what is real in nature: formulate the hypothesis, test it and if it works, everyone basically agrees that's the way things are. Yet, as the recent brouhaha over the status of Pluto has demonstrated, there can be a surprising amount of decisions that scientists have to make.

Before there was Pluto, there was the issue of what happens to a star in the course of its lifetime. In the early twentieth century, the debate over what the scientific evidence disclosed and what theories raged in astrophysical circles, easily making or unmaking academic careers. On the one side was Sir Arthur Eddington, world-renowned scientist, theorist and practically credited with inventing astrophysics. On the other was a young unknown Indian scientist, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who formulated the almost unfathomable notion of black holes. Their despute, and the repercussions that it had on the course of astronomy and physics, is the subject of Arthur I. Miller's Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes. Following Chandra, Eddington and their contemporaries through blind alleys, dead ends and false leads, Miller weaves the tale of how the quest to understand the life of the stars nearly cost both scientists their reputations. Only with the advent of the atomic bomb and achievements in observational methods did Chandra's efforts be recognized, and black holes become a physical reality.

Part biography of Chandra, part history of an idea, Miller draws on a trove of sources, especially Chandra's own revealing personal letters. He also traces the many competing theories concerning the lives of stars, taking the story well beyond just Chandra and Eddington. Miller includes considerable back matter, including a glossary, brief biographical sketches, notes and appendices, but for those who may not have a comfortable gasp on basic physical and chemical principals may find Empire to be a bit of a challenge. I personally found the latter portion of the book, which dealt with the observational findings and the development of the atomic bomb to be more interesting. Empire of the Stars probably isn't for everyone, but because of Miller's thorough research, could be quite important to anyone interested in the history of science.