Going through my mail I saw that carl batnag at Pine Scented Blog, one of the blogs I follow, did a very nice job chiming in on the Christmas Song Book Tag which he got from Words About Words but which has been floating around the internet since it was started by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. And I thought I’d join along. (You’re welcome to join in, too! Just add your link in my comments when you’re done. Thanks!)
1. “All I Want for Christmas Is You”: Favorite bookish couple “Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart” of the eponymous series by Ronald H. Balson
2. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”: Name a book where a character is away from home (school, vacation, etc.). “Cloud Cuckoo Land” by Anthony Doerr (Several characters are away from home but Omeir is fighting in the siege of Constantinople while Konstance is on a space ship really far away. They both want to get home).
3. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”: Name your favorite “little” book (children’s book, short story, novella, etc.). “The Ice Harvest” by Scott Philips – noir novella with a Christmas setting
4. “Santa Claus is Coming to Town“: What book(s) do you hope Santa brings you this year? “West of the West: Dreamers, Believers, Builders, and Killers in the Golden State” by Mark Arax(Nonfiction)
5. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”: Which book turned your nose red (made you cry)? I’d have to say “The Buddha in the Attic” by Julie Otsuka. I just wept at the graphic historicity.
6. “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”: Your favorite book/kind of book to read during the holidays. “A Lot Like Christmas” by Connie Willis – short stories of Christmas by a master sci-fi story-teller.
7. “We Three Kings”: Your favorite trilogy. Mick Herron’s “Slough Horses” series – not a trilogy but a series of 7 (so far). Superb. Or the Christmas books in the “Andy Carpenter Series” by David Rosenfelt
8. “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”: A character you would love to be snowed in with. Oh maybe Aaron Holland Broussard from “Another Kind of Eden” by James Lee Burke. Or perhaps the sheriff in “The 12 Slays of Christmas” by Jacqueline Frost.
9. “Last Christmas”: A book that seriously let you down. “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead His first two books were so much better.
10. “White Christmas”: An upcoming release you’re dreaming about. So many books … The Books of Jacob: A Novel by Olga Tokarczuk
That’s it folks “Have yourself a very Merry Christmas!”
I hate it when I get suckered into reading a romance. And this sounded so good. (I think I might have a better Christmas read coming up and I’ve already finished two better ones so I’m not doing badly for the season.
12 Slays of Christmas Jacqueline Frost Read by Allyson Ryan 2017 – 8h 16m Rating:C- /okay for what it is –
Actually, this is only half romance with the other half being fairly decent mystery. Holly White’s Christmas has been cancelled due to her fiancé’s abrupt change of heart so she heads back to Mistletoe, Maine where her parents own and operate a Christmas Tree farm complete with vendors. But oops – on her first day back an older woman of the town is brutally murdered on the farm. And the sheriff is so cute and eligible. ? (oh well …sigh). The mystery is halfway good when it’s not all woven into the romance.
Onward with my Christmas “mysteries.” The Ice Harvest was a freebie with my Premium membership at Audible. It’s not a new book but, even as noir as it is, it got some excellent reviews back in 2000 and it’s still in print. Some more recent listeners weren’t too happy, but I thought I’d take a chance – it’s short anyway and I liked what I heard in the sample – besides, Grover Gardner (a favorite) reads it.
The Ice Harvest by Scott Philips 2000 / 4h 30m Read by Grover Gardner Rating: A- / noir crime
In the late afternoon on Christmas Eve, Charlie Arglist leaves a low-end bar in a high-end company car, checking out of Dodge, er. .. Wichita. He takes slugs from his handy bottle as needed. He’s a lawyer, but not a terribly respectable one and he needs to tie up a few loose ends and say goodbye to some friends. He has 9 1/2 hours to kill due to an ice storm, so he heads for another dive – a stripper bar with regular fights. But Charlie has a friend there – Renata. He gets an idea …
One thing seems to lead to another and Charlie spends Christmas Eve and Day in a semi-haze chasing people down and avoiding police and doing serious damage on his good-bye spree.
This book is really written very well with an underlying comic aspect to it.
I’ve been reading the Christmas books in the Andy Carpenter series by David Rosenfelt for a few years now and very much enjoyed them. I haven’t gone back to the beginning of the series because I’m just not that fond of dog stories and that’s mostly what the early ones anyway deal with. As I read on that is less and less a part of the whole. In this book and the last Christmas one there is only one doggie thread per book.
Best in Snow by David Rosenfelt 2021 / 6h 52m Read by Grover Gardner Rating: B / legal thriller (# 24 in the Andy Carpenter series)
While on a walk in the park a few weeks before Chrisrmas, Andy’s beloved dog Tara finds a human hand and when the rest of the body is dug up it turns out to be the mayor. Oh dear.
Next thing we know Andy’s friend Vince asks a favor. His nephew, Bobby Nash, who as a journalist had problems with the mayor and corruption leaks, was been arrested for the murder of the mayor. Could he please do the honors as defense attorney? Andy doesn’t want to, doesn’t need the money at all, but … yes, he gets involved.
After his arrest, young Bobby would be in jail but he was found in his wrecked car, half dead from poison, so he’s very ill and in the hospital. In the trunk of his car the police found blood as though a body had been stashed there for awhile. But Bobby remembers almost nothing. And then more people are dead and the who-done-it of it all is very much up in the air. The motive seems to go back to the news articles Bobby wrote. Andy manages to uncover dangerous suspects and the tension blows hotter. These are not nice guys and Bobby ends up with two murder charges against him.
It gets a bit tangled, but I enjoyed it. These are fun books. I love the courtroom aspect and Rosenthal’s humor. I think I may try some of his non-Christmas season legal thrillers.
From https://citylights.com/staff-picks-archive/adventures-of-china-iron-tr-fiona-macin/ “This subversive retelling of Argentina’s foundational gaucho epic Martín Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths.”
The Adventures of China Iron By Gabriela Cabezón Cámara Translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre Rating: 9.8 – literary / historical fiction
I read the Kindle version because at Audible it’s only available in Spanish. It was published in 2017 (Latin), 2019 (UK), and 2020 (US)
The cover shows a a pair of upside-down braids and as China learns about the world and where she is in it, she wonders why she’s not walking upside-down but then, to the reader, it might seem as though a world has been flipped.
First off if you’ve wanted to venture into the world of GLBTQ lit but don’t even like romance then this may be the book for you. I do NOT like anything more than smacking of romance and there is some of that I can tolerate – like if the romance part is distinctly secondary. This might be a romance – I suppose it depends on how you read it.
The Adventures of China Iron is a takeoff of the 18th century epic *poem,* “Martín Fierro” by José Hernández – and I have to add that it took way off from the Hernandez book which is a gaucho classic, a nation-builder and a part of the national myth/heritage of Argentina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mart%C3%ADn_Fierro
“Martín Fierro” translated into English is at http://sparrowthorn.com and the Introduction there was written by the translators in 1967 and 2007. It gives tremendous insight as well as some incredible paintings.
And on to the story – China (Cheena) Iron (sp. Ferro) our protag-onist and heroine is about 14 years old as the story opens and is running away from her husband and 2 children. China, a light skinned and blonde-haired young woman was brought up as a slave to a black couple and when the husband died China was sold her off to a gaucho who married her. He is so brutal that one day she leaves him and their two children for far-off places – any far-off places.
Before long China finds her first companion she names, Estreya (star). He’s a puppy. Then she meets Elizabeth (or Liz or Lizabeth or whatever), a beautiful woman from Victorian Scotland who is looking for her own husband who was conscripted into the military.
Liz has a well-equipped covered wagon and two oxen pulling it so China and Estreya fit nicely. And they drink tea and Liz tells CHina about the world.
Then along comes Rosario and it’s a four-some of sorts. They head across the pampas and the desert for Las Hortencias, a military fort on the frontier.
There have been so many books this year which have been so full of violence and negativity they’ve been horrible to read. So I was hesitant about The Adventures of China Iron even if it was on the Booker Prize International Short List. And it is violent, but it’s totally different. It’s not about the violence. The violence is an interlude.
At only 120 pages this amazingly well-translated novel is barely a novella. And I do so love good translated lit – like what’s usually onj the Booker International Prize Lists. So the Kindle sample was great – lovely writing about good stuff and I gave it a try. Sad to say it’s not available in Audio so I got it in Kindle format only.
Part 1 is magical as the story starts out – mostly light and fun reading. “But birds had appeared: filling the sky with sound, bathing noisily in the pools of water, as if they were born from water, as if their life was in waiting until they got wet, as if somehow their lives were part of the cycle of seeds.” – Page 38 / Kindle
Part 2 takes place at Las Hortencias, a military fort on the frontier of Argentina, and is also magical but gets harsher about a lot of things as adventure turns to thriller (of sorts). But this is what Martin Fierro is about – gaucho outlaws, “good-for-nothing larvae because they were trapped on the estancias with no schooling, and because the city folk exploited the countryside and were even greater parasites then the gauchos themselves.” (Adventures of China Iron – pg 64) Hernandez’s book turned that sentiment about gauchos into their brave national heroes.
Part 3 is the most magical and gets lovely again, “Into the summertime I sank. Into the berries bursting red and replete from the bushes. Into the mushrooms growing in the shade of the trees. Into every single tree I sank.”
The Translator’s Note is a very fine piece of explanation – make sure to read it.
Poetry is extremely difficult to translate anyway – so the translation of bits of Martin Fierro within the narrative is exciting and was a lovely surprise.
I Googled a LOT while reading this book – everything from Martin Fierro to “Iñchiñ” a tribal word. It took me some time to even figure out when all this action took place! So go and Google what you find and see what more you find. 🙂
And enjoy if you figure this sounds like something you’d like – it does have a lot of sex and magic in it. In places it’s very difficult to figure out what’s going on. There are a lot of untranslated/ untranslatable words in it. Keep going – it clears up. I really want to read this again – really – so I can pay more attention to the prose narrative without being distracted by wanting to know what’s going to happen.
I enjoyed Colson Whitehead’s two earlier novels, The Underground Railroad (2016), and The Nickel Boys (2019), both of which won Pulitzer Awards. So I was looking forward to Harlem Shuffle. Too bad. I found it available at the library, but when I got started, I just couldn’t get into it.
Harlem Shuffle By Colson Whitehead 2021 / Read by Dion Graham 10h 35m Rating: 8 / general fiction (crime?)
Yes, the Whitehead can write very, very well and at first I thought it was just me and the timing and what I expected. But no, that wasn’t really the problem. The problem for me (!) is that Harlem Shuffle is about bad guys as protagonists. There have been very few books I’ve managed to enjoy inside the heads of the bad guys, or semi-bad guys. This one starts out pretty good but it deteriorates – just like Ray and the neighborhoods. I think maybe in a different mental space I could have enjoyed this a lot more, but right now with Christmas days away, the news showing that crime is being tolerated, or even celebrated, on too many levels, in too many places, and now the pandemic is starting up again, Harlem Shuffle was just not my cuppa. It felt grimy.
It’s the mid-1960s and Ray Carney (like short for “carnival”?) is the owner of a nice little furniture shop in Harlem. He’s proud of his accomplishments and is a happy young man, loving his business, his small family, his friends and his community. But cousin Freddie is a low level thief, like other relatives, and every once in awhile Freddie sends one of his buddies to get some cash in exchange for something because Ray also acts, discreetly, as a casual fence on the side. But he has to make choices and when an ambitious young Black guy wants an apartment on Riverside Drive, um … ? So the games go on because what are the options?
Against his better judgement Ray gets involved in one of Freddie’s little “heists” and has to make choices. One involvement leads to another and we have a series of escapades which turn worse and involve even less reputable “friends” and even associate with crooked cops. This is like a continuation of The Nickel Boys only mostly set in Harlem and the “boys” grown up and getting into adult trouble.
I really gave it a good try but truly, it was disappointing.
This is the first book in “The Women’s Mystery Club” series by James Patterson and co-authors. The first book though was written by him alone. For the record, these books are usually sexually graphic and excessively violent with what they call “Fem-Jeop” or females in jeopardy.
1st to Die by James Patterson 2001 Read by Suzanne Toren 8h 56m Rating: B- / thriller
This one starts the series so we meet the major characters who are members of the club. There’s the protagonist Lindsay Boxer who is a San Francisco Police Department homicide detective. And her friends Claire Washburn, a Black medical examiner, Cindy Thomas, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and Jill Bernhardt, an assistant D.A. Together they work on various difficult murders which have occurred in the city. The series is up to #22 now. I’ve only read 3 and I’ll likely read more, but they’ll be carefully spaced.
This first case concerns a couple who were terrorized and slaughtered on their wedding night. Two more cases of the very same type happen and the chase is on. It’s a thriller above all else.
I don’t like the extreme ugly violence or the series killers or the sex and romance which enter into the story. The narrator gets overly-dramatic. But the story is so compelling that I kept going and gave it a B-.
Deborah Devonshire was the youngest and last-surviving of the Mitford sisters I read about in the book Sisters by Mary S. Lovett. That caused an interesting discussion on the All-nonfiction reading group so I pursued it a bit by delving into this memoir. (Other group members watched movies or read other books.)
Wait For Me: Memoirs of the Youngest Mitford Sister By Deborah Devonshire 2010 Read by Anne Flosnik: 14h 17m Rating: C / biography
I read it because in addition to the discussion it also kept catching my eye somewhere – on Audible, maybe.
Anyway, as I said, Wait for Me is the story of the life of “Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, DCVO (born Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford” – aka Debo to the family. The book is so entitled because as a child that was her phrase as she ran to keep up with her sisters, Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, and Jessica.
There are parts which are fascinating and parts which are boring. I actually fell asleep a few times while reading it. Anyway,
Publisher’s Summary (from Audible):
Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, “How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl.” Deborah’s effervescent memoir Wait for Me! chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her marriage to the second son of the Duke of Devonshire. Her life would change utterly with his unexpected inheritance of the title and vast estates after the wartime death of his brother, who had married Kick Kennedy, the beloved sister of John F. Kennedy. Her friendship with that family would last through triumph and tragedy.
With its intense warmth and charm, Wait for Me! is a unique portrait of an age and an unprecedented look at the rhythms of life inside one of the great aristocratic families of England. It is irresistible listening and will join the shelf of Mitford classics to delight audiences for years to come.
***** Yes, the book is quite warm and charming. Debo lived quite a long time and did a lot of interesting things. Her focus here seemed to be on architecture and home design as she lived in a number of homes. There are two appendices which sound like they were taken from her diaries. She loved the Kennedy’s and her sisters who were mostly just as famous for their novels and memoirs and associations and politics. I was very interested for a time, but it wore off. My interest seems to (or seemed to) be in the Mitford sisters as a group.
This is definitely one of the best books I’ve read all year – all decade? . It’s been in publication for 9 years and remains at numbers 1 and 2 on the New York Times and Washington Post Paperback Best Seller Lists. But it didn’t start there. I think this must be the Christmas sales from people who have read it giving it to people who should.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 2013 / 385 pages read by author 16h 42m Rating – 9.8/ Native American – botony
It took me a couple hundred pages to really get oriented in this series of essays, but I had found them and Kimmerer’s voice intriguing and quite compelling anyway. I didn’t “get” everything and with a book this promising that means I will really try to read it again. In fact, surprisingly, I got the Audio book from the library (but after 9 years yes, it would be available by now).
But although I got the audio from the library I now wanted to reread it so I actually bought it and the audio too. Yes! It’s that good. If I did this sort of thing, I’d get this book for some family members – I’d get it for lots and lots of people.
It was first published in 2013 by Milkweed Editions (a small but excellent and successful non-profit company). Very slowly, mostly by word of mouth and occasional review it surprisingly climbed into and up The NY Times Best Seller list starting at #14 in February of 2020. By November, it’s 30th week, it was #9 on those same lists. This past week it was #2 on the NY Times nonfiction paperback list and #1 on the WaPo list of the same.
I’d seen it but only wondered – not bought. Then more recently I read a review and it was also on sale at Audible. Okay fine. And reading it I realized what a wonderment of a book it really is. So by the time I got 2/3rds of the way through I’d realized I need to read this whole thing again but right now I want to finish.
“Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.”
I’m taking notes next time. I understand that to best take care of the earth we have to be grateful and feed it as it feeds us. But there is so much more.
I’ve been reading the books of Ronald Balson since Once We Were Brothers in about 2014. That was his first which was published in 2010 and this is my 6th novel out of 7. Eli’s Promise is an older stand alone which I just now realized I hadn’t read. So before getting into his latest in the “Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart” series (the 6th book) I decided to get this stand-alone off my reading list before the end of the year. It really wasn’t as good as the priors but it’s tense and historically accurate. Balson knows his stuff and has done his research.
Eli’s Promise By Ronald Balson 2013 Read by Fred Berman 11h 45m Rating: 8 / historical fiction- thriller
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In Eli’s Promise Eli Rosen, his wife Esther, and their son, Isaac live quietly in Lublin, Poland where Eli owns and operates a small construction business. When the Nazis take over that business is seized and he is forced him to go to another town to set up a new one for them. A man named Maximillan is orchestrating this and says he will keep an eye on Esther and Isaac who are left in Lublin. That’s time frame 1.
Time frame 2 takes place in a displaced persons camp starting in 1945, after the Allies have won and released the camp prisoners.
Time frame 3 takes place in 1965 after Eli makes it to Chicago where after a few years his job entails looking for one specific person who was a Nazi collaborator – Maximillan.
The story, basically about chasing down this Nazi collaborator but with interesting side threads, progresses by alternating through these time frames with the reader spinning ahead and gaining new knowledge each time and the story goes further filling in blanks the next time it come around.
I’m looking forward to Understanding Britta Stein, Balsom’s next novel on my list and the
I really enjoyed The 19th Christmas which I only read about 10 days ago, so after a couple other books, I headed into The 20th Victim. These are the first James Patterson books I’ve read since that book he did with Bill Clinton which I very much enjoyed. I thought this would be disappointing at first but after I got far enough into it I found myself engrossed.
The 20th Victim by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro 2020 / (513 pages in print) Read by January LaVoy 8h 26m Rating: A- / crime-thriller
It’s the same characters mostly, involved in a case of very organized vigilantes going after drug dealers. And then the good friend of a main male character is accused of killing his own father while he’s accusing a doctor. That has the overall story going for awhile.
Cindy, the Chronicle crime reporter, is so aggressive she’s annoying and has teamed up with someone named Serena. Lindsay, the detective, is getting involved in too many directions resulting in an emotional overload. And while Yuki, a prosecuting attorney, is mostly in the background, there is a complex legal case which understandably bothers her – good courtroom drama. This part got me hooked but it was about 3/4 through the book. Claire, the Medical Examiner, is quiet, has her own troubles.
And the sniper-type killings go on, and tension builds masterfully. January LaVoy does an excellent job narrating. So I kept at it and finished and will likely go forward to the next book, 21st Birthday, or back to the first – 1st to Die.
I was writing up my list of favorite books this year and came across Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby but I remember reading Razorblade Tears by the same guy and thinking it was better. So where is my review? I have no idea. I checked my drafts, I checked my mail (where I often put drafts) and it just isn’t here.
So – I read this book in about August, shortly after it was released. I loved it. It gets an A++.
It’s about the rural south and two middle-aged men, one black one white, both with prison backgrounds who have to come to grips with the fact that their adult sons were lovers before they were murdered. And both fathers want vengeance, but have to get over their private rage to do it. It’s a thriller.
I enjoy the Christmas books of David Rosenfelt but I should try some of the others in the series, too. I started them a years ago but gravitated to the Christmas books only and then only in season. I’m not a big dog fan. That said, I enjoy the books so maybe I’ll try some more. They should probably be read in order to keep abreast of the family happenings but that’s only a wee bit of the plot. It seems to me that the stories are about 90-95% stand-alone and I have an idea of what’s transpired in Andy’s private life to this point.
The Twelve Dogs of Christmas
By David Rosenfelt 2016 –
Read by Grover Gardner 6h 17m
Rating – B +/ legal mystery
One thing I like about this series is hat there is often lots of courtroom drama. There’s detective work too, and maybe a wee bit of thriller but not much.
I also like the humor although it seemed a bit silly at first.
And the plots are thick and twisty but sometimes they seem to have a bit of the old Deus ex machina in them – Maybe not. ?
In this book Andy helps an old friend who keeps unwanted puppies for adoption. She is arrested for shooting and killing her neighbor who had earlier taken her to court about the dogs. But the story goes way deeper than that because she’s soon also charged with killing her husband a few years back. This isn’t a cozy, but there isn’t any graphic violence and there’s quite a lot of courtroom drama.
Set in Reykjavik this is the most gritty Christmas novel I’ve ever read. Still, there’s a gentleness to it which moves that around so in a way it’s more like Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. It’s about drug addition and sexual dysfunction as well as families and secrets and long held grudges.
Voices Arnaldur Indriðason 2003 – tr to English 2007 Read by George Guidal 9h 6m Rating – A / Scandinavian noir
The problem I have with it, and with all the Erlendur books, is that the names of the characters are very difficult to distinguish.
From the publisher: The Christmas rush is at its peak in a grand ReykjavIk hotel when Inspector Erlendur is called in to investigate a murder. The hotel Santa has been stabbed to death, and Erlendur and his fellow detectives find no shortage of suspects between the hotel staff and the international travelers staying for the holidays. As Christmas Day approaches, Erlendur must deal with his difficult daughter, pursue a possible romantic interest, and untangle a long-buried web of malice and greed to find the murderer. Voices is a brutal, soulful noir from the chilly shores of Iceland.
This isn’t the first James Patterson book I’ve read but it’s the first in the “Women’s Murder Club” series or with Maxine Paeto as co-author. (Those two have co-authored at least a dozen novels.) I’ve only read three James Patterson books prior to this one – one was with Bill Clinton, one was about 20 years ago and the last one was in 2015 or something.
The reason I picked The 19th Christmas is that I needed something easy on my brain and in the Christmas spirit since seasonal mysteries in their seasons is a tradition with me. I’ll do about 3 or 4 more this season – one or two a week?
The 19th Christmas by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro 2019 / (263 pages in print) Read by January LaVoy-7h 5m Rating – A / thriller (Women’s Murder Club series #19)
It’s complex – lots of stuff happening and lots of characters. Ans it’s very fast paced. The series alao has an overarching plot or continuation of the lives of the protagonists so it’s probably a good idea to read them in order but I haven’t. The overarching plot development breaks the tension which is sometimes a good thing, it adds to the texture and gives the reader some breathing room.
Five different professional women are informal partners in crime- solving in the city of San Francisco. They are Lindsay Boxer, a detective with the city police force, Cindy Thomas, a journalist and Yuki Castellano, a prosecuting attorney. And all are married with children.
The bad guys: on a bustling city sidewalk right before Christmas, Lindsay’s shopping is interrupted by a young man shoving and running up the street leaving another shopper yelling “He’s got my bag.” When Lindsay’s partner, Rich Conklin, chase down and arrest the bad guy bringing him in for interrogation he reveals that there is going to be a huge robbery coming, perhaps at an art museum or gallery, and that starts the investigative action.
He tells them how he came across that information. This takes them to a run-down housing complex where a small family of very troubled undocumented immigrants is living. On their visit Lindsay accidentally kills a neighbor, a mid-level bad guy who seems to have his scoping eye on a local art museum or gallery.
Those are the two threads. Art gallery heist and the legal problems of undocumented migrants. Now the lights are out too – thanks to the scuffle which led to the shooting. The art gallery clue is the major plot line – there are layers of bad guys with one or two bosses.
Christmas gets to be an integral part of the setting because the detectives all want to get home to their families, but some are working even on Christmas Day. And there’s a countdown for the heist because the crime, which might involve dozens of people killed or injured, is planned for some time on Christmas. More tension.
This book is amazing. It got me back to reading a real history book and I loved it.
“Fred Anderson has written as good a history of the Seven Years’ War in North America, commonly called the French and Indian War, as one can find. At some 835 pages excluding the index, it is not, however, for the light reader.”
Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 By Fred Anderson 2001 / 835 pages (Kindle) Read by Paul Woodson – 29h 4m Rating: 10/ American History (Both read and listened)
In general, I’ve never been big on military history, but I’ve read a few which I appreciated. My latest read, Crucible of War by Fred Anderson, is one of the really good ones. And it’s more than a military history even if, by the half-way point it doesn’t seem like it. The second half deals with the consequences which were way, way more than military.
I can’t even being to approach writing a review of this superb book. If you’re interested at all in the American War of Independence it’s extraordinarily good because it details the background for the Colonies’ ultimately being able to work as a united front in their resistance to the English approach to colonialism and domination and the colonies’ own mutual pursuit of “happiness and freedom.”
There are many facets to this and it gets complicated, but Anderson provides great detail while staying on point. One vital thing is that at the time of the French and Indian War the actual War of Independence in 1775 was not foreseen in any way so we can’t use that assumption as a foundation for our views held now in the 21st century. That’s history in the rear-view mirror and maybe a wee Providential to me. Neither the King nor the Colonists had a clue that a stage was being set for colonial independence.
This is a military history as well as the tale of the social, economic, political and cultural consequences. It starts with the formidable 5-nation Indian coalition of the Iroquois Confederacy and the first half of the book emphasizes the military history.
But even before much of the conflict had got underway the Colonists tended to look at the Redcoats and their leaders as if they were the enemy. This was because the British political leaders were developing onerous rules to get promoted by the King. This was for various reasons but they boiled down to money, land and/or political power. Everyone had their own motivations,
So although the English won the War they very shortly afterwards lost the support of the Colonies because whose war was it anyway? Had the war been for the benefit of the Brits or the Colonies? The Brits thought the Colonies should have to pay for their part but the Colonies ended up in an economic depression – as did England. The English wouldn’t allow the colonists to settle the interior because it was trying to keep some kind of peace. The Indians were never the direct allies of the colonists. All this led to further animosity.
The second half doesn’t skip the military tale except for when it entailed officers positioning themselves for promotion and the Indians trying to adjust themselves to the new realities. A few sad and ugly squabbles.
So in the aftermath things got worse. “Freedom and Property” was the motto of the Sons of Liberty, not the English political, economic or military leaders.
And there were really brave, intelligent and honorable people as well as massively stupid, cowardly and corrupt people on both sides. We don’t hear much about the French issues in all of this but they were serious about wanting profits through trade. They just weren’t as interested in settling the land with their own people. And that was a determining factor which it doesn’t seem as though Anderson went into as much but perhaps in that follow-up book.
The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West (1771)
The book winds up wonderfully well, although the Epilogue is not included in the Audible version (neither are the photo captions – neither are the photos – neither are the footnotes but I got the Kindle version in addition to the Audible for a reason. – the Audible narrator is superb.)
*** An interesting to note – some of this takes place near Marietta, Ohio which was established only a few years later by Rufus Putnam who is highlighted in David McCullough’s book, Pioneers. Putnam has a distinct role in Crucible of War because he was a disgruntled sergeant in the war effort and later a general in the Revolutionary War – but mostly he’s known for settling in and becoming the “father of the Northwest Territory” in the late 1880s – he and other veterans. .
McCullough really went back to the traditionalist US history and Americana story-telling for his book and it’s fascinating historiographically. Anderson’s ideas however, combine Traditional, Revisionist and Post-Revisionist views. Traditionalist in blaming England’s greed. Revisionist in spreading that blame to the Anglo settlers (poachers), the military, and the multitude of real estate grabbers. And then there’s some Post Revisionist in that he simply tries to understand the factors from all on their own terms – not by today’s values.
The book was on sale, a relatively recent release, and had decent reviews. Okay fine and it is pretty good – compelling and page-turning anyway.
Just My Luck by Adele Parks 2021 / 12h 50m Read by Louise Brealey & Kristin Atherton Rating: B / thriller-suspense
Three couples, very close friends, have teamed up to play the lottery every week for 15 years but after things getting tense for awhile, one night the friendship hits the skids. The next week one couple, the least prosperous, wins the lottery on their own playing the same numbers the group has played for years and they win about 13 million pounds.
The trouble is that everyone (teens and all) many are jealous and want in on the win. Also, they may all be best friends, but there are certainly a lot of secrets amongst the three couples, with no one being pure. So they tear each other to pieces and everyone is affected.
First the old friends claim they were still in on the group play. Then other things happen, or are revealed, building the tension nicely. The characters each have very different responses to the win. Jake, the husband, who is having an affair with one of the women friends starts spending and giving money to relatives rather recklessly. Lexie, Jake’s wife, who knows about the woman, works in social services and gives money to a favorite client. Emily, their 15-year old daughter, spends money furiously and doesn’t want to go to school, gets beaten up by some friends, and worries she’s pregnant while her boyfriend kind of dumps her. Logan, their son, doesn’t really change a lot but he’s only 11.
But things do change, the family is not necessarily safe, things turn violently criminal and then come the twists. It’s a genuaine thriller after it gets started.
Becky's Books - 