Becky's Books –

I happened on this while looking at “suggestions” after finishing Circle of Hope by Eliza Griswold  https://mybecky.blog/2024/08/23/circle-of-hope-by-eliza-griswold .  Junger is a journalist, author and filmmaker and that sounded interesting as did other of his books.  I looked into it further and was still interested,  but it was also available at the library so I waited – I was in no rush. 

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging
by Sebastian Junger, 2016 
Read by author 2h 59m
Rating –  8 / essays 

And it is a very interesting book and I may read more by Junger. He’s earned a reputation for writing about moderately common psychological issues. This book is about how human beings seem to be naturally drawn to small and close-knit groups or communities and later feel lonely and isolated.  It’s also about war, PTSD and anti-social behavior like mass shootings. Toward the end he gets very interested in recovery from PTSD.   

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Junger

Anthony Fauci has been a hero to me ever since I first saw him on television and realized I’d read about him, too. So I’ve been  eyeballing his book, “On Call,” for the last few months.  He both wrote and narrated the book so although he’s not a professional reader I’m enjoying his voice even if he’s not a great reader.  It’s him! 

On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service
By: Anthony Fauci M.D. 2024
Read by 19h and 12m
Rating:   8 / Autobiography

This is an autobiography and writing a first draft was an ongoing project from his last years of college.  If you’re looking for a shorter or more focused work this might not be what you want to spend time on.  Properly, an autobiography should be researched and sourced as though it were a biography (yes, of yourself) because, who knows, you might have misheard your grandmother.  And you do want the autobiography to get it right.  Biographies are nonfiction.  Memoirs are somewhere between those two and, tend to be shorter and more focused.  Besides, they’re what the author *remembers* – not what his whole life has been.  Both contain what the author decides should be included – It’s not really allowed to add make-believe things (like meeting the queen or something) but you can leave out whatever you want.  

 I was disappointed he went on and on, sometimes in excruciating detail, about his AIDS work,  but for  most of his career that’s what he did.  I was lightly familiar with his AIDS work (read several books) so that wasn’t too much of a waste; actually, I learned a LOT.  

Ahat I wanted, you could say expected, was some good information and insight on the Covid-19 problems. Covid wasn’t an issue t until 2019 and Fauci was 79 years old!  The Covid issues start at about 80% of the way through the book!  They’re worth it though and I’m glad I didn’t skip over to them.   

The rest of the book is a chronological telling of his career in medicine and public service. There’s a wee bit about his childhood, growing up, and then his wife and daughters and I think he does well in their characters.  But it was his medical career which kept him occupied studying and treating  infectious diseases especially when they became epidemics and pandemics.  Highlighted are HIV/AIDS (which changed his life), Swine Flu, Bird Flu, Ebola, and so on.  He started receiving hate mail with the AIDS issue and it didn’t let up until Coronavirus-19.   I remember most of the ones mentioned, but Fauci seems to have been at the center from the H.B. Bush presidency through that of Donald Trump, that’s 5 presidents.    

– 

This book just casually caught my eye, so I sampled it and promptly put it on my Wish List because it sounded just right for me now. I started reading and was very much enjoying the book and then I came to find out, well after I’d started, that it received lots of excellent reviews from good places.   Maybe I still have some kind of instinct. 

Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, 
Power, and Justice in an American Church
by Eliza Greisald,  8/24
Read by Jennifer Pickens
11h 57m
Rating:   8.75 / Christianity 

At Audible it’s categorized under “Religion and Spirituality > Christianity.”  That’s fine – I wouldn’t say I’m a Christian, but I’m definitely an interested student of the history and contemporary issues as well as the theology. And back in the 1970s I was very curious about the “Jesus Freaks” and even almost joined a local group but … 

Circle of Hope is the name of a group of churches in and near Philadelphia which were similar to the “emergent church movement” of new evangelical churches.  They were Christ-centered Protestant groups, but not as formal mainstream evangelicals.  They are also more “progressive” in terms of women’s issues and LGBTQ matters. 

They were never an actual part of the emergent movement but I use the language to describe it. They describe themselves as radical Christians but that’s a very loose term. There are many of them in some areas like Philadelphia.  Some are so radical to eschew civilization – kind of like anarchists. More mainstream groups don’t consider them to be preaching the word of God.   

They cared about and worked toward ending racism, poverty, and war, but after a decade personal relations and a couple other issues really strained.  

The narrative gets so detailed that for awhile I thought this was fiction but no, it’s the story of one community church (with several locations) and it’s racially diverse, earnest, and progressive staff.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington,_Philadelphia (Fishtown)  

I’ve been wanting to read something by Applebaum for a long time – a couple years at least – and I finally came to a point where I just bought a copy (Kindle/Audible) of her latest which was also not too long, and read it.  

Autocracy, Inc: 
The Dictators Who Want to Run the World
by Anne Applebaum
Read by author
Rating:  8.75 / modern history 

It’s good and I recommend it if you have any interest in the subject of foreign relations in today’s world.   I think it could be better with some more careful definitions,  but isn’t that a common complaint from me? (LOL!)  And by the final pages I pretty well knew what Applebaum was talking about.  

I went in knowing, in a general way, what an autocracy is, but not quite how to define it.  Is it a dictatorship? It turns out that yes – an autocracy these days is a dictatorship with some special features like networking with other autocracies, the use of sophisticated surveillance techniques for all occasions, and even some constraints on physical movements. But those techniques are also used in the so-called free world, too.  I suppose they are just part of the routine in autocracies.  And if nobody else complains why should the Chinese leaders or population feel put upon?  

And it’s not just China and Russia, Venezuela and others are also tied into the network. Hugo Chavez and others watch as the pillars of democracy, the courts, the press, the civil service and the election structure were changed and either laws were broken or they weren’t but nobody knew because nobody talked about it.  

And with that I’ll also note that if the autocracy is so stringent with surveillance and confinement the people will rise up in protest as they did in Xinjiang China when Covid and the authorities created harsh regulations. If the people get angry about it, they will rise up as they did there in 2022 when the lyrics in their anthem weren’t recognized as dissent – “Rise up, those who refuse to be slaves.”

Autocracy seems to be more of a “sophisticated network”  of  “kleptocratic financial structures” which work with other like-minded national leaders to expand and enhance their financial control over the regular citizens.  But it happens gradually – usually.  A new official decides he would rather stay in power,  free of close scrutiny, doing as they would slide by and nobody talking – skimming the oil money and depositing in accounts around the world, creating housing developments in excess of what could be sold while the leaders were telling the world how they were pro-Democracy

I had read all 6 Greg Isles’ prior Cage novels of this series when #7, the last one (supposedly), was released. It took me a couple weeks, but I finally caved to reading the 950-pages racist and extremely violent narrative which Isles put together.  And, in addition, when Scott Brick reads something it goes over the top because Brick could read a phone book into a thriller.  But even though I considered quitting several times and didn’t always pay strict attention, I finished.  – There is something compelling about it and I’d followed some of these characters for 6 books – (many die).

Southern Man
By Greg Isles 
2024 / 45h 43m
Rating: C / political thriller 
7th of Penn Cage series) 

This is 950-pages turned into 45+ hours of extreme racist politics and gore in a small Mississippi town with deep roots.  The violence had gone on since way prior to the Civil War and that didn’t stop it. 

I only checked out a few people and events, but it looked like Isles did at least some research and then added interracial relationships and heritage along with military weapons and strategies knowledge.   

The other reviewers were right – the average rating would be about a 3 but there are a LOT of 1s (bad) and 5s (greats) with not nearly so many 3s and 4s. I guess you either love it or hate it.  I’m giving it a 3 but that’s because imo, there are glimmers of what could have been a much better novel and I did finish it so that says something.  

Salman Rushdie was 75 years old in 2022 – and so was I. So when, in the first pages of his newly released book, Knife, he asks himself the question, “Why didn’t I act?”, possible answers are given. But I didn’t feel like I needed “possible answers” I felt like I knew the answer for Rushdie. I understood that he was in shock and unable to move; He just watched his young, male attacker stride down the aisle and jump forward. Rushdie was thinking that this was his own final act; he was living out a dream, replaying a fear and so he was in shock when the blade went through his skin several times. 

Knife:
Meditations After an Attempted Murder  
By Salman Rushdie
2024 / 6h 22m
Read by author
Rating 10 / memoir 

He says this was his “last innocent evening,” but he’d just been through 20 years of fatwa, hiding and being hidden and using a fake name. Still – August 11, 2021,  was the day he was knifed at a public gathering in an actual assassination attempt. 

I’ve been a Rushdie fan since finally reading The Satanic Verses in 1998 or so – after the hype had died down. . I know I didn’t read it until well into the 21st century. Then, when I took the plunge, I did a double-dip, back-to-back thing. It’s such an excellent book!   (But that review was on my old blog.) 

Now I read his books pretty much as they’re released.  I’ve read about a dozen total.  It’s quite an oeuvre and Knife is a wonderful nonfiction retelling of the day Rushdie’s eye was cut out by a terrorist who had come to see and hear him at the Chautauqua auditorium in upstate New York. It made no difference to “A” (Rushdie’s name for him) that it was 20 years since the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued the fatwa.  

I read Rushdie’s memoir, Jacob Anton, about how Rushdie spent those years in hiding because it seemed there were hordes of Muslims looking to kill him for the crime of depicting a fictionalized and sacrilegious version of Muhammed and his life.  I know when he went anywhere there were security problems and usually large expenses for the countries involved or for Rushdie himself. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbing_of_Salman_Rushdie

One of the best parts of this book (I think) was Rushdie’s mentioning all the books which he was inspired by or just remembered as he lived this drama and wrote the narrative for it.  

Enjoy 

Pardon me but imo, this is one of the stupidest books I’ve ever read. I even tried to return it but it had been on “sale” for me. Finally, I fell asleep at about 3 hours in and woke up after it had ended. I tried to get back into it (as if I ever could) to no avail. There were at least a dozen chapters in the middle section I never did get to –  oh well …   (If I’m enjoying a book and fall asleep I go back to where it makes total sense and go from there. I don’t skip stuff. This one I truly didn’t care.)

KIllers of a Certain Age
 by Deanna Raybourn
2022 / 
Read by Jane Oppenheimer
Rating: D (did-not-finish)

Four single women of a certain age (early 50s, I’d say) have been working for a UK based outfit known to them as “the Museum.”   There they have served as executioners (assassins) for various international groups since college days when they were recruited. The four now perceive they are being let go, fired, retired. And it will be by bullet actually.

I was not amused – I’m well into senior status and retirement (by a dozen years) to where I’m now an elderly person.  

These gals (and that word is probably appropriate) have the attitudes, mouthy ways,  and sexual appetites they had when they were newly hired.  Their job is “to eliminate people who need killing.” 

No thanks.  

To be fair, Maureen Corrigan over at the Washington Post had a different take: 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/13/thriller-killers-of-a-certain-age/

And GoodReads readers gave it a 5!  (Oh my)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60149532-killers-of-a-certain-age

“Thought-provoking true-crime thriller…the book raises urgent questions of balancing public and private good that we’ll likely be dealing with as long as the title implies.”—Wall Street Journal

The Forever Witness: How DNA and Genealogy
Solved a Cold Case Double Murder
By Edward Humes / 2019
Read by author – 10h 46m
Rating’ 8 / true crime

Yep –  this was never a top seller (that I know of) but there are some action and detective work scenes in the first third or so.   But it gets fascinating when it starts dealing with the right of the criminal to privacy. This is a true crime book in more ways than one.    

From the publisher: 

A relentless detective and a civilian genealogist solve a haunting cold case—and launch a crime-fighting revolution that tests the fragile line between justice and privacy.

In November 1987, a young couple from the idyllic suburbs of Vancouver Island on an overnight trip to Seattle vanished without a trace. A week later, the bodies of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and her boyfriend Jay Cook were found in rural Washington. It was a brutal crime, and it was the perfect crime: With few clues and no witnesses in the vast and foreboding Olympic Peninsula, an international manhunt turned up empty, and the sensational case that shocked the Pacific Northwest gradually slipped from the headlines.

In deep-freeze, long-term storage, biological evidence from the crime sat waiting, as Detective Jim Scharf poured over old case files looking for clues his predecessors missed. Meanwhile, 1,200 miles away in California, CeCe Moore began her lifelong fascination with genetic genealogy, a powerful forensic tool that emerged not from the crime lab, but through the wildly popular home DNA ancestry tests purchased by more than 40 million Americans. When Scharf decided to send the cold case’s decades-old DNA to Parabon NanoLabs, he hoped he would finally bring closure to the Van Cuylenborg and Cook families. He didn’t know that he and Moore would make history.

Genetic genealogy, long the province of family tree hobbyists and adoptees seeking their birth families, has made headlines as a cold case solution machine, capable of exposing the darkest secrets of seemingly upstanding citizens. In the hands of a tenacious detective like Scharf, genetic genealogy has solved one baffling killing after another. But as this crime-fighting technique spreads, its sheer power has sparked a national debate: Can we use DNA to catch the murderers among us, yet still protect our last shred of privacy in the digital age—the right to the very blueprint of who we are?
©2022 Edward Humes (P)2022 Penguin Audio

That’s the story Edward Humes, the author, takes us on from the crime itself and a bit of background, to the initial investigations, to dead ends and the cold case file of it, to a genealogical tracing.  

At times it seems too complex a telling with too many threads and factors but they all work together in the end.

This could be a tell-all re unethical lawyers and unethical reporters/media – maybe unethical people in general seeing as how many paparazzi and gossips hover.  It’s quite gritty, starting with the opening pages which tell of the ending for Sydney Bennett, Jack Syzack’s client who was charged with murdering her very young child. 

Blood Money
by James Grippando
2013 / 
Read by Jonathan Davis, 11h 26m
(John Swytek series #10)

It looks bad for the defense  but a last minute finding of 2nd degree murder was selected by the jury.  Then what? 

The follow-up gets twisty and twistier. I was hugely entertained for maybe 45 minutes here and 45 minutes there and then I’d lose track and wait a bit until the story came together for a few more twists.   

This is a very nice book. It has a simple plot which examines the motives and responses of a triangle of adults as they sort through their lives.

Long Island
Colm Toibin – 2024
Read by Jessie Buckley, 9h 28m
Rating – 8. 5 / 20th Century Literary Fiction 
(# 2 in the Eiliss Lacey series)- 

These books should be read in order – the first in the series is Brooklyn in which Eilish moves from Ireland to New York while the second is Long Island taking place about 20 years later.  I didn’t find a third title, but I imagine it will be available in due time – or maybe not. I caught the sense of an ending at the end of this one.

But there are other errors reverberating back 20 years as Eilis Lacey, a 1950w immigrant to the US from Ireland (book 1), and her husband, Tony Fiorello whose own large family is from Italy, look at the pieces of their lives.  There are a few significant relationships which change in some way following a single serious error on the part of a husband.  

I only got this one because it was part of a subscription package and I also thought I’d read and enjoyed the author prior. Had I checked my own blog, here, I would have realized I’d never read anything by Glatt before and the narrator the same – never heard of him.  The samples weren’t anything to further my interest – lol.

The Family Next Door:
The Heartbreaking 
Imprisonment of the 
Thirteen Turpin Siblings 
and Their  
Extraordinary Rescue
by John Glatt / 2019  
Read by Shaun Grindell 8h 1m
Rating –  6/10 – / True Crime 

In all honesty I’d followed the actual story from the time it broke the news in LA. I lived just up the road a couple hundred miles so it was of general interest.  Ever since Ann Rule’s books of the 1990s I have enjoyed the “true crime” genre.  Some of it is excellent stuff these days, including literary value, and although that was likely NOT true in the 1990s, it’s become more true with the years. This book, otoh, is only worth those parts of the whole tale you’re not familiar with.  And it does tie up some ends I suppose.  This is NOT Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (published in 1966).  

Louise and David Turpin of Princeton, West Virginia married young, relocated and started a family. Being a computer engineer, David had good job prospects so they eventually settled their 13 children in Paris, California.

Homeschooling helped cover their tracks but it was in Paris when Jordon was 17 years old that Jordon escaped, told the police and life for the Turpin children changed forever.

I was not particularly interested in the first 2/3rds or so, although there was plenty I hadn’t read or seen somewhere.  What was interesting to me was how, after the rescue, the neighbors came together for the kids – heartwarming! And then came some basic hospital and recovery time.followed by the trials.

I think my primary reason for reading this was to find out how everyone is doing today, after some basic hospital and recovery time. 5 yeas later.

Bottom line? – Although some parts were very interesting, the book as a whole wasn’t really worth the bother.  The narratoronly made things worse.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turpin_case

and many photos on the internet.

Another winner from the Joe Pickett series – #12!

Force of Nature 
by C.J. Box 
Read by David Chandler 10h 39m
Rating – A/ Mystery
12 in Joe Pickett series) 

Box keeps brining the good ones out (although I’m still catching up).

Of course he starts out in his stomping grounds in eastern Montana where Joe has taken on a trainee. This is good although the kid is a bit naive.

Then his good old buddy Nate Romanowski, shows up somehow bringing his past along. And the book proceeds through Nate’s background until he “lands” in Cheyenne. This“violent, bloody, and quite satisfying thriller” as many reviews have cleverly called the book, takes stunning twists and turns to the ultimate conclusion. I greatly enjoyed it – an addition to the series.

The Finnish historian Pekka Hamalainen, currently teaching in Oxford, England specializes in US Native Americans and their history.  “Indigenous Continent” is his third book on the subject and he describes a “four-centuries-long war,” in which Native Americans “won as often as not.”

Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America 
Pekka Hamalainen, 
Read by Kaipo Schwab 18h 44m
592 pages
Rating 10
(Both read and listened 2x) 
But this is my second read. 
*********

I find that after 15 months and with a nice slow read as well as a dob of thinking, I have no problems with Hamalainen’s almost over-arching main thesis,  but the necessary supporting points don’t quite hold up.  I still give the book a rating of 10.  

I think the take-over of what is now the US by European and American immigrants was inevitable BUT!!!! That certainly wasn’t foreseeable until 1848 .  

First -the Native American population in North America was already plunging and continued for many years due to disease spreading from European contact in South America. The declining population started before either the Massachusetts Bay Company or the Virginia Colony were first settled.  

Meanwhile, in Europe the population almost doubled between 1550 and 1700 due to increased food supply and health amenities (like sanitation). Not only that but in England the Enclosure Acts reduced public land.  

1890: Native population plunges
In the U.S., Native population falls to an all-time low. The 1890 census records 237,196 Native people—a decrease of approximately 95 percent from a population in 1491 that some historians estimate at more than 100 million.
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/379.html#:~:text=The%201890%20census%20records%20237%2C196,at%20more%20than%20100%20million.

I think Hamalainen wants to recast the story of Euro- and Indigenous Americans in North American history,  portraying the Native American people NOT as victims, but as “powerful actors who profoundly shaped the course of events.”  According to him the conflict “was a four-centuries-long war,” in which “Indians won as often as not.”  

We had to read a section of this back in college days – Poli Sci 101, I believe, 1972.  I recognized a passage when I saw/heard it a couple hours ago. And we had the same photo of him in which he always reminded me of Nikita Khrushchev (below under book https://www.supersummary.com/the-true-believer/summary/#

The True Believer 
by Eric Hoffer 
Read by Fred Sanders 5h 16m
Rating – 7 / (Health and Wellness???) 

I wonder if anyone at Audible.com has read this –  do they really think it should be categorized as Health and Wellness / Psychology and Mental Health as a second alternative.  

Yah?  Okay fine, but … (lol) back in the day the New Yorker said, “Its theme is political fanaticism, with which it deals severely and brilliantly.”  While the Wall St. Journal mentioned its “concise insight into what drives the mind of the fanatic and the dynamics of a mass movement”

A stevedore on the San Francisco docks in the 1940s, Eric Hoffer wrote philosophical treatises in his spare time while living in the railroad yards. The True Believer—the first and most famous of his books—was made into a bestseller when President Eisenhower cited it during one of the earliest television press conferences.

Called a “brilliant and original inquiry” and “a genuine contribution to our social thought” by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., this landmark in the field of social psychology is completely relevant and essential for understanding the world today as it delivers a visionary, highly provocative look into the mind of the fanatic and a penetrating study of how an individual becomes one. 

I will surely have to read this again – if I feel like it.  I’m afraid it’s dated in places and right on target in places Hoffer didn’t intend.   

I’m wondering which author his voice sounds like – a philosopher probably. Oh of course –  Montaigne! Michael de Montaigne France,  It was mentioned by Hoffer himself in the Preface. The style is very structured with short, clipped sentences. But unlike Montaigne’s Essays, the whole book is short (200 pages?) and divided into 4 Parts and then with many 2 or 3-page Sections. Again, not too different from Montaigne, whose work Hoffer very much appreciated.  Hoffer makes pronouncements, not suggestions –  he shares some examples,  but there are very few source notes.  He got it published in 1951 when he was 

Overview

Another reviews and comments said the book was a philosophical treatise that explores the question of why ordinary people join mass movements and become fanatical devotees of what they perceive as a holy cause. Hoffer argues that prospective fanatics—the soon-to-be true believers—experience personal frustration so intense that their strongest desire is to lose their individuality altogether by surrendering to something greater than themselves. Mass movements exploit this frustration by offering true believers an escape from personal responsibility. Furthermore, the precise nature of the mass movement—its doctrines, objectives, and programs—means little compared to its ability to attract and mold fanatics by offering them refuge from an unwanted self. The True Believer was a critical success upon publication and has remained a famous work on the nature and psychology of mass movements ever since. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan conferred on Hoffer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

https://www.supersummary.com/the-true-believer/summary/#

Cold Wind  opens with a scene which is kind of ghastly, but at the same time it’s LOL-worthy. If you visualize the situation and hear Joe’s words to Marybeth about Missy – you can’t help but laugh.  And it gets that way every so often throughout the book. It’s not as gritty and fem-jeop as the recent priors in this series. 

Cold Wind
C.J. Box
Read by David Chandler 11h 13m
2011 / 
Rating: A+   /  mystery
(#11 in Joe Pickett series)

When I visualized the situation and read/heard Joe’s words to Marybeth about Missy I couldn’t help but laugh.  And it gets that way every so often throughout the book. It’s not as gritty and fem-jeop as Box’s recent priors in this, or the Cassie Dewell series, and I’m glad of that.

Earl Alden, the millionaire 5th husband of Missy who is Marybeth’s mother and so Joe Piekcett’s mother-in-law, is found at the top of a wind-tower tied to a wind-blade. Missy gets arrested. This is the first plot line.  

The second plot line involves Nate Romanowski, Joe’s close but very mysterious friend, who has connections to all manner of people from CIA to underworld crime. Suddenly Nate is apparently being hunted. 

Box gets a bit gritty in some of these Joe Pickett books but so far I’m okay if I leave enough space between books.This one I thoroughly enjoyed and look forward to #12, Force of Nature.
.  



 

I accidentally missed this Michael Stagg/Nate Shephard book last week, but caught that error quickly and remedied it – finished today. The series was all on sale this last week and I’d read the first 3 prior but I had 4 books to go so I bought them and started in … on #5 – lol!~) 

False Oath 
By Michael Stagg
Read by George Newbern 12h 5m
2022 – 
Rating –  A++ / legal thriller 
(#4 in Nate Shepherd series)

Nate Shepherd is a young widowed criminal lawyer who works in the northern part of Ohio up next to the Michigan state line. That plays a part in this plot as well as in the plots of some others in the series.  Although he lives alone, Nate’s family also lives nearby.

This “legal drama,” the 1950’s/Perry Mason-ish word for it, is quite suspenseful addition to the series. But it’s not quite what I think of when I think “thriller.”

Brett Daniels, father of Colton and Tyler Daniels. is found dead in the woods behind the house where those three live together with their golden lab. He was apparently killed with an arrow from a cross-bow and left for the coyotes he was hunting. The boys’ mother, Rhonda, lives with her long-term boyfriend just across the state line in Michigan. The boys are star football players and when Colt was a senior in high school last year, the team lost the championship games. This year Tyler is the star quarterback and they’re winning the games.  Dad has been very hard on both boys since they were born, but his treatment of Colton was probably worse – borderline abuse.

Tom, the brother of Nate, our series lawyer, is the football coach at the local high school and has coached both of his talented nephews boys.  The evidence shows, obviously, according to the prosecutor, that Colton had solid motive and opportunity when he killed his father with a cross-bow. The plot line is complex and very carefully built with plenty of twists and tension – just no high speed car chases or graphic beatings – lol. . 

I was kind of lost for the first few chapters because I know next to nothing about football, but when that got taken care of, about 1/4 of the way in, I was hooked and the tension built to a great ending.  

Good book!  It’s older, published first in 2008, and it wasn’t quite what I expected either, but still, like I said, “Good book!”  

The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the  Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century
by Edward Dolnick 
Audible – 2023. (original print 2008) 
Read by Paul Heitsch 11h 46m
Rating:  9 / nonfiction, art 

I’ve read several books about art thieves and for some reason I was expecting something like them.  It’s categorized as “True Crime,” and yes, forgery is that, but I was expecting a bit more of the thriller type narrative.  

There are two kinds of forgery – one is simple copying – make a fake Renoir. – Do not do this with the works of any living artist because he will name them and claim them. Too bad.  There is also the forgery which is “original,” but said to be a “lost” or “very early” work of (famous artist) and yes it is “in the style of” and technically as accurate as can be ini terms of “canvas,” type of paint, effects of aging and all manner of things pertaining to the works of their “famous artist” who lived decades or centuries ago.   

This book is about forgery in general but far more specifically about the Vermeer forgeries of Han van Meegeren (Dutch, 1889-1947). Then it gets down to the exact point, his greatest forgery, “Supper at Emmaus.”   After I got about 1/3 through, I was fine with it and now I really wish I’d gotten the Kindle version,  listened more carefully.  I might still do that later anyway. Suffice it to say the book is about much more than the famous forger Han van Meegeren and I’ve been able to find quite a lot by googling. 

Much of this is gossip and scandal but there is also quite a lot of information and history regarding the art, skill and science of forgery as well as the story of Han van Meegeren.  There are also very brief biographical sketches of other  artists, critics, and historians.  If you enjoy reading this type of thing it’s quite fun.  

But the best part is the last third or so – when Meegeren’s “masterpiece,” “Supper at Emmasus’” is brought to the experts and the public and then examined. It was a forgery, a skill at which Meegeren excelled – technically.  Stylistically, as his own painter under his own name, he was not much good at all and we, in the 2020s can certainly see that. But folks, including the art experts, in Europe during WWII were more vulnerable for reasons Dolnick goes into.   And there’s more… 🙂

Enjoy –  

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/misc/van_meegeren.html