Category: BookLust I

Too Many Cooks

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Stout, Rex. Too Many Cooks. Bantam Books, 1983.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November in honor of Rex Stout’s first Nero Wolfe mystery.

The only thing that can get Nero Wolfe to leave his brownstone in New York City is…not much. In Too Many Cooks he is persuaded to join a group of chefs for a sauce competition as their guest of honor. Even though he is the judge of honor that doesn’t mean someone can’t be murdered right under his nose. Indeed, someone is stabbed in the pantry. This is a case in which Archie and Nero do not get much sleep. Everyone must be interviewed and interviewed again. The slightest lie could crack the case. But when Nero’s life is threatened, the question becomes will he have enough time to figure out the mystery before he is the next dead man?
Every time I read a Nero Wolfe mystery I learn a little more about the man. This time I discovered that Wolfe hates things that move (especially trains). He calls it enginephobia. He doesn’t like to be touched nor does he like to haggle. He still loves his beer, though! In Too Many Cooks he also loves a particular sausage recipe. Archie, his main sidekick, describes himself as a secretary, a bodyguard, an office manager, an assistant detective, and a goat.

Quote I loved, “…Once again I had to follow his taillights without knowing the road” (Archie talking about working with Nero) (p 81-82). Archie exaggerates. He knows the meaning behind every gesture Wolfe makes. Here is another: “Do you realize that that fool is going to let that fool make a fool of him again?” (p 128).

Author fact: Rex Stout’s parents were Quakers.

Book trivia: the foreword to Too Many Cooks is hilarious. Archie is worried about the spelling of French words.

Playlist: Beethoven and Wagner.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss (p 226).

Eye of the Fleet

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Woodman, Richard. An Eye of the Fleet. Pinnacle Books, 1981.

Reason read: February is History Month.

Woodman draws from actual events to bring the action in An Eye of the Fleet to life. His detailed descriptions of the various sailing vessels is extraordinary. Readers cannot say they do not know what a frigate looks like after reading An Eye of the Fleet. Beyond boats, readers will build an extensive lexicon of nautical terminology by the end of the book. Phrases like carrying canvas and yardarms blocks will become common knowledge. If you have ever wondered what a battle at sea sounded, looked, or even smelled like, Eye of the Fleet will take you there hook line and sinker.
Beyond a nautical education readers will meet Midshipman Nathaniel Drinkwater as he begins his nautical career aboard the HMS Cyclops. It is a thrilling coming of age of sorts as young Drinkwater helps his crewmates capture other vessels and battle privateers with cannons, pistols and hand to hand combat. The skirmishes are bloody and deadly but so is life aboard the HMS Cyclops. Drinkwater has to navigate relationships with his fellow sailors as well. One particular run-in with a bully forces Drinkwater to fight back with intensity. This antagonist adds tension beyond the battles at sea.
Gradually, Drinkwater comes into his own as a leader and a romantic. An Eye of the Fleet ends with Nathaniel dreaming of a young woman back in England.

Author fact: I think this goes without saying judging by the detailed descriptions of the boats in An Eye of the Fleet, but Mr. Woodman has sailing experience in all kinds of ships. He was a member of the Society for Nautical Research.

Book trivia: An Eye of the Fleet is the first book in the Nathaniel Drinkwater Midshipman Series.
Second book trivia: my (borrowed) copy of An Eye of the Fleet was signed by Mr. Woodman.

As an aside, I couldn’t ignore the Natalie connection to An Eye of the Fleet. Natalie released an album called Leave Your Sleep. It featured a song called “Nursery Rhyme of Innocence and Experience” originally written by Charles Causley as a poem for children. Woodman’s description of battle-scarred boats reminded me of Natalie singing, “and the flash and rigging were shot away…”

BookLust: from Book Lust in the simple chapter called “Sea Stories” (p 217).

Lee’s Lieutenants: Manassas

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Freeman, Douglas Southall. Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command, Volume One – Manassas to Malvern Hill. Arlington Edition, 1942.

Reason read: Robert E. Lee was born in January. Read in his honor.

Freeman opens the first volume of Lee’s Lieutenants by explaining why and how he started the study in command of the Civil War. He offers suggestions as to why other authors wrote the books they did on the same subject and how his is different. His version is a well-researched biography of major and minor personalities which includes a photograph portrait, a paragraph outlining the military success of each soldier, as well as an interesting fact, such as birthdays, birth places, who had a sense of humor, who had a lisp, who needed alcohol for motivation, and who had haunting eyes (and speaking of haunting eyes, I think “Stonewall” Jackson had beautiful eyes and I found Daniel Harvey Hill most attractive). Freeman used a myriad of sources, including journals, letters and previously published interviews. From these sources, he is able to provide minute by minute descriptions of each battle; of each mission.
One of the most fascinating details of Lee’s Lieutenants was the stark contrast between the assumption of a situation at Headquarters and what was actually happening on the battlefield. Glory seeking exaggerations abounded. Who could take credit for the success at Manassas is a good example. What was so sad is that despite the lack of communication, both Headquarters and the battlefield thought that the battle at Manassas would decide and end the war.

As an aside, I am constantly comparing American football to war. The similarities are endless: both have sides or teams, both wear uniforms to tell each other apart, someone is appointed captain or general to lead the battle, both have an offense and defense, both have “battle plans” and charge down the field, both wear protective gear to keep from getting hurt, both set up positions along the playing field. When a quarterback throws a ball it is often referred to as a rocket. Both have “blitzes”. When a player has a particular skill, it is referred to as a weapon (secret or not). In both football and war, a strategy is to inflict enough pain to take someone out of play.

Quotes to quote, “Involved as all this was, it might have been simplified if it had been understood. It was not” (p 55).

Author fact: Douglas Southall Freeman died nearly 72 years ago.

Book trivia: There is at least another 200 page book just of footnotes.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Civil War Nonfiction” (p 58). What Pearl does not tell you is that Lee’s Lieutenants: a Study in Command is not one 700+ page book. There are several volumes.

Red Box

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Stout, Nero. The Red Box. Bantam, 1937.

Reason read: to continue the series started in December in honor of Stout’s birth month.

The Red Box opens with a peculiar murder. Fashion model Molly Lauck was poisoned after eating a piece of candy. The mystery seems impossible to solve. Molly provided the box of candy from somewhere. This all happened in the middle of a fashion show with hundreds of people in attendance. Nero Wolfe does not need to visit the scene of the crime to know what happened. Based on interviews and the observations of his partner, Archie, Wolfe solves the case. Of course he does.
Nero Wolfe fans will be pleased to know that the details remain the same after four books. I know I love it when mysteries refer back to previous cases or when details remain consistent. Wolfe still lives on 35th Street in a brownstone. He still has over 10,000 orchids. Plant time is still between 9am and 11am and 4pm to 6pm without fail. Theo Horstmann is still Wolfe’s orchid caretaker. Archie Goodwin is still his trusty sidekick (and has been for nine years now). Fritz Grenner is still his chef. [As an aside, one detail I did not remember was Wolfe collecting bottle caps.]

As an aside, I went to high school with a woman with the same exact name as one of the characters. We were not exactly friends but people were always comparing us because we looked similar. I wonder what happened to her?

Quotes to quote, “I am not immoveable, but my flesh has a constitutional reluctance to sudden, violent or sustained displacement” (p 3), “Of course there was the off chance that she was a murderess, but you can’t have everything” (p 77) and Archie to Nero, “You’re the without which nothing” (p 209).

Author fact: Stout was the sixth of nine children.

Book trivia: Red Box was published in 1937 as the fourth book in the Nero Wolfe series. It includes an introduction by Carolyn G. Hart.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

Eddie and the Cruisers

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Kluge, P.F. Eddie and the Cruisers. Viking Press, 1980.

Reason read: Kluge’s birth month is in January. Read in his honor.

If you think about it, the premise for Eddie and the Cruisers is pretty simple. A year out of college, in 1958, Frank “Wordman” Ridgeway joins the band Eddie and the Parkway Cruisers. Front man Eddie is a charismatic and ambitious singer who knows his music is going to make it big. For awhile Eddie is right. He’s got the talent. He’s got the looks. He’s got the girl. Like all creatives, Eddie’s demise comes when he takes his music in another direction and his listeners don’t understand; worse, they hate it. Eddie rages into the night and has a horrible accident, ending his life. Back to narrator, Frank Ridgeway. Twenty years later, Frank is an English teacher and has put Eddie and the Cruisers far behind him. That is, until he starts hearing Cruisers songs on the radio and he is visited by a reporter wanting to know about recordings that went missing – Eddie and the Parkway Cruisers tape recordings from “that” night. Memories come flooding back and all of a sudden Wordman needs to know what happened to the rest of the band. More importantly, where are those tapes?
While the novel takes a dark and ominous turn towards the end, I enjoyed Frank’s naïve narrative. It truly was a coming of age story for the Wordman.

Author fact: Kluge wrote a bunch of books and I am reading seven of them for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Kluge is clever. There are a bunch of sly references that people might not get: Gary Gilmore. Do people even know who he is anymore? And who will get the “Fairly Ridiculous” reference? I only did because I went to the Teaneck Ridiculous (as apposed to the Madison campus Kluge referred to in the book).
Additional (obvious) book trivia: I think everyone knows Eddie and the Cruisers was made into a movie of the same name. I actually got to see it for the first time last weekend! And! And. And, there is a sequel…Eddie Lives! Great googly moogly!

Music (and you know there is going to be a lot): “Auld Lang Syne”, “Ballad of Davy Crockett”, Barry Manilow, Bee Gees, Bill Haley, Billy Eckstine, Bo Diddley, Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Want to Dance?”, Buddy Holly, Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together”, Carly Simon, Charlie and Inez Foxx, Chuck Berry, Coasters’ “Searchin'”, “Young Blood”, Debbie Reynolds’ “Tammy”, Del Vikings, Diana Ross, Dinah Washington, Donna Summer, Drifters’ “Ruby Baby”, Elvis Presley’s “Teddy Bear”, “Love Me Tender”, Eddie Cochran, Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Frankie Laine, Frankie Lyman’s “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”, Funky Company, Gene Vincent, Glenn Miller, Gogi Grant, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Ink Spots, Isaac Hayes, James Brown, James Taylor, Janis Joplin, Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shaking Goin’ On”, Jim Croce’s “I Got a Name”, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Reed, John Denver, Johnny Lee, Johnny Mathis, Jose Feliciano, Judy Garland, Kay Kyser, Kris Kristofferson, LaVern Baker, Lee Andrews and the Hearts’ “Teadrops”, Leonard Warren, Liberace, Linda Ronstadt’s “Blue Bayou”, Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally”, Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Mills Brothers, Muddy Waters, national anthem, Nolan Strong’s “The Wind”, Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay”, Pat Boone’s “Love Letters in the Sand”, Paul Anka’s “Having My Baby”, “Peggy Sue”, “Purple People Eater”, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”, Ray Charles’ “Moonlight Gambler”, Rod Stewart, Roy Hamilton’s ” Ebb Tide”, Roy Orbison, Rufus Thomas, Russ Colombo, Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come”, the Stones, “Stranded in the Jungle”, “Sunday Kind of Love”, Teresa Brewer, “When the Moon Hits Your Eye Like a Big Pizza Pie”, Wayne Newton, and Woody Herman.

Eddie and the Cruisers Songs: On the Dark Side, Blue Lady, Down on My Knees, Far-Away Woman, Fast Exit, It’ll Happen Tonight, Leaving Town, Some Kind of Loving, These Oldies But Goodies Remind Me of You, the Tide, and Call On Me.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “P.F. Kluge: Too Good To Miss” (p 139).

Crazy Creek

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Lampman, Evelyn Sibley. Crazy Creek. Doubleday & Co., 1948.

Reason read: When I was a child, every January I would chose a stack of books to read over the course of a year. This is in memory of that child.

In a nutshell, a young girl named Judy takes a refurbished boat out on Crazy Creek without knowing the river or how to control the boat. After she crashes the boat, two boys rescue her. Strangely enough, they have her last name. Stranger still, she recognizes one of them as her grandfather.
Confessional: when I realized how the ending was shaping up I couldn’t help but be reminded of the Wizard of Oz. I hope that wasn’t too much of a spoiler alert, but the conclusions are very similar. It also explained why Judy was never overtly homesick while away from her modern day family. She is away from her true family for a year and yet the only time she gets weepy is at Christmas, remembering their traditions.

Author fact: Lampman was born in 1908 and died in 1980.

Book trivia: Crazy Creek is not the most popular of books written by Lampman. The Shy Stegosaurus gets more attention. I’m not reading that one for the Challenge.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the introduction (p x).

Case-Book

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Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Sherlock Holmes: The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. Doubleday & Company, 1922.

Reason read: to complete the series started a long, long time ago in honor of Doyle’s birth month.

The best stories come to life when the personality of Sherlock Holmes gets to shine through his investigative brilliance. It is in Case-Book that readers are reminded that Sherlock is his most human self when he relaxes in a Turkish bath.

As an aside, Sherlock reminded me of Nero Wolfe in The League of Frightened Men when he refused to help Colonel Damery.

The stories:

  • Adventure of the Illustrious Client – Baron Gruner is known as the Austrian murderer who supposedly killed his wife. Will he kill his latest fiancé? Why is the woman dead set (pun intended) on marrying this man?
  • Adventure of the Blanched Soldier – crime is not always at the root of a case for Holmes. This time a man hides his pale face for a completely different reason.
  • Adventure of the Mazarin Stone – the theft of a missing crown jewel.
  • Adventure of the Three Gables – a tale of what one person will do to keep their reputation clean.
  • Adventure of the Sussex Vampire – a mother is accused of being a vampire.
  • Adventure of the Three Garridebs – a weird scam so that a villain could acquire a counterfeiter’s printing press.
  • The Problem of Thor Bridge – a woman is found dead. Could the murderer have been her husband’s younger and more beautiful mistress?
  • Adventure of the Creeping Man – what would make a respected professor act like a monkey?
  • Adventure of the Lion’s Mane – Did a man kill his friend over a woman?
  • Adventure of the Veiled Lodger – What happens when a murder plot goes horribly wrong.
  • Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place – how far would a man go to hide his sister’s demise?
  • Adventure of the Retired Colourman – A man experiences the ultimate betrayal…or did he?

BookLust Twist: this will be the last time that will I say this does not come from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 123). The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes is not listed.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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Joyce, James. The Portable James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Viking Press, 1981.

Reason read: James Joyce was born on February 2nd. He and I share the same birth date. I also needed a book for the 2024 Portland Public Library Reading Challenge in the category of a book someone you know did not like. Portrait was an easy choice. Not many people like Joyce.

Stephen Dedalus, being James Joyce’s alter ego, is a study in personal and spiritual growth. The subtext is one of sexual awakening; a coming of age, if you will. Stephen navigates life with contradictory moments of trepidation and vigor. He believes that in order to be a great artist one needs to suffer for the art. A self imposed exile and abandonment of family is critical for success. Not unlike Joyce’s own journey to becoming an accomplished author.
The trick to reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is to not take every sentence as gospel. Every detail is not going to be on some final exam. Read Joyce like you are on an acid trip. Tiptoe across the run-on sentences and uber microscopic details and you will be just fine. If it helps, Joyce was experimenting with different ways to write literature. They didn’t always make sense.

Lines I liked, “He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld” (p 77), “Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind” (p 335).

Author fact: Joyce’s full name was James Augustine Aloysius Joyce.

Book trivia: The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was adapted into a film in 1977.

Playlist: “Lily of Kilarney”, “O, Twine Me a Bower”, “Bluest Eyes and Golden Hair”, and “The Groves of Blarney”.

Nancy said: Pearl called Joyce an influence on all other Irish writers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapters called “Irish Fiction” (p 125) and “100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1910s (p 175).

Rubber Band

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Stout, Rex. Rubber Band. Bantam Books, 1986.

Reason read: to continue the series started last month. Also, Rex Stout was born in December.

The immediate mystery in Rubber Band is that $30,000 has gone missing from a Vice President Muir’s desk drawer. He is convinced he knows who took it. Anthony D. Perry, President of Seaboard Products Corporation, takes offense to the accusation because the alleged culprit, Miss Fox, is his alleged mistress. The secondary mystery involves a group known as the Rubber Band. They are owed money for freeing a man destines for hanging. George Rowley killed a man but escaped punishment due to a seemingly cooked up story about an inheritance. He bribed his way to escape then conveniently never paid the group who freed him. Miss Fox is involved in both cases.
Here are the things I appreciate about the Wolfe series: Rex Stout pays homage to Arthur Conan Doyle by having a picture of Sherlock Holmes over Archie’s desk and the consistencies – Archie, who has lived with Nero for eight years, will always go on and on about Wolfe’s weight. Nero’s time with his beloved 10,000 orchids never varies (9am – 11am and 4pm – 6pm), nor will he alter this schedule for anyone or anything.

The one thing I didn’t appreciate about Stout’s writing. I was constantly considering the time of Stout’s writing. Archie is a little sexist referring to women as “little girls” and using other disparaging remarks.

Line I laughed at, “…she had the kind of voice that makes you want to observe it in the flesh” (p 10).

As an aside, I want to create an Archie Dictionary. Has anyone already done this? Here are some words I would include: bird=guy, bean=brain, pink=kill, faded=retreated, lamped=observed and brass=courage.

Author fact: Rex Stout was born in Noblesville, Indiana in 1886. As an aside, I am reading forty-two more Nero Wolfe mysteries. Hopefully, I will be able to find 42 more facts about his creator. Sigh. [As an aside, according to the back page of Rubber Band Rex Stout wrote 72 Nero Wolfe mysteries by the time he died. I am not reading the thirty short stories.]

Book trivia: the front cover of my copy of Rubber Band is humorous. Rex Stout is “the grand master of detection” and Nero Wolfe, complete with a portly silhouette, is “the world’s most brilliant detective.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout: Too Good To Miss” (p 227).

Empire Express

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Bain, David Howard. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. Penguin, 2000.

Reason read: November is Train Month.

Bain used an extraordinary list of sources for his epic history of the birth of the transcontinental railroad. Everything from autobiographies, essays, letters, biographies, trial transcripts, historical pamphlets, pioneer atlases, private papers, railroad reports, manuscripts, government documents, and periodicals…just to name a few sources. Not quite doorstop heft, Empire Express is an impressive true life, detail-dense, historical adventure, just shy of 800 pages. It covers thirty years of savvy entrepreneurship and brilliant engineering. He describes how Robert Mills proposed something resembling a steam train in 1819 while Asa Whitney was a firm believer in the 2,400 mile railway. The end of the Civil War brought a hunger to connect the East with the wild western plains. The Rocky Mountains proved to be a formidable obstacle so military topographical engineers sent out expeditions to solve the problem. These were the days of gold rush frenzies. By 1842 imaginations fused with innovation and the iron rails began to span the country. Bain included details of a buffalo hunt gone awry and white men wanting to witness a fight between “the hostiles” as if it is was a farcical Broadway musical. [Sometimes history is just ridiculous.] There was even a first hand description of a scalping. [As an aside, who in their right mind would tan a scalp and then put it on display in the public library in the children’s section?]

Author fact: Bain is from my home away from home state of New Jersey.

Book trivia: the series of black and white photographs in Empire Express are as beautiful as they are awe inspiring.

Setlist: “Waiting for the Wagon”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Riding the Rails: Railroad History” (p 200). Also included in More Book Lust in the chapter called “The Beckoning Road” (p 19). I would argue that this book does not belong in this section at all.

Inherit the Wind

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Lawrence, Jerome and Robert E. Lee. Inherit the Wind. Ballantine Books, 2007.

Reason read: two reasons, actually. John Jay was born in December. Inherit the Wind is about a trial. Second reason – I needed a play for the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge.

The title of the play, Inherit the Wind, comes from Proverbs, “He that troubleth his own shall inherit the wind…” (p 126). Bert Cates, a young schoolteacher, is jailed for deliberately telling students about Charles Darwin and the Origin of Species. In this deeply religious town, Cates knew he would cause trouble. Brady comes to town to prosecute this willful lawbreaker. Even though this takes place in the 1920s, some things never change. The verdict of this trial could change the course of politics for it is an election year…
Stage direction: it is important for the concept of the play that the town always be visible. The town serves as a reminder for the audience that the entire community is vested in this trial.
Inherit the Wind was originally copyrighted as an unpublished work in 1950. In my 2007 copy the reader is cautioned that the story is not a history but rather inspired by true events of the Scopes/Monkey trial.

Lines I liked, “You never pushed a noun against a verb except to blow something up” (p 127).

Book trivia: the play was performed in New York City in 1955 starring Tony Randall and Ed Begley. It was performed again in New York City in 2007 starring Christopher Plummer and Brian Dennehy. As an aside, Brian Dennehy played the father in one of my favorite laugh-out-loud stupid movies, Tommy Boy.

Author(s) fact: Lawrence and Lee met in 1942 and wrote four screenplays together.

Songs: “Marching to Zion”, “Gimme That Old Time Religion”, and “Go Tell It On the Mountain”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “What a Trial That Was!” (p 243).

Streets of Laredo

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McMurtry, Larry. Streets of Laredo. Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Reason read: to finished the series started in June in honor of McMurtry’s birth month.

By all accounts, no one should love Woodrow Call. He is small-framed, cantankerous, old and weary. He keeps to himself; a self-confirmed bachelor and loner. He does not suffer fools and hates conversation, even with the smarter ones. Since the death of his best friend, Augustus McCrae, in McMurtry’s previous book, Lonesome Dove, Woodrow Call has given up cattle ranching and is spending his twilight years as a bounty hunter. Never one to shy away from danger, he is now on the trail of a young train hustler who has a death wish. Except Call has lost his speed and agility. He is no longer the feared Texas Ranger. He is no longer the spirited cattle rancher. He is only a man hellbent on bringing a violent man to justice.
Streets of Laredo is a return to violence. Luckily, strong women like Lorena play a pivotal role in keeping the plot from becoming a bloodbath.

Missed opportunity: a large gathering of crows is not called a crowd. As cool as that sounds, a group of crows is actually called a murder. That would have been the perfect name for a town.

Line I liked, “He knew that women were sometimes fond of cats, though the reason for the attraction escaped him” (p 42).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Western Fiction” (p 240).

Pity of War

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Ferguson, Niall. The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. Perseus Books, 1999.

Reason read: Armistice Day is November 11th. We have been observing the day since 1918.

Ferguson thinks World War I is not given the respect it deserves. The Civil War and World War II are more widely written about than World War I. His book, The Pity of War, sets out to explain the war in detail by answering ten questions about the war:
1. Why didn’t the Germans win the war?
2. What kept the men fighting through terrible conditions?
3. What made the men finally stop fighting?
4. Who really won the peace?
5. Was World War I inevitable?
6. Why did Germany start the war?
7. Why did Britain get involved?
8. Did the war keep going due to well placed propaganda?
9. Was the war popular on the home front?
10. Why didn’t the British Empire defeat the Central Powers?
In truth, I felt that there was a sort of pissing contest going on about the different wars: which one lost the most men, which country financed which war more, how bloody was each battle…needless to say, they were all pretty horrible.
The table of International Alignments from 1815 to 1917 was pretty helpful. It is hard to believe that in the beginning there was Anglo-German cooperation surrounding finance. Ferguson describes the moments leading up to war minute by minute. Britain went to war at 11pm on August 14th, 1914. Can we learn from history? Few soldiers knew why they were fighting. they blames their involvement solely on the assassination of the Archduke and his wife. Here are other influences, the brilliant marketing of the Parlimentary Recruiting Committee: speeches, letters, posters, leaflets, surging military bands, and news articles. Psychological pressures of wives wanting brave husbands, the peer pressure of friends, the economy, national pride, ignorance of war, and sheer impulse to “try it.” Ferguson goes on to examine why soldiers stayed in the war even though it was sheer hell. He questions the positive effects of war and the adittance that some soldiers actually enjoyed the fight.
Ferguson’s Pity of War is chock full of detailed statistics like food consumption and the fact that Hitler did not approve of holiday cease-fire truces, such as Christmas Day.

Does an arms race accelerate the likelihood of war?
As an aside, Ferguson made me laugh with his tongue-in-cheek comment about George Bernard Shaw being “cranky.”
As another aside, I believe every man made decision is exactly that, man made. War. Peace. Debt. Excess. Behind it all is a person or a group of people. We have the power to change every wrong decision. When we say something is caught up in red tape, we are not talking about a machine denying us. We are talking about people denying people. If something is complicated it is because people, human beings, want it that way.

Author fact: Ferguson’s grandfather served in the Second Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders. That explains his passion for World War I.

Book trivia: Pity of War contains black and white photographs of WWI images. Some of the photos are from the private collections of soldiers.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “World War I Nonfiction” (p 251).

Interview with the Vampire

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Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. Buccaneer Books, 2006.

Reason read: The movie version of Interview with the Vampire was released in November. Read in honor of the event I did not attend.

This was supposed to be an interview with a very young reporter who wants to write the biography of a vampire. Louis de Pointe du Lac the Vampire agrees to sit down with the unnamed interviewer and share his life story. I was expecting more of a dialogue; a back and forth of questions and answers. Instead, in more of a monologue, Louis shares the romantic history of his vampire beginnings in New Orleans in 1791. Despondent after the death of his family, Louis meets Lestat who convinces him to chose immortality over suicide. With Vampire Lestat as his cruel creator and mentor, Louis learns to avoid the sun, sleep in coffins and experience the exquisite pleasure of the hunt; learning how to drink blood to stay alive (their immortality is conditional on that detail). Yet Louis can not let go of his humanness, drinking the blood of animals and avoiding humans altogether. He is too kind for his kind. Young, beautiful and extremely clever Claudia is his first human feasting. As a child vampire, she is full of grace, passion and intelligence. Louis becomes infatuated with her. It is she who convinces Louis that together, they must kill Lestat and run away to Europe (Transylvania) to find more vampires like themselves. The “couple” end up in France where they find a troupe of vampires and even more danger than they bargained for. The France section of Interview with the Vampire drags quite a bit. Some vampires finally die and I’ll leave it at that, as I will be reading Lestat’s biography next.
Confessional: I did not expect Interview with the Vampire to be so sensual. The act of drinking blood was portrayed as borderline erotic. Yet, “Louie” is a goofy name for a vampire who has lived over 200 years.

Author fact: Rice was an atheist for thirty-eight years. Interview with the Vampire was a search for God and her first novel. Brava!

Book trivia: as mentioned before, Interview with the Vampire was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise. Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst in 1994.

Music: Mozart

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Caught in the Web of Words

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Murray, Katherine Maud Elisabeth. Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary. Yale University Press, 2001.

Reason read: November is National Writing Month. It makes sense to include a book about words since words make sentences that eventually (hopefully) turn into books.

Elisabeth Murray wrote a biography of her grandfather. While it is a straightforward birth to death biography, I was hoping for a more personal memoir filled with stories of James Murray, the family man instead of just focusing on the fact he was one of the greatest lexicographers of all time. Katherine Murray reveals that her grandfather had wanted to write down “a narrative of his life and memories” (prologue). Maybe that is why I expected more. Anecdotes of Murray’s personal life were no more than a few sentences here and there and a smattering of black and white photographs of James (mostly at work in the Scriptorium). However, James was a religious family man and proud father of eleven children with a sly sense of humor.
Having said that, the most annoying pebble in my shoe: I couldn’t help but notice the number of times Murray put her grandfather on an extremely high pedestal: James had a higher standard of accuracy than with anyone else he worked alongside; James was too meticulous; James worked harder than anyone else and worked longer hours than anyone else. To be fair, James Murray did dedicate over thirty-five years of his life to editing the Oxford English Dictionary. He worked under trying conditions – never had enough time, space, or money for the endeavor. Every day was a constant struggle. He employed his own children when the project started to fall behind. Even though he died before the project was finished, Murray was without a doubt, the godfather of etymology.

Author fact: according to the back cover of Caught in the Web of Words Murray was Principal of Bishop Otter College of Education in Chichester, England.

Book trivia: there is a typo in the copyright statement of my version of Caught in the Web of Words. Mine is missing the word ‘not.’ It literally says “This book may be reproduced in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form…without written permission from the publishers.” Woops.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter obvious called “Words to the Wise” (p 249) and again, in More Book Lust in the chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 400s” (p 68).