Tag: book lust i

Arab and Jew

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Shipler, David K. Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land. Read by Robert Blumenfeld. New York: Blackstone Audio, 2003.

Reason read: May is the most beautiful time of the year to visit the middle east…or so I have heard.

This is the history of the relationship between Arab and Jew. Shipler painstakingly traces the prejudice back to its origin and examines the cultural, religious, and socioeconomic divide that has existed ever since. Shipler’s reporting is exemplary. He is unbiased but obviously very concerned about the everyday ordinary people just trying to survive in this land of unrest. Shipler’s voice is at once delicate and forthright in his descriptions and details involving terrorism, nationalism, and political conflict. He refers frequently to information he has collected from textbooks of various grade levels to demonstrate the education & “miseducation” of middle eastern children.

Probably the most disturbing section (for me) was about sexual attitudes, especially those surrounding rape.

Quotes that caught my attention, “Battle has its thrills as well as its regrets” and “Too much hope seems doused in blood.” Because I am listening to this on (22!) CDs I have no idea what actual page these quotes are on.

Book trivia: I listened to an unabridged and revised edition of Arab and Jew. This was also made into a movie in 1989.

Author fact: Shipler won a Pulitzer for Arab and Jew in 1987.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the vague chapter called “The Middle East” (p 154).

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

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Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. One Day if the Life of Ivan Denisovich. New York: Signet, 1963.

Reason read: May is supposedly one of the best times to visit Russia.

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov (#S 854) is a prisoner in a Stalinist work camp in Siberia with only two years left on his sentence. This is one day in his life, from reveille to lights-out. It has been called extraordinary and I couldn’t agree more. Ivan is the very picture of bravery, hope and above all, survival. Solzhenitsyn relentlessly reminds the reader of the Siberian bitter winters by using variations of words like frost, ice, snow, chill, freeze and cold over 120 times. Added to that is the constant lack of warmth (mentioned another 25 times). While Solzhenitsyn is reminding readers of the cold, Shukov is stressing the importance of flying under the radar; avoiding detection and unwanted attention. Whether he is squirreling away food or tools he is careful not to rock the boat. He knows his fate can be altered in the blink of an eye or the time it takes for a guard to focus on him.

Lines to like, “No clocks or watches ticked there – prisoners were not allowed to carry watches; the authorities knew the time for them” (p 32) “The thoughts of a prisoner – they’re not free either” (p 47) and “As elated as a rabbit when it finds it can still terrify a frog” (p 118).

Author fact: Solzhenitsyn served in the Russian army & was accused of making anti-Stalin remarks. He was sent to prison and after Stalin’s death, pardoned. Later still the Soviet Union revoked his citizenship so he moved to Vermont. Go figure.

Book trivia: One Day was published as s short story in 1962 in a Soviet literary magazine and was seen as a social protest. This is his first published novel.

BookLust Twist: from two places: Book Lust in the chapter called “Russian Heavies” (p 210) and from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Siberian Chills” (p 205).

Chosen

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Potok, Chaim. The Chosen. Read by Jonathan Davis. New York: Recorded Books, 2003.

Reason read: May is American Jewish Heritage month.

Danny Saunders and Rueven Malter shouldn’t be friends. For starters, Danny almost blinded Reuven with a line drive straight to the head during a “friendly” baseball game in 10th grade. They have always been on opposite sides of the Jewish faith as well. Danny is a practicing Hasidic Jew and Rueven is a practicing secular Jew. They dress differently, they interpret the Talmud differently, their relationships with their fathers is vastly different. Yet, they become the best of friends. Despite their seemingly strong friendship as they get older they learn their differences have the potential to sabotage any relationship, no matter how strong.
There is such a push me-pull me element to The Chosen. As both boys come of age and are more aware of the political world around them their interests take them on different journeys. When you finish The Chosen you will see one defining consistency, forgiveness.

Author fact: Potok started writing when he was 16 years old.

Book trivia: even though this is a book appropriate for ages 12 and up, every adult should read this.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust from two different chapters, the first being “The Jewish-American Experience” (p 134) and the second, “Good Reads Decade by Decade: 1960s” (p 178).

Means of Ascent

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Caro, Robert. Means of Ascent: the Years of Lyndon Johnson. New York: Vintage Books, 1991.

Reason read: to continue the series started in February for Presidents Day.

The year is 1941 and Lyndon Johnson is now 32 years old. Caro starts off this second section of the President’s biography by singing the praises of all that Johnson had accomplished at such an early age. The list is impressive, but be forewarned, there is a great deal of word for word repetition from the first book, Path to Power. To name some: Lyndon’s physical appearance as a towering young man with jet black hair; his father as the laughingstock of his town; Lyndon’s scheme to marry for money; Alice Glass teaching him which side of his face was more photogenic; even the “carrying water” note Johnson wrote to Roosevelt is repeated. Confessional: I found myself skimming the word for word parts, looking for the “new” material.
Here are the “new” parts of Lyndon Johnson’s biography. World War II brings Lyndon’s “wartime efforts” which, true to form, are grossly exaggerated. It was almost shameful how this future President of our nation lied about his active duty in combat. It left me with feelings of revulsion. At the same time, Caro’s depiction of Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson holding down the fort in Washington during this time is poignant. His interview with her is touching.
Although Caro is tighter and more focused in his narrative of Means of Ascent, as with Path to Power, he includes a great deal more information than necessary. Case in point, there are over 30 pages dedicated to LBJ’s 1948 opponent, Coke Stevenson and his upbringing. While I appreciated the detail, if I want to read a biography on Coke Stevenson I would find a biography specifically on Coke Stevenson. I feel that the only way to make LBJ the ultimate villain is to exaggerate his competition and make him his opposite in every way.

As an aside, this is an interesting time to be reading about a political campaign.

Book trivia: The photographs are extraordinary.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Presidential Biographies” (p 193).

The Assistant

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Malamud, Bernard. The Assistant. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985.

Reason read: Malamud died in the month of March. Sad book for a sad occasion.

Confession: I have a hard time with Malamud. He writes with a melancholy I can’t put my finger on. The Assistant is no different with its depressing tone. From page one it is laced with utter sadness. This quote from the introduction seems to sum up Malamud’s writing perfectly, “Malamud was a master of the short story, and it sometimes seems that his characters are too poor to live in longer fiction” (p viii).

Morris Bober is a Jewish grocer in poverty stricken, post-WWII Brooklyn. He can barely make ends meet but does the best he can for his wife and twenty-three year old daughter. When his meager store is robbed the dye is cast.It only gets more complicated after Frank Alpine mysteriously comes into his life to help with the store, court his daughter and change his life. One of the most beautiful elements to Malamud’s writing is that for all his sadness, there is a thin thread of hope that winds its way through the story. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that the story ends with hope.

The Assistant is rich with the culture of life as an immigrant. It’s also rich with the climate of the era. Can you picture a time when people  said things like, “Say, baby, let’s drop this deep philosophy and go trap a hamburger” (p 44)?

Quotes I fell in love with: “He crawled towards sleep” (p 10), “Wisdom flew over his hard head” (p 18), “How complicated could impossible get?” (p 89), “Where there was no wit money couldn’t buy it” (p 153) and “What you did was how bad you smelled” (p 174). They are so simple yet powerful.

Book trivia: Jonathan Rosen’s introduction is unfair when he says “…finish the novel before you finish this sentence…” (p ix).

Author fact: Malamud taught at Bennington College in Vermont. Cool.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called, of course, “The Jewish-American Experience” (p 134).

Family Man

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Krentz, Jayne Ann. Family Man. New York: Pocket Books, 1993.

Reason read: Krentz birth month is in March

Three annoying things about this book: first, the physical book was literally falling apart while I was reading it. I had to handle it like it was a centuries old manuscript. Second, this was chick-lit to the hilt and I’m just not a fan of I-hate-you-but-I-want-to-rip-your-clothes-off-all-the-same kind of books. Lastly, (and this is a big one) Krentz loves the name ‘Gilchrist’ to the point of nauseation (my word). More on that last bit later – see book trivia.

In a nutshell: the Gilchrist family empire was built on high-powered real estate deals centered around restaurants. The aging matriarch of this empire now has a problem. Her restaurants are starting to fail and there is no one within her immediate family she can trust to sort it all out. She needs needs an heir. Someone to take the reins. Someone as ruthless as she has been over the years. There is someone. Her grandson, Luke Gilchrist. The only problem? She disowned his parents years ago. Now the only person she truly trusts is her personal assistant, angelic and sweet, do-no-wrong Katy Wade. And since Katy has refused to commandeer the ship herself Queen Gilchrist has ordered her to find someone who will, namely the black sheep grandson, Luke. Luke is a very reluctant heir and it’s up to Katy to convince him it is worth his while to come back. His mettle is tested early as every Gilchrist seems to get into some kind of trouble. One Gilchrist was involved in a real estate scam. Another Gilchrist was caught in a blackmail trap. Every Gilchrist comes to Luke via Katy (as the Gilchrist “guardian angel”) for help. The big hook of this story should be Luke. Why does he agree to come back to help the failing empire? Are his intentions true or is he out for revenge? Krentz could have made the storyline far more suspenseful and mysterious and tension filled had she kept Luke more in the shadows.

Author fact: Jayne Ann Krentz also writes under the pen name Amanda Quick.

Book trivia: As I mentioned earlier – You gotta love the name Gilchrist or you will be in trouble. When I am annoyed I start counting things. I got annoyed by Krentz’s (over)use of the name Gilchrist to the point where I started counting…over 200 times in the first 100 pages. Drove me NUTS!

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love is Here To Stay” (p 206).

Tom Brown’s School Days

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Hughes, Thomas. Tom Brown’s School Days. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1911.

Reason read: to finish the series started in April in honor of George MacDonald Fraser’s birth month…even though this has nothing to do with George MacDonald Fraser.

Victorian-era literature always gets to me. I know that Tom Brown’s School Days centers on the manner and customs of the mid 1850s and is the basis for the Flashman series by George MacDonald Fraser, but I found myself completely bored. Aside from the great illustrations this wasn’t the most entertaining of reads.

An odd quote, “They can’t let anything alone which they think going wrong” (p 5).

As an aside – Hughes called his readers either gentle or simple. I couldn’t decide which category I fell into.

Author fact: Thomas Hughes looked like Mario Balzic from the cover of Always a Body to Trade by K.C. Constantine.

Book trivia: I tried reading both an electronic and print versions of this. The full title on the 1911 electronic version was Tom Brown’s School~Days By An Old Boy (Thomas Hughes) with Numerous Illustrations Made at Rugby School by Louis Rhead, MCMXI. And to be fair, the illustrations were great. Introduction was by W.D. Howells.
The print version (published in 1918) was a little different. Title page reads, “Tom Brown’s School-Days By an Old Boy (Thomas Hughes) Edited by H.C. Bradby, B.A. Assistant Headmaster at Rugby School Illustrated by Hugh Thomson.” Interesting, huh?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “George MacDonald Fraser: Too Good To Miss” (p 93). Except…Tom Brown’s School Days was not written by George MacDonald Fraser as I mentioned earlier.

Thirty Nine Steps

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Buchan, John. The Thirty-Nine Steps. New York: Buccaneer Books, 1996.

Reason read: in honor of my birthday I wanted to read something fast and fun.

It’s May 1914 in London, England. Scottish expatriate Richard Hannay has a troublesome visitor. That’s the first thing I would say about The Thirty Nine Steps. An American stranger has come to him with a wild tale of espionage and knowledge of a planned assassination. Because he was in the know, according to this stranger, Mr. Scudder, he had to fake his own death. He has come to Hannay to hide himself and his little coded book of secrets. However, imagine Hannay’s surprise when that same man is found with a knife so thoroughly through the heart it skewered him to the floor! Needless to say, Hannay is now on the run…with the cipher of secrets. With Mr. Scudder dead on his floor, surely he will be the number one suspect. The rest of the short book is Hannay’s attempts to hide out in Scotland, a place he hasn’t seen since he was six years old, thirty one years ago. The key to the whole mystery is a reference to “39 steps” in Scudder’s little book.

Head scratching quotes, “He had about as much gift of gab as a hippopotamus and was not a great hand at valeting, but I knew I could count on his loyalty” (p 22)

Author fact: Buchan was a member of Parliament and Governor-General of Canada.

Book trivia: This is another super short book, only 126 pages long. Originally published in 1915 and made into a movie several times.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1910s” (p 174). But wait! There’s more! From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Oxford – nonfiction” (p 171). It should be noted that Thirty-Nine Steps does not take place in Oxford, nor is it nonfiction.

As She Climbed Across the Table

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Lethem, Jonathan. As She Climbed Across the Table. Read by David Aaron Baker. Maryland: Books on Tape, 2007.

Reason read: February is Lethem’s birth month.

I love Jonathan Lethem’s voice. The style he writes in is so casual, so sly you feel like you need to reread the words to make sure you haven’t missed something important or at least clever. As She Climbed Across the Table is told from the perspective of Anthropology professor Philip. The story he tells you is at once heartbreaking and humorous. His girlfriend and colleague, particle physicist Alice Coombs has fallen in love with a void, a tiny black hole. The only problem with this? The void, named Lack for obvious reasons, has refused Alice’s attempts to lose herself in his depths. This “lack” of affection on Lack’s part only makes Alice desire him more. Why? Because it seems as if he (because it has to be a he for Alice to love) has a personality capable of rejection. He will devour car keys and other items of significance, but not Alice.

As an aside: When Alice repeatedly admits she loves Lack the way she used to love Philip, (but doesn’t anymore), I wanted Philip to be more rebellious. Here is he, allowing crazy, non-speaking, dopey Alice to live in the same apartment all the while refusing the advances of a beautiful and smart therapist who is practically throwing herself at him. Am I too cold blooded to think Philip should have developed more of a “screw you” spine?

Author Fact: This is not a fact per se…but, I ran into a photo of Jonathan Lethem and in it he looked sorta, kinda, somewhat like Mike Gordon from the band Phish. Not exactly like him, mind you. But, close enough to be his kid brother or something.

Audio trivia: David Aaron Baker does a great job with voice accents. The part when Philip is drunk is hilarious.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter “Jonathan Lethem: Too Good To Miss” (p 146).

If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now

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Loh, Sandra Tsing. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now. New York: riverhead books, 1997.

Reason read: Loh’s birth month is in February.

Confessional: I finished this in a day. Not because it was my favorite book but because I was home sick.

This is the story of Bronwyn Peters and her boyfriend, Paul, trying to make it in the glamorous city of Los Angeles. Be prepared. This is a very dated (1990s) story and there will be times when you want to maybe slap the sh!t out of Sandra Loh. I grew weary of the plenitude of brand-name dropping that went on (Guess?, Porche, Sanyo, Motorola, Kohler, BMW, Berber, Dolce & Gabbana, Wamsutta, Crate and Barrel…to name a few), as well as hot-now celebrity names like David Lynch, Frank Zappa, Malcolm Forbes, and Madonna…
Confessional: there were definitely times I wanted to slap Bronwyn Peters. Despite listening to NPR and identifying with a Bohemian lifestyle, Bronwyn hungers for the lifestyle of $200 haircuts and Corian counters. She even convinces her struggling writer boyfriend to buy a condo in downtown Los Angeles after they come into a modest amount of money (clearly not enough for L.A. standards). They settle on a place they obviously cannot afford for long. Bronwyn knows full well they are out of their league and yet continues to plays the game to the hilt. Bronwyn’s one redeeming quality is her steadfast love for Paul. She stands by him through temptation and failure. In the end, If you Lived Here… is Loh’s platform for bringing to the forefront L.A.’s socio-economic class structure. She uses the riots as a backdrop to her commentary on attitudes, prejudices and the simple act of just wanting more.

Lines I liked: “Feeling like Bruce Willis is some sort of Dead Something action picture, Bronwyn gripped her flashlight” (p176), and “and because there was nothing else to do, she rolled over and stole her arms around her fellow, such as he was, because his was the body that was still there” (p 221).

Author fact: If you Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now is Loh’s first novel.

Book trivia: short, short, short!

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “California, Here We Come” (p 49).

Flashman and the Tiger

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Fraser, George MacDonald. Flashman and the Tiger.

Reason read: to FINISH the series started in April in honor of Fraser’s birth month finally, right?). While the series might be ending for me there is one more book I will read in honor of GMF but it wasn’t written by him: Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes. Fraser took the bully character from School Days and created the Flashman series. Clever.

The premise for Flashman and the Tiger is simple…sort of: This set of papers is actually made up of three different time frames with three different titles: “Road to Charing Cross” (1878 – 1883-1884), “Subtleties of Baccarat” (1890-1891) and “Flashman and the Tiger (1879 & 1894). This is the first time in the Flashman papers that there has been a change in pattern. Each of these sections is only a minor episode in Flashman’s career. In “Road to Charing Cross” Flashman has found himself, once again, in an adventure he didn’t count on. He goes to France for President “Sam” Grant, who can’t speak french. The plot thickens when he agrees to help a Times reporter by the name of Blowitz. Blowitz wants to be the first to scoop the story of the amendment of the San Stefano Treaty. For the history bluffs: Flashman is one of the first to ride the famed Orient Express, only he isn’t impressed. He prefers the steamship.
In “Subtleties of Baccarat” the Prince of Wales is accused of cheating at baccarat, a French card game. Flashy is caught in the middle when a group of five men ask that he confront the cheater for an explanation.
In “Flashman and the Tiger” confronts Tiger Jack, someone he met earlier (1879). At this point the year is 1894 and Flashy is now 72 years old. Tiger Jack is not out to get our man Harry directly. Instead, he is looking to ruin Flashman through the ruination of Flashman’s teenage granddaughter. For the history buffs in the crowd, Oscar Wilde makes an appearance at the end.

New to the series: Fraser presents the reader with Flashy’s vitae so far. It’s a nice recap of everything that has happened in the previous nine books.

Typical Flashy lines: “I’d come to France to skulk and fornicate in peace, not to travel; on the other hand, I’d never visited Vienna, which in those days was reckoned first among all the other capitals of Europe for immoral high jinks, and a day and a night of luxurious seclusion with Her Highness should make for an amusing journey” (p 58), and “So we talked cricket while waiting for the attempted murder of the Austrian Emperor” (p 133). One more: “You think twice about committing murder when you’re over seventy” (p 295). I would think so!

Author fact: George MacDonald Fraser died three years after the publication of Flashman on the March. Had he lived, I am quite sure Flashman would be in many more adventures.

Book trivia: This is the 10th book in the Flashman series and the last one I will read for the challenge. The series continues with Flashman on the March.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “George MacDonald Fraser: Too Good To Miss” (p 93).

Pale Fire

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Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York: Everyman’s Library, 1992.

Reason read: Nabokov’s wife, Vera, was born in January. This was read in her honor as it was dedicated to her.

Pale Fire is a parody and a commentary wrapped in suspense. There are two central characters, poet John Francis Shade and self-appointed editor of Shade, Charles Kinbote. Right away there is a foreboding air about Kinbote. Something about him doesn’t seem right. He asserts only one line is missing from the poem, the last one – line 1000. How does he know this after being Shade’s neighbor for only five months (from February 5th, 1959 to July 21, 1959)? He admits that twenty years earlier he tried to translate Shade. The word tried implies he was unsuccessful. Why was that? When Kinbote first moved next door he wasn’t invited into the Shade household. He was reduced to spying through the hedges and trees; an “orgy of spying” he admits (p 68).
But, the poem nor Kinbote’s relationship are the real focus of Pale Fire. Kinbote’s commentary allows him to tell a fantastic story of an assassin from the fictional land of Zembla set out to kill a fictional king. I agreed with New York Times critic George Cloyne in that Pale Fire can’t be read straight through with any satisfaction. It’s a tale to be dipped into from time to time. Despite it being only 289 pages long it took me forever to finish.

As an aside, I had to laugh when Kinbote was talking about the instructional notes he was finding all around his rental cottage. The houses on Monhegan have similar notes, especially if the owners are particular about the rules of their house!

Quote I liked (but confused me): “There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings” (p 9). Literally or does that mean something else?
Another quote I liked, “A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand” (p 28 Canto 1, line 120).

Book trivia: The footnote to the introduction warns that reading the introduction before the text would ruin the story. I took the advice to heart and read the introduction last.

Author fact: in 1919 Nabokov and his family were forced into exile. Just like the king of Zembla.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1960s” (p 178) and from the chapter “The Postmodern Condition” (p 190). Also, in Book Lust To Go in the chapter “Cavorting Through the Caribbean” (p 53), although it doesn’t make sense. It is worth noting Pale Fire has nothing to do with the Caribbean and shouldn’t have been included in this chapter.

December Missed

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Woops! December left us without me writing about the reading. Not sure how that happened (other than to say “life”), but anyway – here’s what was accomplished for December:

  • Beth Shaw’s Yoga Fit by Beth Shaw (an Early Review book for LibraryThing)
  • Cod by Mark Kurlansky
  • Flashman and the Angel of the Lord by George MacDonald Fraser
  • How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
  • The Man Who Was Taller Than God by Harold Adams
  • Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

Here’s a belated look at January 2016 (already started, as you will see):

  1. Flashman and the Tiger by George MacDonald Fraser (the LAST book in the series on my list)
  2. Always a Body to Trade by K.C. Constantine (already read in honor of January being National Mystery month. Read this in a day)
  3. Blue Light by Walter Mosley (already read in honor of Mosley’s birth month. Another quick read)
  4. Checkmate by Dorothy Dunnett (the LAST book in the Lymond Series). It bears noting I am also consulting The Prophecies by Nostradamus (translated by Richard Sieburth) while reading Checkmate.
  5. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya (an audio book in honor of New Mexico becoming a state in January)
  6. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (in honor of Nabokov’s wife, Vera. Pale Fire is dedicated to her and her birthday is in January)
  7. Up, into the Singing Mountain by Richard Llewellyn (to continue the series started last month).

I have been chosen to review a book about the photography of Dickey Chapelle but since it hasn’t arrived yet I can’t put it on the list. I was also chosen to review Liar by Rob Roberge, but I don’t expect that one until February.

On a personal note: December ended with writing to 12 complete strangers. I am really hoping one or two of them become pen pals.

Always a Body to Trade

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Constantine, K.C. Always a Body to Trade. Boston: David R. Godine Publisher, 1983.

Reason read: January is national mystery month.

Someone has killed a nameless woman. Brutally shot her right in the face. It’s up to Chief of Police Mario Balzic to solve her murder only he has two problems: not much to go on in the way of clues, witnesses or suspects and a new mayor who is a little too eager, a little too young and more than a little too green to understand how crimes are solved. He wants this case put to bed yesterday.
The title of the book comes from the idea that in the ways of crime there is one rule: always have a body to trade; meaning there is an accomplice on who to rat if you get caught.

My only “issue” with Always a Body… was that I found it hard to believe the some of the things Balzic would say and do as being professional. I can’t see the chief of police readily admitting to a deputy warden that he had been drinking the night before and probably too much so. Another huge red flag was the fact that Balzic never followed up on leads. He always took them at face value…which made the ending completely predictable.

Like most mysteries, Always a Body… was laden with characters. I tracked 31 people before I gave up.

Author fact: According the back flap of Always a Body To Trade Constantine “belongs to the world Mario Balzic works in.”

Book trivia: Here is another irksome thing: Always a Body to Trade is part of a series. It’s actually the 6th book and the very first book, The Rocksburg Railroad Murders, is on my list. I’ve read them out of order…again.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love A Mystery” (p 121)

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord

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Fraser, George MacDonald. Flashman and the Angel of the Lord. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1995.

Reason read: this continues the series started last April in honor of Fraser’s birth month.

If you have been keeping track, the Flashman papers are now in the years 1858 to 1859. Flashman is thirty six years old and back in America where old enemies remember him and new enemies are out to blackmail him. He’s not back by choice, though. Someone from his past had an old score to settle. So here’s Harry, knee deep in the conflicts of slavery…again. This time he’s working with “the angel of the Lord,” John Brown of Harper’s Ferry fame. Yes, THAT John Brown.
Interestingly enough, Fraser decided to scale back the sex scenes for this particular installment. In addition to not having many opportunities to shag the lady next door, Flashman appears to be growing up some. To some he doesn’t appear to be as cowardly or as shallow…He still tries to get out of getting out of the October 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry but as usual, is unsuccessful.

For some reason I decided to keep track of the aliases of Flashman this time around:

  • Bully Waterman
  • Grattan Nugent-Hare
  • Beauchamp Millward Comber
  • Joshua

A line that made me laugh: “It’s a shame those books on etiquette don’t have a chapter to cover encounters with murderous lunatics whom you’d hoped never to meet again” (p 38).

Book trivia: this is the tenth Flashy book and penultimate Fraser book on my list. Are you keeping track?

Author fact: What haven’t I told you about George MacDonald Fraser? Have I mentioned he died in January of 2008? Well he did.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “George MacDonald Fraser: Too Good To Miss” (p 93).