09.30 Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Little Brother (2008) by Cory Doctorow

Kudos to Doctorow for breaking the publishing paradigm and making this book (and many of his others) freely available under the Creative Commons license. I downloaded this book to my iPod Touch and read it with an app called Stanza. Obviously not the ideal way to read a novel but I found it was nice to be able to pull it out any time and read a chapter or so. Also, given the content of the story I thought it was pretty cool to be pushing the envelope of new reading techniques.

Little Brother is a YA book but I would suggest that people of all ages can read it. The story concerns Marcus a teenager who lives in San Francisco. One day when he and his friends arou out cutting school a terrorist bombing destroys the San Francisco Bay Bridge. In the ensuing chaos, he and his friends are picked up by the Department of Homeland Security, held incommunicado and tortured. Upon his release, Marcus fights back against the police state that the city has become using his tech and hacking know how.

Doctorow writes here in a very broad manner and clearly sets up the straw dog of the terrorist attack to drive home his points about freedom of speech and government repression. Nevertheless he manages to make the story fun and interesting without getting too preachy. Buy a coy for all the teenagers that you know.

09.29 The Limbo Line by Victor Canning

The Limbo Line (1963) by Victor Canning

This is my first Victor Canning book and I am sure going to be looking out for more. Canning writes in the tradition of the great British thriller authors: Eric Ambler, Hammond Innes and Desmond Bagley.

The Limbo Line is a tight little Cold War thriller. Richard Manston is a retired agent living the life of leisure as a gentleman farmer and golfer. He gets drawn back in to the game by his superiors to break a Russian kidnapping ring that is grabbing low level defectors and whisking them back to the Motherland.

The British Secret Service has identified the next victim, a ballerina, Irina Tovskaya, as the next victim. Manston’s job is to dangle her as bait and follow her through the “Limbo Line” the organization that handles the kidnapping, brain washing, and smuggling of the kidnapped defectors.

Of course, nothing goes as planned and like any good spy novel there are various crosses and double-crosses, escapes and evasions. This was a fully satisfying and fun read.

09.28 The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

The Forever War (2008) by Dexter Filkins


I have unfortunately left this review for a couple of months and so I don't have it in the forefront of my brain as it were. My regular readers know that I like to keep an eye on the literature of military history. In my recent reviews of some Vietnam books I have come to realize that you really do need the perspective of time to write effectively about historical events.

Dexter Filkins is a reporter for The New York Times and has covered the Middle East for the past decade or so. This book is a series of vignettes that cover his reportage from both Afghanistan and Iraq. The role of a correspondent is to obviously present the events that they encounter. It gives us a small window into the world of the soldier and their experiences. I recently read Dispatches by Michael Herr which is a very similar book by a reporter which contains his experiences in Vietnam. Unfortunately, I had the same problem with this Filkins book as I had with that one. As reporters they relay amazingly well the sights and sounds of the battle but when it comes to giving any historical or political context then they fall short.

I still enjoyed this book and I thought the scope of it was what made it really interesting. Filkins starts by describing a mass beheading in a stadium in Kabul by the Taliban before their overthrow. He goes on to present some powerful scenes of the hours and days following 9/11 as he wandered in among the wreckage of the towers. Some of the best scenes take place when he is embedded with a group of Marines taking part in the attack on Falluja.

I can't say I would really suggest you go out and seek this book but read it if available and definitely look for Filkins writing in the Times.

09.27 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2005) by Stieg Larsson
Trade, Vintage Crime, 590 p.

I know you have seen this one. This is one of those books that is getting the full muscle of the publishing industry behind it right now. Basically there is a copy prominently displayed in every single book retailing space in America these days. I remember a year ago reading Bangkok 8 or it’s sequel which had a similar zeitgeist. I may have this wrong but I think that the author, Larsson, turned in the third novel in the series and then died right afterwards. That always pumps up the interest.

Regardless, I am always psyched to see genre fiction cross over onto the mass culture. Also, one of my favorite writers is Henning Mankell, a Swedish crime author so I was interested to check this one, by another Swede, out.

The plot is a difficult one to describe but it basically involves two threads and characters that intertwine. Mikael Blomkvist is a crusading financial journalist who has just come through a bruising libel trial. He takes a leave of absence from his magazine and is hired to investigate a 40-year-old missing persons case. The Vanger clan is one of the top industrial families in Sweden. Their patriarch is nearing the end of his life and wants to find out what happened to his niece who disappeared one day in the 60’s.

The other thread follows a young woman named Lisbeth Salander who is something of a disaffected loner. Tattooed, pierced and surly she seems like the last person who would be the top investigator in one of Sweden’s largest security firms.

The author does a nice job of spinning the two characters stories out and ultimately bringing them together. I felt it was a bit forced in the way he characterized them as polar opposites but for the most part it worked. I am a little surprised that American readers have taken to this book so strongly given the differences in pacing between this Northern European novel and most American books.

All in all, a fun book to read. I will definitely look to find his next novel when it comes out of hardcover next year.

09.26 Eureka by William Diehl

Eureka (2002) by William Diehl
Pbk., Ballantine, 470 p.

Not really sure why I picked this one up in a used bookstore. The only book I recognize by Diehl was Sharky’s Machine which was made into a movie with Burt Reynolds (?). Nevertheless, this turned out to be an excellent crime novel and a great vacation read.

This is one of those crime books that has its roots deeply buried in an event that happened way in the past. In this case it is something that occurred in the 1920’s in a town called Eureka, on the coast near LA.

Flash forward to the 40’s before the war and Zeke Bannon is a homicide detective in LA. Him and his partner investigate the death of a woman who appears to have been killed when her radio fell into the bathtub. Zeke is one of those dogged cops that never think things are quite what they seem and he ferrets out some inconsistencies in the tragic death.

Without revealing more of the plot I can only say that the author does a great job of setting up the story and zipping back and forth in time. Most of the first third of the book takes place in the past and the rest in 40’s LA. Diehl does a nice job of writing the hardboiled style of Chandler or Hammett. He is also great with the little details about the cars, clothes, etc.

I would recommend this book as worth picking up if you saw it on the dollar rack or on the bookshelf of your next vacation getaway.

09.25 To What End by Ward Just

To What End (1968) by Ward Just
Trade, PublicaAffairs, 179 p.

Continuing in my exploration of some of the more well regarded books covering the Vietnam War, I decided to read To What End. Ward Just was a correspondent “in country” for several years for the Washington Post. The book reads like an expansion of several pieces presented as chapters.

Similar to many other books on the era I have read the presentation is haphazard to some degree. Perhaps I am reading the wrong accounts but if one reads an account of WWII there is a certain clarity and sequential presentation of the events interspersed with analysis. Vietnam books seem to always be vignette driven – almost chaotic. For men who wrote right after the war there is probably a reason for this. The war was chaotic, dirty, undisciplined and difficult to analyze.

Ward Just admittedly wrote this book before the war was over and he wrote it quickly. He writes some vivid and detailed chapters on the South Vietnamese political scene in the heart of the war. These parts are very interesting and make you see how many competing regional, national and international interests there were at the time. Not entirely unlike Afghanistan right now.

In the end the best parts of this book are the small moments that he recounts being a journalist along for the ride. The jungle, the ambushes, the heat all combined to wear down soldiers in myriad ways.

A worthwhile book in the canon of Vietnam War literature but not the first one I would go to.

09.24 Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard

Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (2005) by Yvon Chouinard
Trade, Penguin, 258 p.

As regular readers of the Report know, I don't generally read business books (I leave that to Buzby). However, a co-worker lent me this book and assured me that it was an interesting and worthwhile read.

Yvon Chouinard, if you don't know, is the founder and owner of the company Patagonia. These days Patagonia is what they call a lifestyle brand - meaning that the comapny has moved far beyond what they initially made and now sell outdoor clothes mainly to urban folk.

The first half of the book which is by far the most interesting describes how Chouinard started Patgonia and how it grew. His family came from Quebec and moved to California when he was at an early age. The young Chouinard was an avid fisherman, hiker, surfer and above all, a climber. He decided that he wanted to start making his own climbing gear and began manufacturing high quality pitons and carabiners on his own. Slowly the reputation of his equipment grew and he hired on a few friends to help out. They soon branched out into rugged climbing clothing and early polypropylene clothes. They eventually sold the climbing gear part of the business (now called Black Diamond). Through the 80's and 90's Patagonia grew and now does in the region of $300 millon in sales annually.

The latter half of the book outlines Chouinard's, and by extension, Patagonia's ethical and business philosophies. This part of the book is pretty poorly written and mirrors in more formal language many of the things that he talks about in the first part of the book. The company strives to have a good workplace with childcare and lots of other benefits. Chouinard himself took off large chunks of time from the daily operations of the company to pursue his outdoor activities. Since the 80's Patagonia has donated 1 percent of sales to environmental causes.

As mention, this was not the typical book I would pick up but I mildly enjoyed the first half.

09.23 Last Stand At Saber River by Elmore Leonard

Last Stand At Saber River (1959) by Elmore Leonard
Pbk, Harper torch, 247 p.

Before he became a crime writer Elmore Leonard's early novels (this is his 4th) were westerns. Leonard's story is set in the Arizona Territory during the last days of the Civil War.

Paul Cable, a wounded captain on from the Confederate side, has been discharged and returns with his family to reclaim his homestead. He finds his home occupied by Union sympathizers who work for Vern and Duane Kidston, brothers who supply remounts to the Union Army.

A former Confederate soldier, Edward Janroe, who runs guns to the southern forces, tries to maneuver Cable into killing the Kidstons. Although Cable wants to avoid trouble, he is drawn into several gun battles in which he uses his wartime tactics to outfox his overwhelming opposition.

This was definitely a fun novel to read and one of the best of the few westerns that I have read. Worth a look.

09.22 The Bitter Tea by Gavin Black

The Bitter Tea (1972) by Gavin Black
Pbk, Fontana, 189 p.

This was something of a classic 70's Fontana adventure novel a la Desmond Bagley or Alistair MacLean. All of Blacks book feature the hero Paul Harris. I'm not sure what role he plays in the other books but in The Bitter Tea he is a suave businessman who runs his own shipping company out of Kuala Lumpur.

One evening on a trip to a mountaintop luxury casino he witness an assassination attempt on a high ranking Chinese official and recognizes the assassin. That evening he also meets a beautiful and deadly woman from Bangkok.

The adventure is moderately interesting but not up to the standards of the authors I mentioned previously. I would probably give another one of his thrillers a try but unless it was substantially better I'd pass on this writer.

09.21 The Mucker by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Mucker (1913) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Pbk, Ballantine, 320 p.

This was a great, rip-roaring ride of a novel. The Mucker is like a whole bunch of different genres all wrapped up in one book. It is a sea story, a marooned story, the story of a prize fighter, a fugitive tale, and a love story. Burroughs weaves virtually every pulp genre together into the tale of Bill Byrne, The Mucker.

The book is now in the public domain and can be found over at Project Gutenberg.

09.20 Intelligence In War by John Keegan

Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (2003) by John Keegan
Trade, Vintage Canada, 387 p.

This is one of the more recent books by Keegan, a leading British military historian. I suspect that he was asked to put something like this together to tie in with the Iraq War and the heightened public interest in all things "intelligence".

Keegan's thesis here is that intelligence in war is secondary to force. The general thrust is that one side in a conflict may have superior intelligence however that may not give them an advantage if the other side possesses a stronger or better run army. He writes, "[...] it strikes this author that the organization of intelligence-gathering and subversion within the same body is undesirable. Subversion is a weak way of fighting, differing from conventional warfare by the total unpredictability of its results; moreover, in a democracy, it is always liable to disavowal by legitimate authority and denunciation by authority's political opponents. Intelligence-gathering, by contrast, can yield conflict-winning outcomes and , if securely and soberly conducted, is an activity only those of ill-will can condemn.
Yet, in the last resort, intelligence warfare is a weak form of attack on the enemy, also. Knowledge, the conventional wisdom has, is power; but knowledge cannot destroy or deflect or damage or even defy an offensive initiative by an enemy unless the possession of knowledge is also allied to objective force."

The book is structured as many Keegan books are with chapters advancing chronologically. He sets forth a number of examples to advance his overall thesis. Napoleon, Stonewall Jackson, a discussion of wireless intelligence, Crete and Midway during WWII. The penultimate chapter, which I found the most persuasive, concerned the battle for the Atlantic during WWII. The Allies had cracked German codes using Enigma and yet loss from U-Boat attacks remained high. German naval tactics were initially superior and even though the Allies knew they were coming they couldn't do anything about it.

The final chapter is also very interesting and concerns the German secret weapons that were developed near the close of WWII. The V-1 and V-2 rocket that were designed and deployed from Scandinavia and later France had been known about in bits throughout their development. Intelligence=gence came from various sources - human intelligence, aerial spy photos, etc. The Allies however, were never able to put all the pieces together and predict what was going to happen until the rockets started landing. In the end though it didn't matter because the war was effectively over.

Overall, not a bad book but by no means close to being one of Keegan's best efforts.

09.19 On The Beach by Nevil Shute

On The Beach (1957) by Neville Shute
Pbk, Signet, 238 p.

Finally. I have been wanting to read this novel again for years and never actually found the time to pick it up. I think I may have read it as a teen so my perspectives and interpretations now are, I expect, wholly different.

The novel is a surprisingly bleak indictment of the aftermath of nuclear war. I always find it interesting when I read post-apocalyptic books from the 50's and 60's at how devastating the results of a nuclear holocaust are portrayed. At that point in time only 2 bombs had been dropped but I expect there was a certain immediacy to the devastation for most people. Pictures and newsreel footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were probably widely distributed. Perhaps I should never underestimate the power of the public's fear when it comes to disaster.

On The Beach posits that a widespread nuclear war has devastated the northern hemisphere rendering it totally uninhabitable. The novel takes place in Melbourne where a young naval officer with a wife and new baby lives the ideal 50's dream in a small house outside the city. He is recalled on assignment to be the liaison officer to one of the last remaining US naval vessels, a submarine. The Australian and the commander of the sub become something of friends.

In the background there is an impending menace. The nuclear fallout id advancing slowly south and over the coming months will render the entire planet uninhabitable. Shute uses this set-up to examine how the various characters in the book deal with their inevitable mortality. The nerdy scientist takes to racing a sports car, the US sub captain remains chaste in memory of his dead family while being courted by a young lady or the Australian officer plants a flower garden that he will never see bloom. Pretty heavy handed stuff as you can see.

Nevertheless, Shute finds a little bite in his examination of class structure and the Australian (read: British) "stiff upper lip" mindset. There is no chaos in the book; no one riots or gets out of control unless some heavy drinking counts. Calm stuff in the face of certain death. I found that the psychology of the characters, while odd seeming to me, was interesting and worthwhile.

09.18 The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell

The Man Who Smiled (1994) by Henning Mankell
Trade, Vintage, 324 p.

Another excellent Henning Mankell book in the bank - I think I have read about a half dozen now. Mankell is a Swedish author who writes police procedurals about a detective, Wallander, in Ystad, 60 km south-east of the city of Malmö, in the southern province of Skåne.

Inspector Wallander is the classic loner: unmarried, strained relations with his family, few friends. He is, however, an excellent detective which is why it is shocking at the beginning of the book to find that he is considering quitting the police force. In the previous novel (The White Lioness) he killed a man in the line of duty and is now guilt ridden.

The strange death of a lawyer friends father and then the death of his friend serve to draw Wallander back into the fold. He assembles the old team and finds himself again through the rigors of the extensive investigation.

A good read.

09.17 Empire Of The Sun by J.G. Ballard

Empire Of The Sun (1984) by J.G. Ballard
Trade, Simon & Schuster, 288p.

I have always wanted to read this Ballard book mainly because it is, in many respects, a memoir of what he wet through as a child in Shanghai. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the British were all interned for the course of the war.

Ballard's book follows young James Graham, a boy obsessed with all things aerial and convinced of the superiority of his class. In the chaos of the Japanese occupation of the Shanghai International Settlement Jim becomes separated from his parents. This section of the book is really interesting. For Jim, it is just an adventure running around trying to find food and exploring the vacated houses.

Eventually Jim becomes interned in a large camp at Lungua where the story tracks the years of starvation, hopelessness and ultimately death for many of the inmates. The book is really a story of survival but also a a loss of innocence for a young boy. A boy who idolized war is reduced to gnawing on maggot filled potatoes and caring for crazed prisoners. Surely that is as long a way from piloting a heroic Japanese Zero as you can get.

Quite soon after the novel's publication Hollywood came calling and a film was made by Steven Spielberg. I have only watched the early parts of the movie but as I expected there is a lot of sanitization going on. Ballard writes in 2006: "I was deeply moved by the film but, like every novelist, couldn't help feeling that my memories had been hijacked by someone else's."