Collected Miscellany

– The latest issue of Boldtype is out – the “Escape” Issue:

This month we celebrate the art of absconding, with a selection of books that draw readers down paths less traveled. An anti-tourist scours lesser-visited, former Soviet states for non-adventures, while another writer is on a mission to visit the holiday hot spots of the Roman empire. Even more astonishing is Rory Stewart’s memoir of walking across Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Escapism can have its tragic side, however, as with the wealthy but imperiled Finzi-Continis. Photographers Robbins and Becher capture the deja vu of geographic and cultural displacements. The going gets weird as New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford signs his life away to Mario Batali as a kitchen slave, and, in a new novel, an aging professor becomes addicted to a drug that allows him to relive his fondest memories. Finally, a feature on new editions of the work of Little Nemo cartoonist Winsor McCay provides flights of fantasy that are totally armchair-accessible.

– So is the latest University Bookman. As a one time graduate student in history I found the review of recent books on historical consciousness fascinating.

– Brock Clarke has a fascinating piece in the latest issue of the Virginia Quarterly: The Novel is Dead, Long Live the Novel. Writing in reaction to Rachel Donadio’s essay in the New York Times Book Review, “Truth Is Stronger than Fiction,” he politely eviscerates Tom Wolfe and praises a book I had not heard of before, The Effect of Living Backwards. This is another one of those areas where the “politics of literature” don’t match up. I have never been a fan of Mr. Wolfe and I quite enjoy Brock Clarke. More on this later (the article not the politics) if I can get my thoughts together.

– In case you hadn’t noticed, God of the Machine is back up and running. Check out the new design and the new mini-blog for regular pithy comments.

I have always been interested in knowing more about the Khmer Rouge and their destruction of Cambodia. To satisfy this morbid curiosity, I decided to read The Lost Executioner by Nic Dunlop. It is an interesting look at one of the most heinous members of the Khmer Rouge -Comrade Duch, chief executioner for the Khmer Rouge – and the Khmer Rouge’s rise to and fall from power.

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Day of the Scarab is the third and final book in Catherine Fisher’s The Oracle Prophecies series (see The Oracle Betrayed and The Sphere of Secrets). I have really enjoyed this series – as the above reviews indicate – but for some reason this last book felt a little anti-climatic in parts. The richly imagined world, the created mythology, and the strong characters were all there but the pacing and excitement seemed missing at times. Nevertheless, the Oracle Prophecies series is an imaginative and entertaining young adult fantasy series and I would recommend it to young and old alike.

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Is Castro dead? Who knows. But with all this talk of Cuba, I was reminded of Leonardo Padura and his novels featuring Mario “the Count” Conde. The third installment to appear in English, Havana Black, was released in June by Bitter Lemon Press. Here is what Publishers Weekly had to say:

At the start of the well-plotted second volume of Padura’s seething, steamy Havana Quartet (after 2005’s Havana Red), Cuban detective Mario Conde (aka “the Count”) is approaching the end of his police career and his 36th birthday with drunken abandon while also anticipating, almost welcoming, the arrival of a devastating hurricane. Fed up with the latest departmental purges, which have claimed his boss and mentor, Major Rangel, Conde resigns from the department only to be offered a challenge and a bargain by Rangel’s newly appointed replacement. If he can solve the brutal murder of a highly placed Cuban defector within three days, Conde’s resignation will be accepted without prejudice. Padura grounds his tale against a backdrop of governmental corruption, the broken promises of the Cuban revolution and the difficult relations between those Cubans who fled the Castro regime and those who stayed. This densely packed mystery’s unusual locale should attract readers outside the genre.

If you want to read the series in oder, start with Adios, Hemingway, and then Havana Red, before taking up Havana Black.

I am finding myself more interested in mysteries lately. I am mostly interested in mysteries based in Middle Ages England. However, I just finished reading the first book in a series by Elizabeth Peters entitled Crocodile on the Sandbank based in Victorian times in Egypt. It’s worth a look.

The book is based on an English woman, Amelia Peabody, who turns out to be an amateur archaeologist and detective. She winds up in Egypt with her traveling companion Evelyn Barton-Forbes in the middle of an archaeological dig. Amelia and Evelyn team up with Egyptologist Radcliff Emerson and his brother Walter to solve a mystery involving a mummy and its attempts to disrupt the dig.

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I know we are only seven months into the year, but I think I have just finished my “book of the year.” I started Liberation Movements on my lunch hour yesterday and then went home after work and started reading again. I ended up staying up late just to finish it. I was so enthralled that I just had to keep reading.

Here is the brief synopsis from the book flap:

The year is 1975, and one of the People’s Militia homicide investigators is on a plane out of the capital, bound for Istanbul. The plane is hijacked by Armenian terrorists, but before the Turkish authorities can fulfill their demands, the plane explodes in midair.

Two investigators—Gavra Noukas, a secret policeman, and Katja Drdova, a homicide detective—are assigned to the case. Both believe that Brano Sev, their enigmatic superior and himself a career secret policeman, is keeping them in the dark both about the details of the case and all its players and about the true motives of their investigation, but they can’t figure out why. That is, until they learn that everything is connected to a seven-year-old murder, a seemingly insignificant murder that has had far-reaching consequences.

I plan on posting an in-depth review, but let me just say that Olen Steinhauer has really honed his craft. Olen weaves in elements of spy thriller, mystery, police procedural, and literary novel into one captivating story. Brano Sev, the central character from 36 Yalta Boulevard, is once again prominent but Steinhauer adds in a number of fascinating characters; including one that may or may not have an incredible/supernatural ability. There is also a philosophical depth underneath it all as Steinhauer explores issues like how our past determines out future, free will, etc.

If for some strange reason you haven’t read Steinhauer, here is what you need to do:

– Go out and buy the previous books in the series: The Bridge of Sighs, The Confession, and 36 Yalta Boulevard.

– Order Liberation Movements.

That will give you enough time to read the first three books before LM is officially released. Trust me, these books are the perfect way to spend the last six weeks or so of summer. If you are looking for entertaining and thought provoking reads, Steinhauer is hard to beat.