Human Smoke: the Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilisation

This is, quite possibly, the single most depressing book that I have ever read. So much death and destruction could have been prevented. The book is also fascinating. I was already fairly cynical when it came to politicians, but having read this I will be even more cynical about their motives, their aims and even their humanity.

The book presents relevant information chronologically across both Allied and Axis powers. The deceit, war-mongering and lack of humanity were shocking despite the amount of WWII literature I've already read. Apparently I'm also idealistic enough to expect the 'good' side to behave better than the 'bad' side, but history is written by the victors and this book shows just how well it can be done.

This book forms part of the Non-fiction Non-memoir challenge as well as the What's in a Name challenge, where it represents the book with something seen in the sky (which is smoke).

Jane Austen: a life

This is the best biography of Austen that I've read, to date. All the facts are presented clearly, with the usual amount of speculation and guesswork, given that we know so very little. This was fascinating, depressing and inspiring all at once. I found that the majority of the speculation was based in reality and, most importantly, it was based on research of the period in question. The way things were done during the Georgian and Regency periods contrast rather sharply with the following Victorian era, particularly in the area of 'refinement'. Austen comes alive in this book, as does most of the family. More time is spent discussing the information that we do have, than lamenting the lost letters, etc.

I thoroughly recommend this to anyone interested in Austen or her work.

This forms part of the non-fiction non-memoir challenge, which does actually allow biographies 

(just not memoirs or autobiographies).

Saint Peter's Fair

My first book of the new year! The only challenge that this one counts towards is my 2012 GoodReads challenge, to read 245 books in 2012. I aimed for 156 (3 per week) in 2011 and made it to 242, so I think aiming to up my total by 3 in 2012 is perfectly possible.

Saint Peter's Fair is the fourth book of the Cadfael Chronicles, set in Shrewsbury during the Nineteen Year Winter in the 12th century (Not to be confused with darkoutthere's LARP by the same name, inspired by the Cadfael books and excessively fun if you haven't played in it already (and, really, even if you have!)). The book is split into five sections, which is rare in these books, the eve of the fair, the first, second and third days of the fair and after the fair. Events focus on young Emma, a wealthy merchant's niece, come to the fair from Bristol. Another focus of the novel is the unrest from the town, as it had recently been attacked by King Stephen, after declaring for Empress Maud (see One corpse too many, book two in the series). The town is aggrieved that for three days of high business, all income goes to the Abbey and they feel that the Abbey should part with some of that income in order to restore the town's defences etc.

This is a fascinating and enjoyable murder mystery, with a hint of espionage thrown in from all quarters, and well up to Pargeter's usual high standard.

The Romans

This has been sitting on my shelf for a while, and the only reason that I picked it up to read the other day, is the Reading Round Rome challenge, which I have now started. Six more books to go!

This is an interesting introduction to Ancient Rome. It recognises that it cannot cover everything, but highlights the main points in the development and demise of the civilisation. It certainly whet my appetite for more. Unfortunately, while it admits that there were seamier, repellent aspects to Ancient Rome, it mostly glosses over them. I shall have to discover those somewhere else. This book was rather heavy on Roman law and Stoicism, the military and the Senate, but didn't really tell me very much about what life was like for the average Roman on a day-to-day basis through the years, both in the city itself and in the provinces. How did the Roman Catholic religion come to be seen as a different form of Christianity than that of Byzantium or Africa? There are so many questions that this book raises (intentionally or otherwise) that I'm not sure I'll be able to limit my Roman reading to 7 books...

The Heretic's Apprentice

This is the only Cadfael mystery I've ever had to restart because I just couldn't get into it the first time. I suspect the reasoning for that was that it was around the time I was reading about the Inquisition and there's really only so much religious intolerance I can handle. I didn't even make it to the murder the first time!

This time, I finished it and enjoyed every moment of it. Given the amount of so-called heresies abounding at the time (and, really, ever since such a thing was invented), I really don't think there was any way to avoid covering the topic in at least one of the Cadfael novels. I think she did it very well, personally.

On top of that, there's a murder, which may or may not be related. There's a love story, which is not uncommon, Cadfael has a weak spot for young love. There's also dissension amongst both monks and lay folk regarding what constitutes heresy as well as what constitutes an acceptable use of one's own wit, which may or may not be dependent on one's sex and station in life. And, there's plenty of information about the crafts of the time, in this case the creation of vellum, which was skin that was used as paper (for lack of a simpler way of explaining it). I'm really glad I went back and finished this one, it was definitely worth it!

The Hermit of Eyton Forest

A Brother Cadfael mystery. I had planned to keep this for my Lethal Location challenge next year, but it turns out this was published in 1988.

This really is a very good example of what I enjoy about the series. There's plenty of real life history in the background, with King Stephen and the Empress Maud battling, in this particular novel they're currently fighting over Oxford. (On a side note, we had a lovely LARP set in this period of time, based on the fight between the King and the Empress, which was inspired by this series.) Plenty of good detecting with a healthy sprinkling of clues that let the reader work it out for themselves, if they're so inclined.

This particular novel is loosely centred on Richard, who's father is now dead. He's the 10-year-old heir to a large chunk of land and his only living relative is his domineering grandmother, who wants to marry him off to more land. Luckily for him he's safe in the keeping of the abbot. And then, a hermit arrives, Richard makes friends with the hermit's errand boy and an abbey guest is murdered. Chaos ensues. Luckily Brother Cadfael is there to solve the mystery, with the help of the sherriff, Hugh Beringar, and thankfully unencumbered by any notion of duty to the law. He can act in whatever way he sees as right. And given this is the 12th century, legal and right aren't always the same thing.

As always, the supporting characters are well-drawn and engaging, as is the mystery. Most importantly, Cadfael isn't annoyingly right all the time and none of the Holy Brethren are without fault (though some are more faulty than others, of course). In short, this is a quick, fun read that's still good despite being fluffy.

Tolkien and the Great War: the Threshold of Middle Earth

This is an amazing book. I've never really read much about the First World War. Anyone who's so much as glanced at my non-fiction shelves or GoodReads stats will note a decided preponderance of works relating to the Second World War, but nothing on the First. Everything I know about the First World War is due to Sue Harsant, who taught me history in high school (and I shall never forget her complaining after an exam/test/assignment that we should not simply say Ferdinand, because she might think we were referring to Ferdinand the Bull who went traipsing through the daisies. Her very dry sense of humour delighted myself and Tiina Napoleon at the time).

Anyway, the point of that long aside was that this is the first work I've ever read about the First World War and so was my first glimpse into the horrors of trench warfare. I had an intellectual understanding that it was a horrific thing, but I didn't understand. I still don't, thankfully, but now I have a greater idea of what about it was so horrific. Of what it was like to be there, what happened to people on the ground. On the one hand it makes me glad for the 'advances' of mechanised warfare. At the same time, those same supposed advances terrify me. No longer does individual kill individual, now machine destroys machine and life from afar. I know they had machine guns and bombs and so on, but on the whole they could at least see who they were killing. The horror of war, and the facts of war - the facts being that you are killing individuals that are really no different from yourself - were up close and personal. They no longer are.

At the same time as this works as a general introduction (for me) to the First World War (because you can be sure I'm going to be looking for more on the subject now), it also works really well as a biographical work on Tolkien. Specifically with regard to the effect that his experiences in the war and in the Battle of the Somme particularly must have had on his writing. You cannot go through an experience of that sort without undergoing profound changes. There's a fair amount of speculation on the author's part because Tolkien was extremely reticent regarding those experiences. That speculation is backed up by fairly solid reasoning (in my completely uncritical opinion) and while I'm of the opinion that you can never know exactly how things influenced the creative process, you can work out a fair amount, especially when it's something as significant as this.

If you're interested in either the First World War or Tolkien, I'd recommend this.

Jack the Ripper

A fairly old book, this has as plausible an explanation as any I've read (and I've read a few). I'm not completely convinced, though I think the explanation put forward here is possibly the most well-researched and well-thought out of any. There are parts of it I agree with, such as the murderer only stopping because he died. There are also parts I disagree with completely, such as the idea that the murderer's first attempts were as successful as his later ones. No researcher seems to take any practice into account. I cannot believe that he did not make some mistakes when he first began to kill. A must-read for anyone interested.

Dissolution

The first in a series of novels about Matthew Shardlake, a hunchbacked lawyer during the Reformation. In this book, he travels to a monastery where one of Lord Cromwell's men has been murdered. As the man was there to convince the abbot to voluntarily close the monastery suspects abound. It's a complicated plot that really is quite fascinating. It's also interesting to see the subject of the dissolution of the monasteries from a variety of viewpoints.

One can both lament all the good work that the monasteries did with the poor, the sick and in education, as well as understanding that the majority of them had strayed, were accumulating vast amounts of property and wealth as well as behaving in ways that monks should not. Some kind of reformation was necessary, I do not know that it should have been so drastic. Of course, at a time when loyalty to anyone other than the king amounted to treason there really wasn't much choice.

Coming on the heels of A Trail of Blood, which only briefly touched on the subject, one could almost feel that they were meant to go together. This is highly recommended.

A Trail of Blood

Set during the reign of Henry VIII, this is a story that seeks to explain the mystery of the Princes in the Tower. The two princes, Edward and Richard, went to live in the Tower of London when their father, Edward IV, died. For whatever reason the crowning of their uncle as regent was postponed. Finally the uncle was crowned Richard III. His Tudor successors later claimed that he had murdered the princes in order to ascend to the throne. There has never been any conclusive proof regarding what happened to the two princes.

This novel claims that the reason the coronation of Richard as regent was postponed was because the two princes (and consequently their sister, the mother of Henry VIII) were found to be illegitimate. Richard III kept the boys in the Tower to protect them, as he had sworn to do. The story explains why they felt the need to escape and how Edward was killed in the attempt. The rest of the novel is spent uncovering the movement and final location (really quite obvious from the beginning) of Richard, Duke of York.

The aim of the protagonists is to unearth a Yorkist claimant to the throne, ostensibly to succeed Henry VIII (who had no son at the time) but really to put an end to the Reformation and what they saw as a corrupt regime with dubious claims to royalty. The aim of the author is to solve the mystery in as plausible a manner as possible. I think he succeeds, though some of the events and coincidences are a little far-fetched. I'm interested in finding more by the author, particularly the non-fiction related to this period.

Fatherland

This was not quite what I was expecting from a 'Hitler won the war' novel. It's a detective story, and a very good one at that, with Hitler's Final Solution (the complete extermination of the Jews) at its centre. I was expecting something along the lines of what it would have been like for a variety of people living in such a world, which would really amount to short stories. What I got was the story of a man with doubts about the whole thing finding out what kind of world he lived in.

I would have been interested in an exploration of how it affected the US and the UK, as well as other places. Particularly given the map at the front of the book that showed western Europe as not being part of the Greater German Empire. I was impressed by the use made of the son, though I did find the ending a little unsatisfying. I should have liked an epilogue that told the story of what happened afterwards, once the report was out.

I found the use of President Kennedy for the US president rather confusing. At first I thought it meant JFK hadn't been assassinated, then I realised it was only 1964. Then I found it wasn't JFK at all, but some other Kennedy. This apparent supporter of Hitler had been the US ambassador to Britain during WWII. I'd like to find out more about him, if he was a real person (and wikipedia says he is).

The plot as a whole - Heydrich cleaning up those who know about the Final Solution once it had been done - was certainly plausible. I've always wondered (well, ever since I've known) why Hitler never put the orders in writing or put his name to them. Some argue he didn't know about it, which I think is completely implausible. Here, the suggestion is that even he found it barbaric, which I think is the most unlikely statement in the book. If Hitler found the wholesale slaughter of people barbaric it would never have happened. Of course, the fact that those slaughtered were considered less than people probably made it easier for those responsible. It still doesn't answer the question of why the order was not given in writing with Hitler's signature at the bottom.

Cold Mountain

This is a very sad book. Set during the American civil war, Cold Mountain follows the story of Inman, a Confederate deserter trying to get home, and Ada, a woman with no idea how to survive on her farm.

I personally found the sections about Inman to be on the less interesting side. It does get a bit more interesting once he starts running into the Home Guard, who are on the lookout for deserters. I suspect that says more about me than about Frazier's skill as an author. I much preferred the chapters that dealt with Ada's struggles, particularly after the introduction of Ruby. I adore the character of Ruby. I can relate most easily to the abstract academic life of Ada. Ruby, on the other hand, is earthy, superstitious and entirely focused on survival. The contrast between the two of them is fantastic.

Personally, I could have done without the semi-happy ending of the epilogue. I think ending with Inman dying in Ada's arms would have been perfectly appropriate, if rather depressing.

Mary Tudor: England's First Queen

History has vilified her as Bloody Mary. Why? Because she burnt over 300 heretics in her reign. She tried to stem the tide of Protestantism in England, to return the country to the Catholicism that reigned at her birth and until her father's lust (for both power and women) got the better of him. Unable to produce an heir, the crown returned to a Protestant (Queen Elizabeth I) and Mary was consequently vilified on religious grounds.

I had always thought that Elizabeth was the first queen of England and that her sister Mary was Mary Queen of Scots. How little I knew! Mary Tudor was a phenomenal woman. She lived in interesting times. To have your entire family turned against you for your beliefs - beliefs that they shared until very recently - must be extremely disorienting for anyone. She handled herself extremely well. I am impressed by her complete belief and the way that she was willing to stand by her belief and not simply renounce it for another, milder version of the same faith as so many others did. Unlike Elizabeth, she was not willing to pretend to comply with the religious dictates of her family and the law. She was prepared to die for what she believed. History would have been far kinder to her if she had.

This is a story of a remarkable woman. I admire her greatly for her unwavering determination to do what she believed was right. I may not agree with what she believed, or what she did, but I admire the courage that she showed at a time when she was abandoned by all who should have supported her. This is a woman who did much for the equality of women and the rights of women at a time when the notion was never even considered. This is a highly recommended biography.

Hidden Children of the Holocaust

This book is about the lower echelons of the Catholic clergy during the Nazi occupation of Belgium in World War II. While the higher levels kept quiet, the parish priests and nuns hid thousands of Jewish children and saved their lives.

Vromen undertook this research as a sociological study and the book reads somewhat like a thesis. She has interviewed one priest, a number of nuns, a number of hidden children and a couple of members of the secular resistance movement responsible for getting the children from their families to the institutions that hid them.

I am left feeling depressed and uplifted at the same time. Nazis and nuns are two of my greatest fascinations, so it's no surprise that I enjoyed this study. What I'm left with is a sense that armed resistance receives too much acclaim in comparison with other forms. The people who just did a few tiny things - carrying messages or providing food - were just as courageous as those who chose a more militant form of resistance. But what about all those others who chose not to resist, neither actively nor passively. Did they collaborate or embrace Nazi ideology? Did they merely think of themselves as neutral? Which begs the question, how can you remain neutral in the face of such inhuman behaviour? More interestingly, how would I have behaved? There's no way to know without finding myself in a position that I hope the world never sees again. I suspect, though, that as survivors die memory will fade and such horrors may again be committed. The extreme religious right of the United States and their vilification of Muslims give me cause for concern. The eternal conflict in the Middle East gives me cause for concern. Every continent shows some form of intolerance and oppression of humanity. I can only do what little I can to ensure that we do not forget.

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

It seems wrong, somehow to say that I really enjoyed a book about the Nazis. Somehow, it seems like it's an endorsement of their ideology and the things they did. I don't agree with them about anything, but I find them fascinating. I'm an archaeologist because I'm interested in people and people are easier to deal with when they're dead (apparently this is different for kittens). I have an abiding interest in World War II and Nazi Germany, for which I blame my high school history teacher, Sue Harsant. Nazis fascinate me because they took the treatment of other human beings to an extreme. I don't understand how they did the things they did. I don't know how some of them turned a blind eye to the things that were going on. I hope that if I keep reading, I'll figure it out.

I'm also interested in reading some alternative histories. There were so many points during the rise of Hitler and the Nazis and during the war, where everything could have been ended so much more quickly. Where everything could have gone on for so much longer. Where quite a different result could have come about. I'd like to know what people think might have happened in those cases. I hope that it will give me some insight into the ways in which these people thought and why things happened the way they did.

This book is a fantastically detailed history of, as it says, the rise and fall of the Nazis in Germany. This book was originally published in 1960 and it shows. There's a slight hint of sexism, but given that almost no women played important roles in this conflict, I can forgive that as a product of its time. There's a severe anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler thread to the book, and given what they did I can forgive that. I would have preferred the book to be slightly more objective, but given the incredible access to sources that Shirer had, as well as the fact that he was on hand as a journalist at many of the events chronicled I'm willing to forgive his subjectivity. He can't view this as one completely objective for the simple fact that he was there, he experienced it. I will also note a fair amount of scorn for the blindness of other leading politicians and say that he was just as biased against them as against the Nazis (well, maybe not quite, but a bit). I could have done with less of the "good christian men" motif - many Nazis considered themselves good christian men as well and as someone who thinks that organised religion is responsible for a great deal of the worlds ills having it so regularly referred to was rather grating. Also, it needed a map. You can never have too many maps and this book had none.

If you're not interested in WWII or the Nazis or any of that, don't bother. If you are, this is a must-read.

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher

This book first came to my notice when my one and only not-normal aunt (her words) recommended it to me. The copy I have belongs to my sister, a gift to her one christmas, possibly from me (it's so hard to remember, but I strongly suspect that it was so). I enjoyed this book, though I gather that others haven't. It's a history of detection in England and the detective novel. It's a biography of Mr Whicher and the Kent family. It's also a fascinating mystery about a murdered child.

If you only like the kinds of mysteries where everything is accounted for and 'solved' at the end, then this is not a book you should read. While, technically, the crime was solved when someone confessed, there were still unanswered questions and unexplained facts. There are ways to account for this, but one does not come away from this book feeling that the mystery has been solved satisfactorily. In many ways the book is rather depressing as one vicariously views the British media and public ruin the lives of both the family involved and the detectives trying to solve the case.

An interesting book. I enjoyed it, but I'm not really sure how I feel about it.

The Remains of the Day

I loved this movie when I saw it (I'd like to own it, but that's something else entirely) and I really wanted to read the book as a result. I've finally managed that. I was a bit worried, I will admit as my experience indicates that adaptations seldom live up to the book and this can be unfortunate when one is attached to the adaptation before reading the book. That was not the case here. The adaptation captures the feeling of the book wonderfully. There are, of course, nuances in the book that the adaptation simply can't provide. This is a beautifully written book that manages to cast a light on the between-war period in Britain.

Stevens is an engaging character and one is left wondering about his true feelings throughout the novel. He talks about his current situation and the past with a detachment that is wonderfully in character and incredibly suspenseful at the same time. What is the meaning of his reticence in mentioning his previous employer to anyone? Particularly when compared with his recollections of that time. Are Miss Kenton's hints about a desire to return real or wholly imagined on his part?

I have piles more questions that I could ask. This is a fantastic book (except, of course, that it's not fantastic at all. Words are strange things). If you have the opportunity you should read it.

Love in a Fallen City

This is a lovely book that I picked up at a Wordsworth book sale shortly after seeing Lust, Caution (a movie and experience I enjoyed greatly) with theOtherAmy. This is a set of short stories written by the same author. It's a book of beautifully written stories set in China in the early 20th century. I don't know much about translating works into English, but this seemed very well done as it kept the lyrical quality that I imagine the original Chinese had. It seems terribly wrong to call it 'Chinese' but I don't know enough about the Chinese languages to be more specific.

These are beautifully written, lyrical tales that evoke an atmosphere of a time I never knew. Read them if you can.

Jane Austen: Selected Letters

This is probably one of the best gifts I ever received from Sheep. Now, at first glance, Sheep is not a very complimentary name to give to a friend. I suspect, however, that she will not mind terribly. For a start, her name begins with an S. On top of that, it's her fault for moving to New Zealand, which many people associate with sheep. Thirdly, she's Christian and very devoted. As Jesus is the Lamb of God, sheep must be highly valued animals to Christians. Also (and this really isn't complimentary), I consider the blind acceptance of belief that most adherents to organised religions display to be very sheeplike.

Anyway, this is a collection of some of Jane Austen's letters. It's not all the surviving letters that have ever been found (I wouldn't mind Deirdre Le Faye's volume of those, actually, but I've never yet seen it in South Africa). Most of Austen's letters were destroyed by her sister, Cassandra, as she felt they were too private for public consumption. I don't blame her and I doubt not that it was what Austen herself would have wanted, but I do lament it.

The letters give some insight into Austen's life and personality. It's an interesting read and highly recommended (unless you can get your hands on the complete collection, in which case you'll have all of these as well).

Later Days in Highbury

This is a sequel to Jane Austen's Emma written by Austen's great-grand-niece or something similar. Actually, this is a sequel to a sequel (or whatever the word is for the same book through someone else's eyes - A Visit to Highbury) but this is the one that the library had. Austen-Leigh writes well. She focuses on minor characters and new characters. She manages to make the new characters interesting people that you care about. She doesn't do anything too awful to existing characters - they appear to be acting as they would if written by Austen. The opinions certain characters hold about certain other characters are not always ones I'd agree with and I do wonder which viewpoint is the author's own.

This is an Austen sequel that I would recommend.