TO SLEEP IN A SEA OF STARS

 This special signed edition available through B&N was supposed to be YA king Christopher Paolini’s first adult novel. It read like a normal 12-18-year-old YA novel to me. I felt hemmed in once I started to read this 878-page tome and I hate to stop reading once I start a novel. While the novel does have mostly adult characters, there are almost no sexual innuendos. It reads like a cross between Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy...a little too silly for my taste. In a sci/fi novel, I prefer the antagonist be as close to a single entity as possible, such as in the Alien series or in The Day The Earth Stood Still. I don’t need to read a book with a variety of foolish characters in impossible situations; such as the movie Abbott & Costello go to Mars (1953) or Spider-man or Batman novels. Now after that somewhat rant you must think that I hated this novel...not so book lover! I hate being deceived. When I read the teaser inside of the dust jacket, and it says, “Kira Navarez dreamed of life on new worlds...now she’s awakened a nightmare.” That’s false advertising...believe me, it was not that dramatic. Was it well written? Yes. Was it as teased? No. 

Kira Navarez and the company she works for were finishing up its survey of Adrasteia, an earth-size moon, light-years away from earth. On the last night of their mission, they celebrated their departure in the mess hall. While Kira and her fiance, Alan, were at the punch bowl, the expedition boss cleared a path to her. He said, “We have a problem: one of the drones down south went dead.” Kira said, “So? Send another one.” Her boss replied, “They’re too far away, and we don’t have time to print a replacement. Last thing the drone detected was some organic material along the coastline. Needs to be checked before we leave.” The moon they were on had to be cleared before the expected colonist could arrive. Kira would have to shuttle down in the morning and check it out. Kira and Alan spent the night together before Kira’s mission in the morning. That night, Alan asked Kira if she would be his wife. She said, “Yes. Thousand times yes.”

The organic material in question was on the top of a hill a few hundred meters to the south of her shuttle. “At the top of the hill, she found a flat spread of rock scored with deep grooves from the last planetary glaciation...biologically, there wasn’t much interest on Adrasteia...still, the absence of more developed forms of life was a plus when it came to terraforming: it left the moon a lump of raw clay, suitable for remolding however the company, and the settlers, saw fit.”

She found a rock formation that looked like the result of a meteor strike or a volcanic eruption. She then fell into the hole. “Kira lay where she was, stunned. In front of her, all she saw was rock and shadow.” She was lying on a pile of stone rubble, covered in dust. When her head cleared, she realized that she fell into a room. It had to be made by intelligent aliens. The dust started to cover her body like a series of tight, ever-shifting bands. “Outside the suit, the dust flowed over her visor, plunging her into darkness, Inside the suit, the tendrils wormed their way over her shoulder and across her neck and chest...she opened her mouth to scream as the torrent of dust rushed inside of her. And all went blank.”

The tight suit of tendrils and dust is the focus of the novel (that could have been finished in 350 pages). What is it? Is the suit good or bad? It is capable of defending her in any attack, but possessing it causes ungodly damage to many planets and aliens. Why does all of the universe seem to want the suit? Good luck finding that out...I was on page 646 and still didn’t know. The author has to learn how to leak out a little information in order to keep the reader interested...but alas, he didn't.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I’m not into exotic-looking aliens like you would see in a Star Wars movie. That’s how I visualized the different types of aliens in Paolini’s space opera. Give me a good ole Robot like Robby or Gork anytime before an Ewok, Chewbacca or God forbid...a Jar Jar Binks! 

In Larry Niven’s classic 1985 novel, Footfall, the antagonists threatening Earth are the Fithps, baby elephant-looking creatures with multiple trunks. Why is this monster okay? Because it’s a single entity. No other creature appears in the novel. See my review of this wonderful story on 3/30/2011.

the SPLENDID and the VILE

My favorite non-fiction writer who writes like a fiction writer, Erik Larson, has finally disappointed me. His latest novel is nothing more than a chess game in the skies between Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler. A game of who could bomb one another better. If you want to know what was in Churchill’s head while trying to get FDR and America into the war...you will like this book. If you want to know what was in Hitler’s head while delaying the blitzing of England...you will like this book. If you want to know what went on at Churchill's country home in Chequers...you will like this book. With the countries only 485 miles away from each other and Hitler involved in many other conflicts at the same time, you would think England with their famed RAF would be the favorite against the Luftwaffe, but they were not (the Luftwaffe was too massive). Why Hitler took so long to bomb London is still a mystery to me. So basically this novel takes us through many bombing raids between these countries and almost nothing else (I am exaggerating). Okay, you do meet all the other characters Hitler had working for him and Churchill’s many Lords, generals, and advisors. And who has the better bombers and who has the better fighter aircraft? Are the German Messerschmitts better than the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes? All these facts with no sidebar or secondary story (which is Larson’s strength in storytelling) were putting me to sleep most nights. If you want to read the author that I know and love, read Larson’s The Devil in the White City (see my review of 1/26/2012). 

“America loomed large in Churchill’s thinking about the war and its ultimate outcome. Hitler seemed poised to overwhelm Europe. Germany’s air force, the Luftwaffe, was believed to be far larger and more powerful than Britain’s Royal Air Force, the RAF, and its submarines and surface raiders were now severely impeding the flow of food, arms, and raw materials that so vital to the island nation.” For Churchill to win the chess game depended on one thing as far as he was concerned. “I shall drag the United States in.” Not that Churchill wasted much time waiting for FDR’s decision: “Within two days of his (Churchill) taking office, 37 RAF bombers attacked the German city of Munchen-Gladbach, in Germany’s heavily industrialized Ruhr district.” On and on this book struggled till it came to the conclusion that the hoi polloi of the world already knew how it (WWII) would end. I thought there would have been a good chance of a quality secondary story...but nooooo! (John Belushi). Just more facts that have been dissected more than the proverbial frog. If it wasn’t for Erik Larson’s great writing skills, I would give this rigorously historical book a lower rating.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: On 6/18/1940 at 3:49 pm, Churchill stood before the House of Commons to address the French debacle (France surrendering). This speech would go down as one of the great moments in oratory, at least as he delivered it in the House of Commons. He issued an appeal to the greater spirit of Britons everywhere…"Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.’ "

Churchill agreed to broadcast his speech made earlier in the day to the British public that night. It didn’t go well. He was accused of being drunk, sick, or fatigued. What happened? “As it happened, the problem was largely mechanical. Churchill had insisted on reading the speech with a cigar clenched in his mouth.” Haha.

Also of note, There was a young American journalist and war correspondent in England at the time that would write a 1,300-page epic, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. His name was William L. Shirer.  

 

the HANDMAID'S TALE

If you are a chauvinist pig, you will love this 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood. While there are no creatures such as the crakers in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (see my review of 3/12/2015), it is still one spooky dystopian story. Our story is way into the future where the USA is now Gilead, except for Hawaii and Alaska. Somehow congress and the senate were wiped out (murdered?) by some group (never identified in the novel) and the constitution was replaced by The Book of Genesis with the new leader’s interpretation. What were they reading? Except for some barren wives married to commanders, all women had no power or rights. There were some women assigned to cook and maintain a commander’s house (the Marthas and the econowives), but the majority were handmaidens. What are handmaidens?  They are women all dressed the same: long red dress like a moo-moo and a large white bonnet with blinkers (so they couldn’t see right or left). They do small chores (in pairs) like walking to a meat market named All Flesh to pick up tonights meat for their assigned commander’s house. Their main responsibility is to have sexual intercourse with their commander while the wife (usually barren) holds the handmaiden down. How else is this regime going to populate the New USA? Yes, I remember the 1950s…”keep them barefoot and pregnant”. Remember? Haha. The ladies are constantly watched by Angels, Guardians, or a big black truck with a large eye painted on it. Any protesters are gunned down by the new army. 

I could go on and on about the depressing lives women now endured, but I just wanted to give you a taste of what this story was all about. Where are the husbands of the handmaidens? You are briefly told that there is rebel fighting somewhere. Our narrator for this tale is Offred. Real names are forbidden for women except for the wives of a commander. We never find out what Offred’s real name is. All names now start with “Of”, so the narrator’s name means: Of Fred. What happened to her real husband Luke? I think the main criticism I have for Atwood’s writing is that she is too secretive. Stop leaving me out to hang and dry! Don’t let me squeeze the pages like a lemon for a drop of information. I know she finally wrote the sequel to this story in 2019 (The Testaments), but come on...that’s 35 years ago! You are an old woman now! Haha. Does she finally divulge what the hell’s going on? Don’t get me wrong...I loved the story. But the 93 authors that follow my reviews know I always find something wrong. My last beef is that if you are going to use Cormac McCarthy’s style of writing (no quotation marks)...stick with it. I believe the first page that you used with quotation marks was page183. Every time I read a dystopian novel, I say I’m not going to read another...they are too depressing… then I read another one. Now if you want to criticize me, I know, I know, I know that I love my ellipsis and parentheses, but that’s my style of writing. Oh okay, also writing paragraphs that are too long.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment:

I’m not surprised that Atwood finally wrote a second book, because late in this book, Offred says, “I’m sorry there is so much pain in this story. I’m sorry it’s in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.”

“I’ve tried to put some of the good things in as well. Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?”

“Nevertheless it hurts me to tell it over, over again. Once was enough: wasn’t once enough for me at the time? But I keep on going with this sad and hungry and sordid, this limping and mutilated story…”

At the novel’s end, there is a historical notes section that is a very interesting addition to this novel. It’s the year 2195. Professors are having a symposium about a tale (this story) they found in an old storage trunk along with other memorabilia of the time. Professor Pieixoto starts the proceedings with, “...I wish, as the title of my little chat implies, to consider some of the problems associated with the soi-disant manuscript which is well known to all of you by now, and which goes by the title of The Handmaid’s Tale.”  

Well done Margaret Atwood!

The Last Day

It was a good novel, but not as good as I thought it would be. The premise got my sci-fi mind drooling. Just think of it...the rotation of the earth slows then finally stops. I’m asking myself, “What happened and how can it be fixed? What countries are now permanently in the dark and cold? Which ones are now permanently sunny and hot? Are there some countries that will straddle the line and have great weather? If so, will they try to rule the world?” So you can see how tasty this novel could be. Andrew Hunter Murray wrote a good story, just not as strong as it could have been. He is somewhat talented in the descriptive end, but a little shallow in keeping the reader excited. I also had the feeling that he was trying to write at the same pace Dan Brown writes novels. Murray’s main character, Dr. Ellen Hopper (an ocean scientist studying currents) is trying to solve her mystery at the same breakneck speed Dan Brown’s, Professor Robert Langdon (see my review of Origin on 10/24/2017), a religion symbologist, does. The only thing similar is they both have unusual occupations. So here’s a little taste of the novel. 

Early on (page 38 of 407 pages), the reader finds out how earth’s problems started: “Eventually, the cause was discovered. A white dwarf star, a rare celestial creature the size of earth but two hundred thousand times as dense, loosed from its own star system by a supernova explosion, now free to barrel through space disrupting everything in its path. It was traveling at two thousand kilometers a second through this part of the Milky Way, its trajectory and enormous gravity dragging the earth slowly backward, its path as perfect as if it had been designed by some malign heavenly committee. It was already millions of kilometers away by the time it was spotted, speeding from the wreckage, its damage done.” So you see, it doesn’t seem like anything could have been done to avoid the inevitable...maybe if we could have gotten Indiana Jones involved. Haha, just kidding.

The novel starts in the year 2059, thirty years after the slowing earth finally stopped. We meet our heroine, Dr. Ellen Hopper, out on a rig in the North Atlantic charting the new currents and whale patterns. Whoopi! (sorry). Anyway, two mysterious people from Britain helicopter onto the rig to bring her back to London. It seems a famous Oxford professor Edward Thorne (on his death bed) has something he only wants to tell his ex-student, Ellen Hopper. What’s so secretive that he will only speak to her...not even to the prime minister. This reminded me of how Dan Brown’s hero, Robert Langdon was whisked off to the Vatican City in Angels & Demons. This is where the story takes off and where I’m going to leave you to agree or disagree with my review… after you read it. 
 
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: There is a novel that I read and reviewed on 3/28/2013 that dealt with the earth’s slowing rotation... The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. Walker’s novel dealt with the slowing rotation viewed through the eyes of an adolescent girl in California. It was more about how gravity sickness affected a town in California. Gravity sickness was never mentioned in Murray’s novel. Neither novel reached apocalyptic proportions, which was refreshing.

The first work of apocalyptic fiction goes to Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, who wrote Le Dernier Homme in 1805. Wow, that was a mouthful! It translates to The Last Man. Lord Byron’s 1816 poem Darkness deals with the sun’s extinction. And Frank Lillie Pollock has a second sun incinerate earth in his 1906 poem, Finis. Popular H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in 1895 and has his time traveler witness the sun’s expansion, wiping out the earth’s population. 

COUNTDOWN 1945

Move over Erik Larson, there’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Chris Wallace (just kidding). Well, Wallace’s book is certainly on par with the writer of Dead Wake, Erik Larson, the king of non-fiction books that read like fiction. Wallace’s chapters were countdown days to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan during WWII. For instance, the first chapter was countdown: 116 days, and the last two chapters were countdowns: 43 seconds and Firestorm. Each chapter ending with a cliffhanger to the next. I also liked the short chapters, long ones put me to sleep for whatever reason. The book was co-written by Mitch Weiss, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and bestselling author of the Heart of Hell...so I’m going to assume he had a lot to do with Countdown 1945.

Countdown 1945 goes over in detail the last 116 days of The Manhattan Project, the death of FDR, the emergence of Harry S. Truman, the last weeks of the famous Potsdam Conference (Stalin, Churchill, & now Truman replacing FDR), the genius of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team and of course, Col. Paul Tibbets, Jr, and his crew that flew the B29 Superfortress (Enola Gay) that dropped Little Boy (atomic bomb) on Hiroshima on 8/6/1945. Was that a long fused sentence, or what? 

Oppenheimer headed the team at Los Alamos, New Mexico where they finished the development of the atomic bomb. He was the son of a German immigrant, six feet tall, 135 pounds with an “appetite for rare steaks, stiff martinis, spicy foods, and cigarettes.” And did I forget to mention “a genius of theoretical physics?” Students at Berkeley and California Institute of Technology loved him! “But Oppenheimer had a dark side, too...he didn’t tolerate small talk...dismissive to the point of rudeness and his brilliance could be clouded by melancholy and peevishness.”

“FDR thought very little of Truman, keeping him out of the war effort during Truman’s short stay at VP...he made no particular impression on me.” That’s why Truman didn’t know anything about the Manhattan Project. Truman was president for 13 days before the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, walked into the oval office. “He handed the president a short, typewritten memorandum and waited while Truman read it. The first sentence was a battering ram...within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.” It will be (down the line) Truman’s call whether to drop the bomb or not.

 “Creating an atomic bomb was a devilishly complex process. First, the country had to produce radioactive fuel. Then it had to figure out how to safely detonate the fission process-setting off an atomic chain reaction-at the right moment and in the right place. And it had to pull all of this in complete secrecy.” There you go, you got a 43-page taste of what this book is all about. Did I like it? No. I loved it!

RATING: 5 stars out of 5

Comment: “The closer the U.S. got to the Japanese homeland, the more fiercely the enemy fought. Not a single Japanese unit surrendered. And the enemy homeland was mobilizing for an invasion and the bloodiest battle of all. Japan had more than two million troops stationed there. And every civilian had been armed and trained to fight.” 

After the successful testing of the atomic bomb in the desert of New Mexico on 7/16/1945, the Los Alamos workers partied in the streets. Hooray, hooray.

Then the euphoria died down.

When Oppenheimer imagined what it would be like to be under the explosion in Hiroshima, he mumbled to himself…”Those poor little people. Those poor little people.” President Truman wrote in his diary, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world.” General Eisenhower was against the dropping of the bomb, he wanted to overrun Japan. Truman wondered if he should warn Hiroshima, would they still surrender? If he did invade the main islands, the price could be millions of dead and wounded Americans besides the Japanese dead and wounded.

the BIG FELLA

Jane Leavy, author of The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle (see my first review of 11/15/2010) writes an enjoyable tale of Babe Ruth’s historical barnstorming tour of 1927 with Lou Gehrig. Ruth had just finished the 1927 season with a record of 60 home runs. The hard-nose Commissioner of major league baseball, who was hired by baseball because of the 1919 Black Sox scandal, had a rule that the winner of the World Series couldn’t barnstorm that year. What?? Babe didn’t care about rules or fines. He made more money than God (just a phrase, but almost true) with his countless endorsements, vaudeville acts and silent movie appearances. The Babe had a sports agent! Yes, Christy Walsh is the sport’s world’s first full-time agent...and his only client was the Babe (who needs anybody else). The Babe’s team was called “Bustin Babes” and Lou’s team was “Larrupin’ Lou’s. They toured many cities from the east coast to the west coast, playing local all-stars sprinkled in with some major leaguers. They attended and missed many town breakfasts, luncheons, and evening banquets and local award ceremonials they were invited to. It’s been said that they signed 5,000 baseballs during the tour! Every town in America wanted it.

I wasn’t aware of how badly the Babe was harassed and catcalled his during his career. His ethnicity was constantly questioned because of his big lips. People like Ty Cobb (a known racist) yelled the N-word at Babe from his dugout whenever the Yankees played Detroit. Babe is best described by Brother Gilbert from St. Mary’s in Baltimore (Babe’s childhood home), “If you ever wanted to see a bone out of joint or one of nature’s misfits, you should have seen him.” A sportswriter said, “His ears stuck out. Like handles on a loving cup. His hair stuck up. His nostrils spread wide. His lips were full as the rest of him would become. He was dark complected, having inherited his olive skin from his mother’s side of the family. In the rough tongue of the playground, he quickly acquired a nickname: Nigger Lips, or Nig, for short.” Wow, yet he succeeded big time. “George Ruth never shared his first impressions of St. Mary’s with his family. He never spoke about what it was like to go from being one of two surviving children in a family defined by a loss to be one of the many, what it was to go to bed that night wondering when or if he’d see that family again. He never said what it was like to sleep in ordered rows and dress in matching clothes, to share sinks and stalls in a communal washroom, to surrender to a system predicated on uniformity and routine.” Doesn’t it make sense that as the Babe got older, he became a nonconformist and a champion for orphaned boys?

In the late 1940s, as Babe was dying, the author spelled out the many opinions of various doctors. Even during his dying days, everybody wanted a piece of him. John Rattray, a Maryland chiropractor, thought the operation to stop his headaches was unnecessary. “Rattray was convinced he could have restored the Babe to full health and that he died not of cancer but as a result of nerves severed during surgery.” Bernarr MacFadden, a physical culture doctor (what!), had Ruth’s picture on the cover of his magazine three months after his death. He said, “If he would have put Babe on an exclusive grape diet he might have returned to the baseball field for many years of active service, notwithstanding his age.” Haha. “Ruth chose another course. He consented to an experimental form of chemotherapy and radiation then being tested on mice at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors reported that tumors treated with the drug melted away.” As Mel Allen, the great NY Yankee announcer would say, “how about that!”

Jane Leavy’s style of writing is soothing but also a little annoying. You will be going along with something interesting and realize that she is suddenly talking about something in the past right in between the current stuff she was just talking about. It’s done almost unobserved. Does that make any sense? Her books do seem to be highly certified though. In this book, she has 104 pages of author’s notes and sources to back up her claims. Overall, I enjoyed this book mostly because of the subject matter...Babe Ruth.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Comment: From Jane’s Epilogue:

On August 12th,1948, the hospital announced his condition was critical. Two days later, doctors began issuing hourly bulletins. On the 15th, Paul Carey reached Julia at the nearby hotel where she was staying with Claire, “I think you’d better get over here.”

On Sunday, August 16th,1948, he managed to get out of bed and sit in a chair for twenty minutes, but his breathing was labored. His temperature continued to rise. He told Claire, “Don’t come back tomorrow, I won’t be here.”

Slugger rallies, pulmonary complications. Family at the bedside. Slugger sinking rapidly. Slugger failing.

“The slugger had never failed at anything and he certainly wasn’t going to fail at this. At 6:45 p.m., May Breen DeRose read him a telegram. As she got ready to leave, he lurched out of bed and started across the room. “Where are you going, Babe?” the doctor asked.”
“I’m going over the valley.”

“At 7:30 p.m., he received a final blessing (8/16/1948). Minutes later he fell into a deep coma. He was pronounced dead at 8:01 p.m.”

The autopsy showed that he didn’t die of cancer of the larynx. He died from a very rare and aggressive form of nasopharyngeal cancer that had spread to his neck, his lungs, and his liver.
His granddaughter Linda offered a different opinion. “I think baseball killed him; not cancer. He had no more worth in his head.”

Babe Ruth died at age 53, his clean-up hitter, Lou Gehrig at 37.

SAM HOUSTON & the ALAMO AVENGERS

I’m always a little leary of historical fiction novels written by Fox News Network celebrities. Most of them are published in an uncannily fast time, such as novels written by Bill O’Reilly (ex?), usually co-written with Martin Dugard, published at least once a year. He is what I call a commercial writer. How much research can be done at that pace? But, lo and behold, Brian Kilmeade, Fox News Network TV star (Fox and Friends) and radio star (The Brian Kilmeade Show) seems to have written a book all by his lonesome. So you can imagine that I was apprehensive reading another Fox Network star. Guess what? Although not a fact-filled almanac, I was pleasantly surprised at the author’s historical accuracy. This is not my first rodeo reading about the Alamo and its afterlife. It was a smooth and seemingly factual rendition of one of America’s favorite stories. One thing though...I thought the author spent too much time on The Alamo and too little time on the Avenger part.  

The birth of Texas was started by Stephen F. Austin’s father in 1821. “The fifty-nine-year-old Moses Austin obtained permission from the Mexican governor of Texas, who was eager to populate the sparsely occupied state, for three hundred American settlers to establish a colony there. Just weeks after settling the deal, he died of pneumonia.” On his deathbed, he pleaded for his son, Stephen, to take up his cause. He came. As the years went by, Austin went to see President /General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna about making Texas a separate state. Santa Anna would have nothing to do with that and had him arrested. “He felt lucky when, in late July 1835, he was finally permitted to head home to Texas. After his many months in Mexico City, he fully grasped the size of the enemy; he and his thirty thousand Texian (spelling at the time) settlers faced a fight with a nation of some eight million.”

The fight to take Texas from Mexico (go west, young man's first step? haha) would be a mammoth struggle, to say the least. And Santa Anna was a Napoleon look-alike to the nth degree. Here is a man who ordered one of his own Mexican states (Zacatecas) to give up their weapons and when they refused to give them up...he destroyed them. “The president permitted his soldiers to run wild, setting fires and pillaging. In fact, more than two thousand civilians in the town had been slaughtered, among them hundreds of women and children. Santa Anna’s message was clear: He would be merciless in putting down any who opposed him.” This is the man the brave Texians would have to wrest Texas from. Read the rest of this historical novel to find out how they did it! In it, you will meet President Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett (see my review of (7/18/2013).

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars

Comment: Winning the war:

“Sam Houston, through some mix of luck, instinct, fortuitous timing, and good counsel-and bravery-of men around him, did something remarkable. He and his army of farmers and shopkeepers, men distracted by the plight of their families and friends, who had become homeless wanderers fleeing for their lives, faced off with a large professional army, one amply supplied with guns, artillery, and munitions. And won a stunning, one-sided victory.”  

TOUGH LUCK

R. D. Rosen’s biography, Tough Luck, only trails two other sport’s biographies that I have read and liked. My all time favorite is Tunney by Jack Cavanaugh (2006). The story of Gene Tunney’s life and his brilliant upset boxing victories over Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight championship of the world. Next in line is a true hard look at one of baseball’s icons, Joe Dimaggio, The Heroes Life by Richard Ben Cramer (2000). What makes the life of football legend, Sid Luckmam, interesting is how he was able to live a superstar life even though his father was the notorious mobster, Myer Luckman. Yes, friends with the Capones and the Lepkes of the 1930s. Bang Bang, you’re dead. The book opens with Myer Luckman having his own brother-in-law killed for skimming a few bucks to cover his gambling losses. It makes big news in Brooklyn, NY where a budding Erasmus High School football player was emerging. 

The book is narrated by the author, R. D. Rosen,“In 1959, when I was 10 years old, I was fascinated by the new occupants of a big redbrick colonial house around the corner from my family’s quirky custom split-level. Word had spread quickly throughout Highland Park, our suburb on the North Shore of Chicago, that the new occupants were former Chicago Bears quarterback, Sid Luckman and his family.” The author then turns back the clock to Sid’s childhood in Brooklyn, NY. Meyer Luckman loved football (Myer would never see Sid play a Chicago Bear game) and gave Sid a football on his eleventh birthday. Wow, since he owned the only football on the block, guess who was the neighborhood’s mandatory QB? Meyer arranged for NY Giant QB Benny Friedman to show Sid how to hold and throw a ball, although in the early years of football, almost all of the plays were a run. The QB was behind the center, the fullback was behind the QB and a tailback was behind the fullback. This formation was known as the I - Formation. Every team used it. Nearly every play was a run off tackle by the tailback. Ohio State’s legendary coach, Woody Hayes, used to call it, “three yards and a cloud of dust.”  

Sid becomes a star at Erasmus High. Coach Paul Sullivan loves Sid and considers him his son. By the way, Sid’s high school graduated many famous people such as: Yankee pitcher, Waite Hoyt, actresses: Clara Bow, Mae West, and Barbara Stanwyck, singers: Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, writers: Mickey Spillane, Roger Kahn and actor Moe Howard of The Three Stooges to name a few. Ha,ha. Anyway, in the stands watching Sid play was Columbia University’s head football coach, Lou Little, chomping at the bit, to sign him up. Lastly, watching Sid play football at Columbia was the Chicago Bears coach, George Halas. George visualized Sid as his QB in his newly formed T-Formation idea. The formation of the future! Finally a passing game! And Halas knew who he wanted for the position. I think the love these two men developed for each other was the best part of the book.

Did I find anything wrong with this book? Well, it was a bit of a snoozer at  times. I have to admit that my head drooped down more than a few times. Also there was no dirt on Sid Luckman. It seemed that anybody who came in touch with him, instantly fell in love with him, including Joe Dimaggio (who was very dirty in his aforementioned biography), Frank Sinatra and the famous Manhattan restaurateur, Toots Shor. And every ballplayer he ever played against (or with) including hall of famers: Otto Graham, Sammy Baugh, Bronko Nagurski, Johnny Lujack, Norm Van Brocklin and George Blanda to name a few who loved him. And he was so generous that he had a room in his Florida house filled with presents! If you visited him...you left with a present. Don’t even ask what kind of tipper he was. 
 
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: It seems that Sid was as perfect as you can get. There are plenty of documents at the book’s end that support that fact (I’m trying not to be facetious). The great original owner and coach of the Chicago Bears, George Halas (Papa Bear), typed a letter to Sid five months before Halas died at the age of 88:

My dear Sid, “I love you with all my heart.” When I said this to you last night as I kissed you, I realized 44 wonderful years of knowing you were summed up by seven words.
My boy, my pride in you has no bounds. Remember our word “now!” Every time I said it to you, you brought me another championship.
You added a luster to my life that can never tarnish. My devoted friend, you have a spot in my heart that NO ONE else can claim.
God bless you and keep you, my son. “I love you with all my heart.”
Sincerely yours, George

Sid Luckman kept the original letter framed in his apartment and a copy of it folded in his wallet for the rest of his life.

The War Hound and the World’s Pain

This is a guest review from Deron O:

The War Hound and the World’s Pain is the first of two stories by Michael Moorcock chronicling the history of the von Bek family and their relationship with Lucifer and the Holy Grail. This novel has a more mature tone and style as compared to nearly all of Moorcock’s other novels I’ve read. It took me some time to adjust to that. The constant struggle between Law and Chaos in all of his Multiverse novels is present here in the form of God and Lucifer. Consequently, in addition to the action, there is a significant amount of religious and philosophical discussions that might exhaust readers expecting something more akin to Moorcock’s Elric or Hawkmoon series.

The novel begins at the sacking of Magdeburg, Germany in 1631 in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War. Ulrich von Bek and his band of irregulars, mercenaries for the victorious Catholic army, quit the burning city, tired of the slaughter and discouraged by the lack of loot. Von Bek soon deserts his men when some show signs of the Plague. He heads deep into the Thuringian Forest where he happens upon a castle, strangely uninhabited but immaculately maintained and fully stocked, a fine place to recuperate.

Eventually, the occupants return. First, Lady Sabrina, with whom von Bek falls in love, and later, the lord of the castle, who introduces himself: “Welcome, Captain von Bek. I am Lucifer”. It was not by chance that von Bek found himself in this castle. Lucifer explains, “I am weary of the Earth and still more weary of Hell, captain. I yearn for my position in Heaven...I must make amends...I must discover the Cure for the World’s Pain...God has bestowed the world one object, one means of healing humanity’s ills. If that object is discovered and the world set to right again, then God will listen to me...I might be able to convince Him that I am truly repentant...I am asking you to embark upon a Quest on my behalf. I want you to find me the Cure to the world’s ills...The Holy Grail..”

Von Bek wonders what he gains in exchange for undertaking this hunt and if Lucifer is somehow trying to buy his soul. Lucifer answers, “Buy your soul, von Bek? Did you not realize that I own your soul already? I am offering you the chance to reclaim it.” Seeing no alternative, von Bek assents but not without also including Lady Sabrina’s lost soul in the bargain.

All do not share Lucifer’s desire for reconciliation with God. The minions of Hell enjoy their stations. Will they too be allowed back into Heaven, or be cast forever into Limbo? Faced with this uncertainty, they set out to stop von Bek at all costs!

In broad strokes, the plot mirrors the novel’s backdrop. The Thirty Years’ War began as a religious war between Catholics and Protestants around the time of the Protestant Reformation and ended with the weakening of religion’s influence in the affairs of man. Von Bek, an aspect of the Eternal Champion, similarly brings balance. He says, “I pray, in short, that God exists, that Lucifer brings about His own Redemption and that mankind therefore shall in time be free of them both forever: for until Man makes his own justice according to his own experience, he will never know what true peace can be.”

Once in the right mindset, I enjoyed this first tale of von Bek and appreciated Moorcock’s attempt at something a little more ambitious.

4 out of 5

Comments

There is a character named Philander Groot. In chapter 10, he says, "I am Groot. Groot is who I am." I was struck by that as it sounds like someone else’s catchphrase.

Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1960; but according to this article, it was only in 2008 during the Annihilation Conquest comic book miniseries that Groot began saying, “I am Groot.” 

Given that The War Hound and the World’s Pain was published in 1981, is it possible that the writers of Guardians of the Galaxy lifted that now famous line? Considering Michael Moorcock’s influence on comics and fantasy in general, I’d have to lean towards “Yes”. I have absolutely no proof of that, but it would be cool.

THE SEVEN AND A HALF DEATHS OF EVELYN HARDCASTLE

This novel made me dizzy and woozy with a slight case of vertigo at times. If you saw Bill Murray’s movie, Groundhog Day... multiply the confusion by one thousand, and you will be at this novel’s level. If Stuart Turton didn’t possess such wonderful writing skills, I would have thrown the book against the wall. And here is an example of his descriptive skills, “The fellow who enters is large and shambling, scratching a head full of white hair, dislodging dandruff in every direction. He’s wearing a rumpled blue suit below white whiskers and bloodshot red eyes, and would look frightful if it weren’t for the comfort with which he carries his dishevelment.” I thought the book had way too many characters, all of them playing a roll in this murder/mystery, thus adding to the confusion. And eight of them became hosts to the malady I call...the waking up for the next eight days in a different person’s body (or much longer). Sometimes the chapters would start off with a new person in a certain host, then lapse back into an old body they had a few days before, while you tried to solve the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle in a rundown castle. You also had to contend with a footman (a liveried servant, who admits guest and serves tables) who was hell-bent on killing each host or anybody else that got in his way. This character never made any sense to me.

The book starts with the narrator, Aiden Bishop, running through a forest shouting “Anna." He thinks to himself, “My mind has gone blank. I don’t know who Anna is or why I’m calling her name. I don’t even know how I got here.” He looks at his hands, “I’m cut short by the sight of my own hands. They’re bony, ugly. A stranger’s hand. I don’t recognize them at all.” He has no idea who he is (many people in this novel are also confused at certain times). He shouts, "Anna" again...a woman screams back, “Help me!” “I spin, seeking the voice, glimpsing her between distant trees. A woman in a black dress running for her life. Seconds later, I spot her pursuer crashing through the foliage after her.”  Aiden hears the fading echo of the pistol’s report. He is exhausted as a man’s warm breath touches his neck and says, “East”. Aiden falls to the ground as the tormentor backs out of the forest. Aiden thinks, “My relief is pitiable, my cowardice lamentable. I couldn’t even look my tormentor in the eye. What kind of man am I.” The alleged murderer left a compass in his jacket pocket. By the way, I’m using the name Aiden Bishop for clarity purposes...he doesn’t know who he is until deep into the story and then he still isn't sure. So he heads east. On page five he breaks out of the woods and sees,”the grounds of a sprawling Georgian manor house, it’s redbrick facade entombed in ivy.” He makes his way to the crumbling old estate’s front door and “hammers it with a child’s fury”. The door is slowly opened and... Welcome to the Hardcastle family’s Masquerade, or the nineteenth anniversary of Thomas Hardcastle’s murder at the Blackheath estate. Sorry, that’s it, you only get a six page taste of this 435 page novel. 

I didn’t love, or hate Stuart Turton’s novel...it just made me pull my hair out too many times. Bang my head against the wall too many times. Pinch my arm. Read with your own peril.

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: Some reviewers are comparing Stuart Turton to Agatha Christie. Are they talking about the author who has sold over two billion novels? Are they talking about that author? Nuff said.