Book Log 2020 #37: Under Occupation by Alan Furst

This newest entry in the Night Soldiers series sees a noveliist who drifts into the French resistance when a man dying from Gestapo gunshots gives him a blueprint that is apparently worth killing over. The novelist becomes increasingly involved in resistance activities, eventually traveling into Germany to find the people who can best explain the drawing he was given.

As much as I've liked the books in this series, it's time for Furst to shake up the formula a bit, as this book feels like it's covering ground we've already covered. Maybe move out of France (I don't think any of the books in the series are set in the Low Countries), or drop the romantic angle, which doesn't always work well. I'll read whatever comes next, and will hope to be surprised.

 Book Log 2020 #36: SS-GB by Len Deighton

I've read a lot of alternate histories, but somehow never got around to this one from the 1970s. In it, the Germans launch a successful invasion of Great Britain at the start of World War II, prior to the US entry into the war. While there is still a nominal government, the country is run by the Nazis.

The main character is a British police detective who, while working for the Metropolitan Police, answers to a German superior. He is assigned a murder case, but has questions when the condition of the body doesn't quite align with the available evidence. His investigation winds up involving higher ups in the German administration, the British resistance, and weapons research that could change the shape of the war - and the future.

I did like this book quite a bit, and found it to be one of the better entries in the alt-history genre of Germany winning World War II (though I think technically in this book the war may still be on). It's also another data point for my Swastika Theory, where the size of the swastika on the cover is inverse to the quality of the writing. The original cover (and several reprints) have no swastika at all, while it tends to be smaller on most of the covers that do have one.

 Book Log 2020 #33: An Elegant Defense by Matt Richtel

Was it a little on the nose to pick up a book about the human immune system in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic? Maybe.  But it's also understandable that one might want to learn more about this system at the very time it was being so thoroughly bested.

In any case, the book looks at the immune system, and the ways modern medicine is manipulating it to fight and cure disease, through the cases of four people with different illnesses. Richtel writes for the New York Times on a variety of topics, and that experience comes through in how well he's able to explain the complexities of human immunity and immune response so that they're understandable to the layperson.

While I did like the book, immunology is a field that's evolving quickly (probably even moreso with the pandemic), so I wonder how long the book will be accurate. 

 Book Log 2020 #35: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

This book, Alexie's first young adult novel, is semi-autobiographical (Alexie once said it was "78 percent true"), following a Native American teen living on a Spokane reservation who decides to leave the reservation school and attend the all white high school in the nearest town. 

The book examines the expected challenges - the difficult life on the reservation and the challenges that come up when interacting with the non-reservation world - and some that are less expected, such as the physical manifestations of being born with hydroencepaly.  There's a lot of humor in the book, which is needed to balance the difficult depictions of alcoholism and poverty.

I liked the book, but wonder how I would have felt about it if I'd read it as a young adult. I'd like to think I was aware of the challenges faced by Native Americans today, but I'm sure I would have been surprised by at least some of what's depicted. 

Not surprisingly, a book that frankly depicts issues like alcoholism, racism, etc. get challenged quite a bit by people who don't think it's appropriate for young adults. I will say I'd feel comfortable with both of my kids (a teen and a tween) reading this, as I don't think any of the content was included to be sensational or salacious. There's also the matter of multiple allegations of sexual harrassment against Alexie, which sparked a semi-apology and a backlash among literary groups. I learned about these allegations while reading the book, and decided to finish it, but haven't chosen to read anything else by him. You can decide if that makes me a tool of cancel culture or not.

 Book Log 2020 #34: The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer

One of the problems with keeping up with the Book Log in the way I have over the last few years - significant negelct leading to posts written years after I actually read the book - is that I don't have the memory to point out specific positive or negative issues. I have general feelings about the books, and do my best to shape those into something worthwhile.

You probably noticed. Assuming anyone is actually still reading this.

In some cases, even the general feelings aren't that strong. Such is the case with this book. When this happens, I do more reading of reviews to spark memory, but it didn't really help. One review I read mentioned how the reviewer thought she'd already read this book based on the title and cover, which do have that generic historical novel feel. 

I may be having a similar experience, as the plot elements I thought were in this book haven't shown up in the synopses or reviews that I've read. It could just be that these elements don't get mentioned as they're not pertinent to an overall review. Or they could be from a different book that also has dual timelines set during World War 2 and the present day.

Anyway, a lot of people seemed to like this book. It's Goodreads rating is just over 4.5, and I gave it a 4, so it must have worked for me on some level. Much of the book is set in Poland (both during the war and in present day), which isn't a common setting for war-related novels, so I may have given it a bonus for that. If you read this, leave a comment and let me know what I missed.

 Book Log 2020 #32: The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

In the year 1468 a young priest arrives at an English village to preside over the funeral of his predecesor and take his place as the village cleric. As he settles into life in the village he suspects that there was more to the other priest's death than meets the eye, and develops similar thoughts about the other villagers and the village itself. 

This is a bit of a departure for Harris, most of whose works are set in the recent past (with the occasional dip into ancient Rome), but he doesn't suffer for it. He also does a great job of taking the reader on the same journey of discovery as the main character.

Recommended, as is pretty much everything else Harris has written.

 Book Log 2020 #31: American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

An FBI intelligence officer finds herself at loose ends. She's stuck doing paperwork, never getting to join an actual intelligence operation. Being young, Black, and female all count against her with the old, white, and male FBI hierarchy.

Until she gets an offer from the CIA to join the team plotting to overthrow Thomas Sankara, the communist president of Burkina Faso. While she joins the team, she's conflicted in doing so. She's assumes she was asked to join the team based only on being a Black woman, and as someone sympathetic to Sankara's views she's not sure taking him out is the right thing to do. She's also trying to process the death of her sister, and the role her new CIA boss may have had in it.

The book is framed as a letter from the main character to her sons, explaining why their lives have taken particular turns. Doing so requires detours into the 1960s and the 1980s, which help to flesh out the relationship between the main character and her sister and fully detail the plot against Sankara.

There was an actual coup against Sankara, and a Burkinabe court recently found several people guilty of his assassination. As far as I can tell the trial didn't bring up CIA involvement, but given that organization's history of deposing leaders it didn't like, their involvement would not be surprising.

Whether or not the CIA did play a role in the coup, this book paints a realistic, energetic, and highly engaging picture of how they could have. But the strength of the book is in the  main character's personal relationships and actions, which make the story more relatable and memorable.

 Book Log 2020 #30: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

Rachel Watson commutes to London every day, and in the morning her train slows down right at the point where she can spend a minute looking at her former home, now occupied by her ex-husband and his new wife. She also gets to see a couple who live a few doors down, who are usually eating breakfast on their deck. Rachel creates a bit of a back story for them, names them, and enjoys her daily ritual.

Until the day she sees something while passing that changes everything (as the dust jacket would say). Rachel wants to intervene, but she's hampered by being an alcoholic, to the point that she regularly calls her ex while drunk and then has no memory of doing so. Turns out she may do more than just drunk dial, and she rapidly gets entangled in a missing persons case involving her ex, his wife, and the other couple.

This book was quite a phenomenon, which makes some sense given the plot twists and Rachel's role as a highly unreliable narrator (two other characters also narrate, to certain degrees of reliability). I do agree with some of the reivews that found Rachel's actions to be excessively illogical, but having never been in her mental state it's hard for me to say how legitimate that criticism is. If nothing else it's a reasonably well written mass market psychological thriller that will provide enough distraction to keep you from snooping on people during your commute.