The Boston University men's hockey team opens its 2012-13 season tomorrow night at home against Providence. I will not be there. It will be the first home opener I've missed going back to the team's tenure at Walter Brown Arena. More notable, however, is that this will likely be the first season in which I will not attend a single game since I first started at BU as a student - in 1987.

The reasons for this can be found in this document and in details uncovered in its preparation. The two arrests for sexual assault last year were troubling enough, but the fuller picture compounds things.

I'm not going to say I'm shocked by what's been revealed - it's hard to be truly shocked when you grow up on the Georgia academic scandal to the Oklahoma drug scandal and everything at Miami, not to mention SMU's death penalty and whatever basketball point shaving scandal you want to bring up - but I'm hugely disappointed that this occured at my alma mater. I certainly can't support it, and as a long-time season ticket holder I have no interest in subsidizing it.

Am I going to ignore the team entirely this season? I would like to say yes, but I know at some point I'll tune in to one of the many games that will be televised. Twenty-five years of fandom does not go away easily.

I will say that the university didn't play hard ball too much when we cancelled the tickets - there was a little harrumphing about being in the second year of a three year agreement - so I think someone realized it's in their long-term interest to forego a year or two of revenue for the potential of fans coming back as long-term season ticket holders in the future.

So what will it take for us to start up as season ticket holders again? Speaking only for myself, I can think of three fairly obvious requirements:

1. No arrests. For anything, for at least a couple of seasons.I would like to say no arrests ever again, but I know the reality is that some idiot is going to get picked up for urinating in public at some point, and for whatever reason I think I'd be better with that in 2015 than in, say, December.

2. Player turnover. Getting through the current crop of juniors and seniors will help, and while it's unfair to think that all of the players in these classes are potential felons, they are also veterans of a team where inappropriate behavior was not seen as such. My hope here is that the newer players are more of a reflection of what's expected from high profile athletes.

3. A new coach. This is the hardest condition to write, as Jack Parker is synonymous with BU men's hockey. It's easy to see him as the college hockey equivalent of Bear Bryant, a coach who would stay at the helm until the very last. I have no idea if he has any benchmarks he wants to hit before he retires - most wins, another Beanpot-Hockey East-NCAA treble - but he may want to amend his goals and get someone (Mike Bavis?) prepped to take over sooner rather than later.

As for this year, I may take in some of the BU women's hockey team games - they're also nationally prominent, and tickets will not be hard to come by. I'm also thinking I may get to a couple of men's basketball games this year, the last in which they'll play in the America East conference. Who knows, 25 years from now I may still be going to see these teams.

Book Log 2012 #18: The Columbus Affair by Steve Berry

While this takes place in the same universe as the Cotton Malone series, this stand-alone book follows a disgraced newspaper reporter who is recruited by a shadowy billionaire to help solve a mystery involving Columbus and some of the most sacred artifacts in all of Judaism. Along the way the reporter has to come to terms with the two most painful broken relationships in his life (his father and his daughter) and the potential to restore his good name. There's also the involvement of a Jamaican crime lord, whose ambitions and cultural pride cause their own issues.

The background needed for the main character would not have allowed this book to be another Malone adventure, and I think that's a good thing. The Malone series could use a break; this year is the first year since 2006 that we won't have a new book in the series, and I hope writing a stand-alone work will help refresh the series.

This is a better outing than the last two or three Malone books, which I think comes from having new dynamics to explore between characters and, more importantly, having a good historical mystery to work with. For someone as well-known as Columbus there is a great deal of uncertainty about his background, and when you throw in some of the quirky facts about his first voyage there's ample room to create an interesting story. I kind of hope we get more stand-alone novels in the future.

Book Log 2012 #17: Dying Light by Stuart Macbride

The second book in the series featuring Logan "Lazarus" McRae, we find our detective transferred to the squad of misfits led by the similarly inept DI Steel thanks to a botched raid that's left a fellow officer in a coma. Stuck trying to rehab his reputation surrounded by losers, he finds himself on two investigations - one the slaying of prostitutes, the other a string of deadly arsons - though only one belongs to his squad. McRae sees solving the prostitute case as his way out - but so doesn't DI Steel, who takes every opportunity to claim credit.

Very much a worthy successor to Cold Granite, with the added office politics a nice counterweight to the crimes. There's also further developments in the relationship between McRae, his newspaper contact and the medical examiner who's dated them both, which adds an interesting (if a bit uncomfortable) personal note. Looking forward to reading the third book.

Book Log 2012 #16: DNA USA by Bryan Sykes

Sykes is a geneticist who has used studies of mitochondrial DNA to trace our roots back to a small number of common female ancestors, as recounted in an earlier book The Seven Daughters of Eve. And if you've not heard of that book, you will run across mentions of it three or four dozen times in DNA USA, which the publisher says gives a "groundbreaking examination" of the country based on its citizens' genetic code.

Except that most of the book is not about that at all. The first part (or "movement," ugh) talks about how scientists have used genetics to get a clearer view of human development and migration. This is where you'll hear the most about Sykes' previous books, generally to explain why he's not going into detail over a given subject or finding. It makes sense in context, at least to start, but it happens enough to feel a little off-putting.

The second part follows Sykes as he takes a cross-country road/train/plane trip, collecting saliva samples and stories from Americans to see what their genes say about them. There is some interesting stuff here - there's apparently a real issue with Native Americans and this sort of testing, which I'd never heard before - but there's also a fair amount of personal reflection on traveling with his son (and then his wife) which I didn't really care about.

The final, short section actually goes into the results, which are limited as only about 25 people were tested. This pretty much debunks the idea that this is some sort of "groundbreaking examination," though it gives Sykes material to make some sweeping yet unproven generalizations.

It's not written badly, and the first part is interesting enough. I get the feeling there's a better book about genetics and genealogy that could have come from this, though.

Book Log 2012 #15: 1493 by Charles Mann

I was a huge fan of 1491, Mann's book about the pre-Columbian Americas, and the rational way it went about showing the differences between the popular image of the hemisphere prior to Columbus and the vibrant, well-populated civilization that was actually here. I think my enjoyment of that book may have set the bar too high for the follow-up. It's as well-researched and written as the first one, but never quite hit the same heights for me.

As for why this is, I've come up with two theories. The first is that the links between the new and old world that are detailed here aren't as surprising as the revelations in 1491. Thanks to Thomas Friedman and all his world-flattening, the idea that Andean silver fueled Chinese growth isn't as shocking as it may have been a decade ago.

The other is that, in trying to be exhaustive, the book can get a bit exhausting. A later section of the book discusses independent settlements of freed/escaped slaves (such as the quilombos in Brazil or the settlments in the Great Dismal Swamp). It's an interesting topic, but it gets bogged down by the need to discuss all of the major settlements in the Americas.

There are still some interesting connections made - the linkage between various types of mosquitos, malaria bugs, human physiology and slavery, for example - and overall it's well worth reading. You just may find your attention wandering more than you'd expect.

Book Log 2012 #14: We Is Got Him by Carrie Hagen

In 1874, a young boy is taken from his front yard by a pair of men (his brother is also taken, but is released shortly afterward). Shortly thereafter the father receives a ransom note, and thus begins what is believed to be the first kidnapping for ransom in US history. The search for the boy, Charley Ross, would play out in the press and gain nationwide attention.

At the same time, the city of Philadelphia (where the kidnapping occurred) is preparing to host the US centennial celebration. The men in charge - powerful, rich, connected - are concerned that the Ross case will hurt their fundraising efforts and impact attendance, and exert pressure on the mayor to either get the case wrapped up or buried as quickly as possible.

If this set-up sounds kind of familiar, it's because it follows the Devil in the White City template that Erik Larson set up so successfully. Even better, the two story lines in this case are actually related, avoiding the problem that some post-Devil books had in tying the two story lines together.

The result, for me at least, was kind of uneven. I felt that the centennial planners never quite came to the fore enough. I suppose that's fitting, as their exercise of power was mostly in the background, but more detail about these men, even if not related to the actual events in the book, would have helped flesh that group out. I also tended to think that the transition of the story from Philadelphia to New York was muddled, as it was less clear to me what characters knew what information at that point.

I don't know if I necessarily enjoyed the book, but I did find it an engaging look at the period and location, and of how ill-suited law enforcement was at the time to deal with anything like this, even when the crime was committed by men who were not exactly masterminds. Worth a read, certainly.

Book Log 2012 #13: Cold Granite by Stuart MacBride

Logan MacRae is just back to work after a year off recovering (and perhaps not fully) from stab wounds suffered in solving a serial murder case, and finds himself in the middle of a string of child murders and disappearances. He's got to juggle the investigations with the press (and the inevitable leak), an ME who is hostile towards him, and a changed landscape among the brass. All of this takes place within the bleak backdrop of Aberdeen, where it seems to rain every day it doesn't snow.

I have to say I enjoyed this book very much, both straight-up as a crime novel and for the elements more specific to Tartan noir. Aberdeen is used to great effect, and the apology to the tourist board that MacBride puts at the start of the book was good for a laugh. I didn't find MacRae to be as anti-heroic as the genre suggests, but more of that may come out later in the series, which I intend to continue.

Book Log 2012 #12: Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten

The invasion of Scandanavian crime fiction brings not only new authors, but the catalogs of existing ones, as evidenced by this book, the first in a series featuring the title character, who plies her trade in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city. The case at hand is the killing of one of the city's richest men, whose apparent suicide is quickly discovered to be something else. Family, friends and ex-cons now operating in the victim's neighborhood all come under investigation.

And that investigation seems interminable, with page after page of dialog that really felt off to me. I've run into this more than once with books in translation, and in most cases the translation either sorts itself out or I get used to whatever quirks originally bothered me. Not so with this book, which read as oddly on the last page as it did on the first.

Not helping is that for all of being the title character, I had a hard time building any interest in Huss, who doesn't appear to be any more gifted at criminal investigation than her colleagues (and in at least one case, a little less gifted, or at least a little less lucky). I suppose some of this was to come from her domestic life, mostly from having to address one daughter's decision to become a skinhead, but that wrapped up so cleanly - almost magically so - that it didn't help develop her character at all.

My other issue with the book is that it didn't use the city very well. There were long stretches where I lapsed into thinking the story took place in Stockholm, and for the most part it might as well have. Maybe I've gotten too used to Scottish crime authors making really good use of their location. 

Can't say I'd recommend this one, and don't particularly plan to continue with the series.

Book Log 2012 #11: Supervolcano: Eruption by Harry Turtledove


In the end notes to this book of alternative geology, Turtledove thanks his parents for subscribing him to National Geographic all those years ago, as an article from that magazine is what inspired this series that starts here by having the supervolcano that lies beneath Yellowstone National Park blow for the first time in 70,000 years or so. It just so happened that I'd unearthed what I believe is the issue in question (August 2009, article here) while I was reading the book, so I had added impetus to read the article.

And if you do opt to pick this book up, I would suggest reading the article first. For one reason, you'll get to see where much of the exposition comes from (including a Rhode Island reference that leads to the main character's odd and unexplained hatred for the state). For another, you'll actually get a decent idea of how and what such an explosion might entail.

Because the book, rather than having a chapter that describes the eruption in detail, only covers it from a distance. And while the towering clouds, fearsome roar and rolling ground under the characters' feet underscore just what a big deal this is, we never get a good feel or depiction of the event referenced in the title. It's like a book version of Terra Nova's distinct lack of dinosaurs, but in this case the reader gets shortchanged on the one event the book should address.

Instead, we get the aftermath of the eruption and its impact on the members of the Ferguson family and their associates. Which isn't bad in and of itself, but does get bogged down pretty badly in a narrative that can't go more than a sentence with making some allusion, riffing on a notable quote from literature, or using a phrase or slang term that may have been used semi-widely 30 years ago. This also infects a decent amount of the dialog, which certainly doesn't help. There are passages here that are in no way related to how people actually talk. All of this is too cute by half, and by trying to show how smart and/or clever he is, Turtledove detracts from the story.

There are some interesting bits - the Ferguson daughter becomes a refugee staying one step ahead of the ashfall, and the older son is snowbound in Maine touring with his band, whose name is like a bad joke come to life.

So would I recommend this book? No. But will I read the next one? Probably. Because I am a sucker.

Book Log 2012 #10: Radio Shangri-La by Lisa Napoli

I have an odd fixation with Bhutan, so this book was right up my alley. Napoli, a journalist based in Los Angeles, took a major detour at a crossroads in her life by agreeing to move to the Bhutanese capital of Thimphu to help start a youth-oriented radio station. Considering Bhutan only allowed television and Internet access in 1999, this was a bigger deal than she expected.

The bulk of the book covers her time in the country, getting used to her youthfully exuberant, if not particularly skilled, station staff, learning about the pervasive nature of its Buddhist culture, and trying to get used to the spicy cuisine. As interesting (and often humorous) as this is, I think the last part of the book, where Napoli goes back to California and eventually hosts one of her former radio personalities, speaks best about the author's personal journey in comparison to the changes in Bhutan (which was introducing elections for some positions) and in the Bhutanese, who have the unenviable task of trying to balance traditional living with the desire to be more involved with the outside world.

Certainly worth a read if you're interested in Bhutan or cross-cultural sorts of books.

Book Log 2012 #9: How Italian Food Took Over the World by John Mariani

So it turns out that I didn't lose my list of books, so now I can go back and report on books like this, which I more or less forgot I'd even read. Which, in and of itself, tells you something about the book. I don't have specific criticisms, but do remember being less impressed with the book than I expected. Could just be I didn't connect with the writing. Probably worth a peek to see if I'm off base.

Book Log 2012 #8: Code to Zero by Ken Follett


A man wakes up in a public restroom, and can't remember who he is or how he got there. While he looks like a common bum, he quickly realizes that he's not, and as he builds up a base of knowledge about himself he also becomes aware that his condition is related to the coming launch of the Explorer I, the rocket that put the US into space in 1958. This leads to his wife and old friends from Harvard, and the realization that someone is out to stop him, and perhaps the rocket launch itself.

It was the basic premise of the book that led me to pick it up, but I have to say I was somewhat disappointed in the actual story. Certain things happened to quickly for my taste, or enjoyed a coincidence that stretched credulity a bit too far. I'm also not sure I understand why the characters who worked for the KGB joined the other side in the first place. There's a half-hearted attempt to explain at least one character's change, but I'm not really buying it.

The other issue I ran into is that there are things that the characters have done that I would have preferred to read about. Several characters worked for the OSS during World War II, some behind enemy lines. Another fought in the Spanish Civil War. There's the potential for some interesting flashbacks, but we don't get any. Most of the flashbacks we do get are to when most of the characters were students at Harvard or Radcliffe.

So, no, I don't think I'd recommend this book, which is a shame, as I still think the premise is a good one.

Book Log 2012 #7: The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler

Another drop in the torrent of Scandinavian crime fiction hitting the US, this novel follows a psychiatrist and police detective as they work a multiple murder where the doctor uses hypnosis - a practice he'd sworn off years before - to get information from the only surviving family member. A number of new crimes follow, and both protagonists have to work to figure out the how and why they're connected - if at all - in order to stop the killings and save a kidnap victim.

I was not a fan of the book to start, as things seemed pretty stilted - there were more formal introductions of characters and information in the first 75 pages than you'd find in all of pretty much any other mystery novel - but as things moved along the writing moved away from its Billy's Pan Pizza stiffness (perhaps an artifact of translation?) and picked up steam.

I'm still unsure that some of what passed would actually happen - the publicity over the doctor's use of hypnosis seemed to happen too quickly and too strongly, though I know little enough about Sweden to say if hypnotizing victims of crime would be that controversial. On the plus side, I did find that the typical world-weariness of the detectives in Scandinavian crime fiction was tempered somewhat, a positive effect of his doggedness.

Kepler is a husband and wife team of writers, and I wonder if that's to blame for some of the uneven tone at the start of the book. In any case, I did enjoy the book once it started rolling, and I think I'd pick up either of Kepler's other two books once they show up in the US.

2012 Book Log #6: In the Garden of Beasts  by Erik Larson


Larson is best known for his books that contrast technological marvels with criminal events that happened concurrently (Devil in the White City, for example), but this book harkens back to Isaac's Storm, the story of a man who had his beliefs changed due to a seminal event (in this case, a deadly hurricane that more or less destroyed Galveston, Texas).

This book moves on to a bigger stage, as it covers the tenure of US ambassador to Germany William Dodd, a history professor who winds up being the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany. He takes the job believing that he can use the power of his intellect (and the US government) to help steer Hitler and his friends into less radical waters. As his time in office unfolds, he has to battle both the Germans - who continue to act out, occasionally beating an American citizen who didn't stop to salute marching SA members - and internal enemies in the State Department, who seemed to spend as much time deriding Dodd for his lack of Ivy League credentials and frugal way as they did working on actual diplomacy.

Dodd's daughter is a sort of co-main character, a vivacious young woman whose own intellect and writing gets her into literary and higher society. She's also a bit of a romantic adventurer, between her marriage to a much older New York banker and the on-again, off-again romance she kindled in Berlin with a Russian intelligence agent who was working to turn her into an informant (a task of which she was apparently unaware).

I don't know if I really enjoyed the book as much as his others, but I did find it fascinating to see how the common if often casual anti-Semitism among American diplomats (including Dodd) and the common belief that the Nazis would moderate or be replaced led to a number of missed opportunities. I don't think another ambassador could have done more to push the Nazis to a more moderate position - Dodd did as well as he could, I think, and anyone trying to do more would likely have put US-German relations in a more difficult position - and I don't think anyone would have really succeeded in doing anything to make things better. Anyone and everyone could have done more to get Jews out of Germany while the getting was good.

All that being said, I do think the strength of the book is the inside look into the early days of the Nazi regime, and it's well worth a read for that alone.

Book Log 2012 #5: The Flanders Panel by Arturo Perez-Reverte

An art restorer, working on a 15th century painting of a chess match, discovers a question painted under the surface of the work - the Latin equivalent of Who killed the knight? - and in doing so decides to solve the mystery posed by the question, with the help of her long-time mentor and father-figure, a former boyfriend and art historian, the agent selling the painting, and a reserved chess master. This quickly spreads into a modern day murder mystery, as members of the group begin to drop. Muddying things is the potential transfer of the painting to another firm, as the value of the painting becomes greater in the face of all the killings.

It's a pretty good mystery, but I was disappointed in the ending. Suffice it to say I didn't quite buy into why the guilty party's motivation. But I did enjoy it overall, just a little less than some of his other books.

Book Log 2012 #4: A Lily of the Field by John Lawton

So I got a new phone recently, and in the process of transferring information from my old phone I managed to delete the file where I'd been keeping all of the book titles I'd not yet logged here. It was a solid dozen, so well done by me.

This is actually one of the more recent books I've read, and to add annoyance to annoyance it's the eighth book in a series featuring a London police detective and cases he's picked up before, during and after World War II. There's one, maybe two previous books to which I likely now know who the guilty party is, so even more well done by me.

Even so, I am glad that I picked this one up as I enjoyed it quite a bit. The set-up is a little odd, in that the main character of the series doesn't show up in the book until it's well underway. The first third of the book (if not more) follows a group of characters who become important to the actual crime. It was a little confusing at first, but given where this book is in the series it's not like you have to trot out the main character on page one.

The actual murders in the book are secondary to the great period detail, from the social and musical life pre-war Vienna to post-war London and its rationing. I would certainly recommend this book, but I'd also recommend starting from the beginning (and to throw another wrench into things, the books take place in a different chronological order than their published order).

Lentorama 2012: Know Your Diocese

Day 40: Archdiocese of Boston

Of course we were going to wind up here. The basics: founded in the early 1800s, split off from Baltimore. Grew tremendously with all of the Irish and Italian immigrants that came in later that century. Had a significant problem with priests abusing boys (hopefully the use of the past tense is appropriate), thanks in no small part to an enabling cardinal who got the most golden of parachutes when he was reassigned to Rome after resigning as head of the archdiocese. Current guy seems to be doing well, like that he keeps wearing his monastic robe rather than moving into fancier cardinal duds.

Honestly, this Lentorama did not go well. A couple of entertaining bits, but mostly a slog. I do already have an idea for 2013, which I think will at least be more fun to write.

Lentorama 2012: Know Your Diocese


Day 39: Diocese of Dubrovnik


While bishops sat at Dubrovnik going back to the sixth century, it didn't get diocese status until 990. For roughly 700 years it was an archdiocese, but it was demoted in 1828, which I assume had something to do with the end of the Republic of Ragusa, of which Dubrovnik was capital. There's not much else I can find about it, especially as the diocese website is (a) in Croatian, and (b) seems optimized to crash my browser.

Lentorama 2012: Know Your Diocese

Day 38: Diocese of Poona

OK, language question. From what I can tell, Poona is also Pune. I was thinking that Poona was some sort of bastardization created by the English, but when I click through to the diocese website they use Poona. But then it lists Pune as one of the areas it covers. So maybe it's the Vatican that needs to update its usage?

Anyway, the diocese was formed in 1886, developed from work done by various priests sent to the area to offer service to Catholics in the military. There aren't that many Catholics in the area, and it seems like every time there was significant growth in the diocese a chunk would get cut off and moved to somewhere else. I'd be a little irritated if I were the bishop of Poona. Or Pune for that matter.

Lentorama 2012: Know Your Diocese


Day 37: Diocese of Tulsa


This diocese was formed in 1972, freeing it from the 1930s creation of a diocese of Oklahoma City and Tulsa. It covers 31 counties in eastern Oklahoma. Not surprisingly, it can trace its history even earlier to French monks who arrived in the area to put down a Catholic footprint and convert the natives.

Really, there's not much else to say about them.