Book Log 2013 #13: The Africa Reich by Guy Saville

I spent a good five minutes trying to decide if I wanted to read this, based on the Swastika Rule - I don't know the actual percentage, but the cover looks to be about 60 percent swastika - but I eventually decided to give it a go, as I wasn't finding much else of interest at the library. Turns out the rule didn't quite apply here, as the book was better than the rule would suggest.

As you can guess by the title, Germany won World War II and has established a strong foothold in Africa, where they threaten the weaker colonies of those who lost (or were neutral) during the war. The British hatch a plot to weaken the Germans in Africa, and turn to a quasi-retired special forces officer to lead the mission. He opts to do this one final mission so he can secure his preferred future of running an orchard and marrying his already-married girlfriend.

As you can imagine, things don't quite go as planned, and the team finds itself stranded deep in German-held Kongo, their best bet for escape an overland trek to Portuguese-held Angola. Along the way they fight off the Nazis, team up with the local resistance, and try to learn just why their plan was foiled.

At times there's a cartoonish level of violence, which pairs with some A-Team level of injury avoidance to make disbelief that much harder to suspend. For the most part, though, it's a perfectly serviceable alt-history novel that's a decent commuter read. It's the first part of a planned trilogy, and I have to give kudos to the author for his frank blog post as to why the second installment is lagging. Hard enough to imagine putting a quarter-million words to paper, never mind blowing it up and starting fresh.

Book Log 2013 #12: The Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell

The premise is simple enough: a man who has figured out time travel celebrates his birthday every year with all of his other selves from across time at a party that is always the same. At least until the man turns 39, at which point the party changes, and one of his selves ends up dead. How that happens - and how to prevent it, with the help of his older selves and a mysterious woman - makes up the bulk of the story.

And it's not a bad story per se, but I found myself hung up on the time travel aspect and its details (such as how various versions of the man become "untethered" as things change) at points that took away from my overall enjoyment of the book. I'd also have liked a little more background on whatever calamity has befallen the planet (or at least New York) in the man's timeline. It's not necessarily important - though the mostly abandoned city does allow the party to go on year after year - just something that niggled.

Anyway, it's certainly worth a gander, and you may like it more than I did if you can get past the things that I couldn't quite get my head around.

Book Log 2013 #11: A Study in Revenge by Kieran Shields

Anyone waiting for Caleb Carr to return to the plucky band of New Yorkers who solves murders in The Alienist and The Angel of Death will find some solace in the adventures of Portland, Maine police detective Archie Lean and his unofficial partner, the criminalist Percival Grey. In this outing, Lean and Grey are called in to help solve a killing with an apparent occult twist, one that pulls them back into the ambit of an old and powerful nemesis. Both parties are looking to find the same object, one which promises great power and, in the wrong hands, great danger.

Historical mysteries set in New England are always going to be of interest, though I wish I hadn't jumped quite so quickly to read this one. It is the second book with these characters, and the first, The Truth of All Things, is referenced frequently. This isn't such a bad thing if you just want to get up to speed, but if you have a light case of OCD about reading a series in order it's a problem. I'm still going to go back and read the first book, but it'll be less of a mystery.

Back to the Carr comparison, there are some comparisons to be made between Grey and Laszlo Kreizler (both highly intelligent, practicing in new fields and personally set apart from society based on a physical trait), as well as between this book's main female character and Sara Howard (both also highly intelligent, feisty, and less observant of traditional women's roles).

Anyway, I do recommend this book, but only after reading the first book.

Book Log 2013 #10: The Audacity of Hops by Tom Acitelli

Not surprisingly, given my taste in beer, I really enjoyed this history of craft brewing in America. Starting with Fritz Maytag getting involved with Anchor in the '60s and running through the contractions and rebounds in recent times, Acitelli puts together the story of how a handful of brewers used their passion and knowledge to reverse the trend in brewery consolidation and inspire other brewers to join them in building a small but significant niche among America's beer drinkers.

The book also clearly demonstrates the obstacles that craft brewing had to overcome (and in some cases is still overcoming), from finding capital to getting shelf space to trying to survive the pressure put on craft brewing by industrial brewers to just what exactly craft brewing means (is the Boston Beer Company, which is a top 10 brewer that contracts the work to other breweries, a craft brewer?).

One idea that came up, and is worthy of greater exploration, is craft beer's place in the wider development of quality American food and drink. The 1970s were a banner decade for this, between craft beer, improved California wines, and restaurants like Chez Panisse that emphasized local, quality ingredients. There are good books on each topic, but something synthesizing things would be a pretty good read, too.

Book Log 2013 #10: The Namesake by Conor Fitzgerald

The latest entry in the Alec Blume series, the title refers to a murder victim who shares his name with a magistrate investigating the 'Ndrangheta, Calabria's organized crime outfit. When that magistrate suffers a stroke while discussing the killing with Blume, the policeman sees an opportunity to help both of their investigations. What unfolds from that opportunity sees Blume mixing with police and intelligence agencies in Italy and Germany (as he's partnered with a German cop who has apparently gone off the reservation) and his partner/sort-of girlfriend Caterina Mattiola in danger.

Read this a while ago, and don't recall and specific issues I had with the book. Enjoyed it as I have the other entries in the series.

Book Log 2013 #9: The Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman

The second book in the series featuring Luxor police detective Yusuf Khalifa, it starts with an investigation into the murder of an elderly hotel owner with a shady past whose interest in ancient artifacts is tied into the search for the missing treasures of the Temple, long considered lost after it fell to the Romans. This naturally interests Khalifa, who has an interest in history and antiquities as well, and he digs into the case, even in the face of opposition from his superiors.

Complicating matters is a militant Israeli group who is reoccupying buildings in Jerusalem and a crusading Palestinian reporter who dogs them. The Israelis would like the treasures for obvious reasons, and the reporter gets on the trail thanks to some documents sent to her by an unknown party. As the case broadens, Khalifa has to turn to the Israeli police for help, and winds up working with a detective whose dislike of anyone Muslim stems from the death of his girlfriend in a terrorist bombing a few years before. Can this odd couple solve the murder and discover if the treasures exist (and keep them out of the wrong hands - whoever they may belong to)?

I liked this more than I expected, and while I was able to guess a couple of the book's twists ahead of time I didn't think that detracted from the overall experience. There's a good chemistry between Khalifa and Arieh Ben-Roi (the Israeli cop), even if their relationship normalized a little quickly for my taste (it's a plausible result given the way the book turns out, I just would have liked the tension to last a little longer).

Anyway, as a thriller it's good, and I did like its treatment of the subject better than The Columbus Affair. It's a series I'll go back to.

So we have another year with a Senate election here in Massachusetts, filling the seat vacated by John Kerry when he became Secretary of State (which comes up for re-election next year, making it five straight years in which we'll have voted for a US Senator; Elizabeth Warren better keep a wary eye out during 2015). The election is tomorrow, so it's apparently time for another Blogalicious endorsement.

On the Democratic side we have US Rep Ed Markey, who's been serving in Congress for the last 37 years. He's pretty much what you'd expect from a Massachusetts Democrat, a lefty who's provided solid if generally unremarkable service to his constituents. On the Republican side we have newcomer Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy SEAL who has made a pile in the financial sector.

The race itself has been similarly unremarkable. Both have runs ads you'd expect for the candidates - Markey touting his experience while trying to paint Gomez as a 1 percenter, Gomez talking about his service and being a "new" Republican while trying to make Markey the poster boy for Congressional partisanship - and their three debates have done little to inject any spark into the race. There have been some third party ads (Gomez refused the "People's Pledge" to keep third party money out, as he needed that money to keep from having to self-fund his campaign), which have been as witless and partisan as you'd expect (though it did introduce us to the comically named Americans for Progressive Action).

So what we have is a standard Massachusetts Democrat versus a weaponized version of Mitt Romney.  Neither is particularly exciting, and neither candidate seems primed to change the Washington culture. Markey is taking his one best shot at moving up from the House, while Gomez's "new ideas" include linking Congressional pay raises to balanced budgets and term limits, which were fresh ideas during the Reagan administration.

And that might be my biggest problem with Gomez. He's trying to run the Scott Brown playbook by painting himself as an independent Republican, and he's tried to work the Romney pivot a little from his positions in the Republican primary. It's not working particularly well in this case, either, as his remarks pretty much place him in the current GOP mainstream. So while I'm not over the moon about him, in this race, Blogalicious endorses Ed Markey. Let's hope he uses his brief term to find an identity.

Book Log 2013 #8: The Absent One by Jussi Adler-Olsen


A 20 year-old case of a murdered brother and sister keeps showing up on Carl Morck's desk. And while there's not much to suggest that this cold case will ever heat up, he eventually starts to look into it, with the help of his Syrian assistant and a new staffer, an unwelcome transfer from another department. As Morck and his "team" start to fill in some gaps, it becomes clear that the case is linked to some very important Danes - and one homeless woman. In order to close the case, Morck has to find the woman before the others do.

I don't know that I liked this better than The Keeper of Lost Causes, as I find centering things on a conspiracy of the rich and powerful a bit stale. That being said, the book does keep things interesting, and I do like the way the relationship between Morck and his colleagues is developing. But I could have used just a bit more of Morck's home life and the ongoing fall-out of the botched raid that left one of Morck's fellow officers paralyzed (although I'm interested to see how things will work now that those two subplots are merging a bit). Still, enjoyed it and am looking forward to A Conspiracy of Faith, which I've not been able to snag at the library.

Book Log 2013 #7: The Watchers by Stephen Alford

I never finished this book about espionage during the reign of Elizabeth I, and looking at reviews I am likely in the minority in how I feel about this book. Based on the jacket I was expecting an account that would feature the likes of Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen's principal secretary and sypmaster, but it mostly focused on individual spies.

That on its own might not have been a problem if there was more primary material about their lives and duties. But as you might expect, these folks (who were typically young men who entered Catholic colleges in France and Italy to root out plots against the queen) didn't leave much of a paper trail, for both professional and personal reasons. The story derived from what does exist (and some speculation) is interesting, to a point, but after a few stories about Englishmen suddenly appearing in Rome to ingratiate themselves with some mid-range cleric I lost interest.

But as I said I may be off on this one, so if the subject/period is of interest, it couldn't hurt to give it a go.

Book Log 2013 #6: Caveat Emptor by Ken Perenyi

This book caused a minor stir when it came out earlier in the year, as in it the author covers what's been a lifetime of forging paintings by mid-level artists, a profitable sideline (though often not that far to the side) to his legitimate work as an antiques dealer and restorer.

An indifferent student, Perenyi found his way into a branch of New York's art scene in the 1960s, and while his interests were more contemporary, his mentor steered him into reproducing older paintings as a way to develop technique. His mastery of technique, coupled with the influence of some less than savory characters, led him down the path of forging paintings for fun and profit (and some outright stealing to boot).

As regretful as Perenyi may sound at times, you do get the sense that he feels like the art world got what it deserved by stamping so many of his fakes as originals. Can't say I go along with that - as incompetent as some of the buyers were, it's still fraud - but it does strike me as a fitting point of view from someone who was marginalized from the "legitimate" art world.

All that aside, I did find the book interesting for its depiction of the New York art scene in the 1960s and '70s, and for the technical details of how Perenyi developed his techniques. It does descend into name-dropping at times - Andy Warhol merits multiple mentions, even though the two never met - and at times gets a little breezy for my taste. Overall, though, it's one of the better general audience books about art forgery I've read.

Following up a news story from earlier in the year, the IOC's executive committee recently short-listed three sports that are in the running to replace wrestling in the 2020 Summer Games. The sports short listed were squash, baseball/softball, and... wrestling. Yes, wrestling may replace itself, which is a pretty good indication as to how the IOC works.

It's ridiculous that things got to this point to begin with, though I suppose the bright side is that the federation for wrestling used the dumping from the Olympics to clean house and refocus itself on promoting the sport. Still, it's a little too much blame the victim for my taste.

So we're down to these three sports, two of which should be in the Olympic program regardless (wrestling and baseball/softball) and a third, squash, which is pretty popular internationally and certainly worthy. In my book they'd all be in, and in the interest of whatever the IOC is trying to do by dropping and adding sports, I have suggestions on what to cut to allow all three in.

Add wrestling, drop taekwondo. I have nothing against taekwondo, I've gone with it mostly under the "last hired, first fired" philosophy. It also doesn't help that over a third of all medals have gone to just three competitors: China, South Korea, and Taiwan Chinese Taipei.

It'd be more fitting if wrestling replaced boxing, which has lost a lot of its luster thanks to issues with scoring and refereeing. But we'll stick to the LIFO approach for now.

Add squash, drop table tennis. I don't mean to be picking on the People's Republic, but when a sport sees more than half of its medals go to one country, you have to question if it has enough competitive balance to be part of the Olympics. Squash should be somewhat better in this regard, though recent world championship results suggest a fairly small group of countries at the top.

Alternately, you could drop tennis, considering that the Olympics is, at best, the fifth-most important tennis tournament of the year.

Add baseball and softball, remove field hockey. The most imbalanced team sport is probably basketball - especially on the women's side, given the recent domination of the US team - but it's too popular (and too lucrative) to pull.  Going through the other sports there's not a great argument to be made for getting rid of of any of them. I still think the best bet would be to move an indoor team sport to the Winter Games, but that's not likely to happen, so I went with what seems to have the least mass appeal of the team sports.

Book Log 2013 #5: The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

If you're looking for the anti-Twilight book about vampires, this is probably it (other than, you know, Dracula). Told mostly in flashback (or whatever one would call flashbacks based primarily on letters written decades before), we follow a teenaged girl (who grows up to be the narrator), as she is dragged across Europe by her father, an academic turned peacenik whose frequent trips to the Balkans for work provide great cover for his greatest personal interest - the hunt to find Vlad the Impaler, who he believes is still alive (or at least not dead).

Whether or not this book works for you will depend on how patient you are with the story being told by letters. The vast majority of the action takes place in letters written by the narrator's father or by his thesis adviser, whose interest in Vlad and eventual disappearance is what sets the dad on the same trail. Most of the book's suspense also comes through the way the letters present information, so if you're looking for epic battles with werewolves or whatever this is going to be 900+ pages of disappointment.

For such a long book I found it didn't drag as often as you'd expect, and that the changes in location and introduction of characters helped keep the story from getting stale. There's also the running theme about the desire for knowledge and the lengths to which it drives people, on top of the usual vampiric themes of good versus evil (in both general and religious contexts), all of which are well presented. Certainly worth a read if you didn't get to it when it originally came out, and if you have the time to dedicate to a longer book.

Book Log 2013 #4: How to Watch the Olympics by David Goldblatt and Johnny Acton

I picked this up thinking it would be like The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup, but it's actually a reasonably straightforward guide to each of the sports on the program for the 2012 Summer Games. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - I wonder how many people picked up the Thinking Fan's Guide expecting actual soccer talk - but it's not particularly useful for sports you're familiar with (though it does provide some trivia and details that make a skim of those sports worthwhile).

The tone is light and it's pretty well written, but it's more of a browse than a straight through read. It can be surprisingly entertaining when you read about a sport you know well; the average American would find the chapter on basketball pretty funny. It'll still be reasonably useful for 2016 (though there won't be chapters on golf or rugby), so keep it mind when Rio rolls around and you want some clarification on dressage.

Book Log 2013 #3: The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden

I've not seen the movie, but if it's anywhere as good as the book I need to rectify that. I really enjoyed (to the extent that you can enjoy a book with Idi Ami as a main character) this study in how power can infect an otherwise intelligent person and make them think that the truly horrible is actually some version of normal (or at least pretend that it is).


Not that the main character, Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan, is fully in control of himself. The very nature of a dictatorship means that no one is beyond suspicion, and whether Garrigan plans to run or reconsider the request of the British embassy to give Amin a lethal dose of something, the idea that he's free enough to do so is mistaken. The worst part is that Garrigan is stuck either way - he can tend to Amin and become complicit in his crimes, or try to get out one way or another and risk serious injury or death.

It's not always an easy book - nothing related to the Amin period is easy - but it's a great study of what absolute power does to both the person with it and the people who fall within its orbit.

Book Log 2013 #2: To Forgive Design by Henry Petroski

In this latest work, Petroski lays out various examples of how failures of various structures - bridges, buildings, parts of larger mechanisms, etc. - that are often blamed on design are actually often due to something else, a something else that never quite gets a much press as the initial blame, and thus doesn't give the full picture as to why the failure occurred.

It's an interesting topic, and right in Petroski's wheelhouse of engineering, design and failure, all topics he's tackled before. My problem with the book is that the topic is addressed with too much data. Chapters often brim with examples for a particular point, to the extent that I started to forget what point was being made. I found the book more successful when chapters dealt with a single example or topic (there's a great chapter about the replacement of the Waldo-Hancock Bridge in Maine, which I have some bias towards as both the old and new bridges are about 10 minutes from where my in-laws used to live, and I've crossed both a number of times).

So while I wouldn't label this book a failure, it is one of the harder slogs I've had with Petroski's book, and I didn't finish it. I hated to quit, but I just couldn't work through another dense, example-laden chapter whose point I'd lost due to all of the other information.

Book Log 2013 #1: Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris

So I hadn't realized that I'd not started this year's book log until I was browsing entries looking for comment spam. I can't say I got any emails, Facebook messages or other communications pleading for its return, but here it is.

In this novel, a teenaged girl goes missing in the Saudi Arabian desert, and its up to the family's desert guide to find her.  Her body is eventually found by others, and when the autopsy turns up some surprising revelations, they ask him to investigate the death. The only way he can effectively do this, though, is to enlist the help of a female worker at the coroner's office, who also happens to be the fiancee of one of the girl's adoptive brothers.

Ferrais lived in Saudi Arabia for a time and was married into a Saudi-Palestinian family, and her first hand experience with the culture helps to support an already well-conceived mystery. And for all of the display of this traditional culture, there's all of the characters who are living out of synch with it, from the desert guide (a devout Muslim from Palestine rather than a Bedouin) to the lab tech (whose mother was Russian) to the family at the center of the mystery, with its adoptive sons and the daughters (and daughters in  law) who both fight for place in the family hierarchy and, in some cases, long for a freer life. While I don't expect the people in this book mirror the author's experience exactly, there's certainly a "write what you know" vibe.

This is the first book in a series of mysteries featuring Katya, the lab tech with the Russian mother. Probably a good idea to read them in order, and it's worth a go. I really enjoyed this book.

So this isn't the whole spam, just the closing line.

Let`s take our chance together to feel the smell of real money

It's ostensibly spam to get me to invest in some sort of dealer in pipes for oil and gas (drilling? pipelines? it's not clear.), but I love the idea that for my small investment I could feel the smell of money. That is some big-time plutocrat nonsense right there.

One of things I noticed while trying to catch up and finish this year's Lentorama was that I seemed to be getting a pretty significant number of page views each day - for example, 40 today - which didn't quite jibe with the number of views on my most recent posts (for example, the last 10 days of Lentorama have, collectively, no views, but that's sort of expected). So what gives?

The answer, as it so often is on the web, is comment spam. And in the interest of turning a nusiance into entertainment, I'm going to share some of the more entertaining entries before deleting them. From a 2002 post about the design for the new building at the World Trade Center site, we get these gems:

Tremendous things here. I am very satisfied to see your article. Thank you so much and I'm taking a look ahead to touch you. Will you please drop me a e-mail?

I never did drop an email, which I guess is why this person never touched me. Probably for the best, it probably would have wound up as an episode of SVU.

This piece of writing gives clear idea in support of the new people of blogging, that in fact how to do running a blog.

I'm guessing my clever idea was the use of appropriate syntax and grammar.

Hi there! This is my first visit to your blog! We are a collection of volunteers and starting a new initiative in a community in the same niche. Your blog provided us valuable information to work on. You have done a extraordinary job! 

I'm guessing the volunteers are behind the linked website, By Extreme F^ck!ng (my edit). I am not sure how off the cuff architectural criticism gave them information to work on, but I assume it involves spires and tunnels.

My family every time say that I am killing my time here at net, except  I know I am getting experience all the time by reading such nice articles or reviews.

Listen to your family.

Have you ever thought about including a little bit more than just your articles? I mean, what you say is valuable and all. However think of if you added some great photos or video clips to give your posts more, "pop"! Your content is excellent but with pics and videos, this website could definitely be one of the greatest in its field. Good blog! 

I imagine my posts would "pop" if I included video and pictures from the linked site, collegeorg!es.0rg (also my edits). My posts would probably also make many other sounds as well.

Happy to see that it's an org site, because there's not enough non-profit porn in the world. These kids should get a medal from the UN.

you are actually a just right webmaster. The web site loading pace is amazing. It sort of feels that you are doing any unique trick. In addition, The contents are masterwork. you've performed a excellent activity in this topic! 

I will also find true love on Flag Day. 

Lentorama 2013: There's a Name for That

Day 40: sedes stercoraria

We end our 40 days of Catholic things with one of the more legendary items in papal history. The sedes stercoraria, or posterior chair, was said to be used to check the gender of newly-elected popes. The new pope would sit on the chair, and it would be someone's ticklish duty to make sure that the pope had the appropriate male parts. 

The only problem is that there's no record of this ever happening. The purpose for this chair is derived from the hole in the seat - whose actual purpose is unknown, as what existing chairs there are date from Roman times - and the Pope Joan legend, where a woman was purportedly elected pope and only discovered when she gave birth during a procession. Just as there is no record of newly-elected popes getting a ball check, there's also no historical record to confirm a female pope. The legend persists, to some extent because there's no proof (evidence of a Vatican coverup!).

I did stumble across one article that suggested that these chairs were used to verify if a man (not sure if it was a pope specifically or clergy in general) had been castrated. So maybe there's something to the testicle theory.

So there you go. Another Lentorama come and gone. Hope all three of you enjoyed.  

Lentorama 2013: There's a Name for That

Day 39: ferraiolo

You likely saw one of these during the recent papal election. It's a long cape, running from the shoulders to the ankles, bound by fabric strips tied around or near the neck. Color varies by rank, as with most vestments. They're typically non-ornamented and worn for formal, non-liturgical occasions.

The best-known wearer of one of these was Bishop Fulton Sheen, who always donned one during his TV appearances. I don't know if you can use the phrase "big pimpin'" in relation to Catholic vestments, but if you can, you'd probably use it for someone wearing one of these.