Teaser Tuesday (27-4)

Oh, shame! I've been too occupied with being bedridden and working on papers to actually read this past week*, but here's a teaser from one of my favorite books.

"Did they really try to burn down the paper?"

"Yes, they did," I said, wondering if I'd heard this black lady in rural Mississippi just say that her first language was Italian.

(p. 66, The Last Juror by John Grisham)

*I have book comments forthcoming, but academics have been rather demanding. Still, the worst will be over by Thursday night.

Tatooine Ghost

Tatooine Ghost 
© 2003 Troy Denning
416 pages

Tatooine Ghost is set early in the expanded universe, focusing on Leia and Han in their first year of marriage. Mon Montha of the New Republic has sent the newlyweds to Tatooine, where a unique painting – the lone survivor of an Alderaanean art form known as ‘moss painting’ – has surfaced in an auction. While Leia – who saw the painting every day in her childhood home – places great sentimental value in the artifact, buried within it is the key to the New Republic’s communications protocol concerning military and intelligence operations. Leia must prevent the painting from falling into the hands of the Empire while simultaneously confronting her father’s presence on Tatooine.

    Tying into events of The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith*,  Tatooine Ghost sees Leia and Han infiltrate the auction under heavy disguise. The book would be short indeed if Leia was able to obtain the painting merely by bidding for it, and in no time at all grenades are thrown and our happy couple – along with Chewbacca, Threepio, Artoo, and a few minor characters from the original trilogy who knew Leia’s father as a little boy on Tatooine – are forced to chase the painting across the sands of Tatooine in a manner reminiscent of the Empire’s attempt to recover its Death Star plans in A New Hope. As Leia begins to experience her father’s past – to talk with his friends, to visit his home and familiar haunts – she is forced to come to terms with the legacy of her father, particularly in light of the fact that she is beginning to experience the Force which he served and which corrupted him. 

I lost interest in the main plot early on, being more interested in Leia’s reckoning. Portends of the extended universe’s history abound: the imperial officer heading the Imperial search for the painting just ‘happens’ to have red eyes set against blue skin. Although I thought the search for the painting was a bit derivative of A New Hope, I enjoyed the book overall given the emphasis on Leia’s character growth.



*The book was published in 2003, yet references events (Shmi's abduction and torture at the hands of Sand People, Anakin's retaliation and graveside confession)  that only took place in a movie not released until 2005. I'm not sure how that happened.

The Brethren

The Brethren

© John Grisham 2000

384 pag

               From within the confines of a minimum security prison, three convicted judges spin a web of deceit and extortion across the nation. Relying on a corrupt lawyer with addictions to shuttle mail and handle the money, these three men – termed ‘the Brethren’ --  seek out closeted gay men via classified ads in alternative magazines. Posing as young gay men themselves to earn the marks’ trust, the judges then threaten to expose their victims to their wives if they  do not pay upwards of $100,000. These closeted men have no recourse but to pay, for explaining the circumstances of their extortion means revealing parts of themselves they've kept in hiding. The Brethren have little to lose from their scheme, but financial security following their eventual release from prison to gain – and so they write their letters and prey on their victims, watching their bank accounts grow and contemplating future lives of leisure.

    They might have continued to spin their webs for years, but they chanced to ensnare a young politician named Aaron Lake, favored by the CIA to be the next president of the United States. Lake isn’t just favored by the CIA: he was hand-picked by the Director, who has subsequently funded and helped manage Lake’s bid for the office. Fearing the potential rise of a Russian strongman, the Director wants a man willing to double funding for the US military to ward off potential threats – and he does not take kindly to the idea of three felons preying on his man. The Brethren have no idea that the CIA is involved, and their scheme may either result in the biggest payoff ever – or three occupied slabs in the penitentiary morgue.

    I read this first years ago, and have read it a couple of times since then. I picked it up over the weekend intending to read a little at lunch, but found it too interesting to put down. The novel is set during the 2000 presidential election – an obvious Dubya stand-in is mentioned as Lake’s potential running mate, and his ‘liberal’ opponent in November is the sitting vice president. Brethren, like The Broker, is a thriller with its roots in the legal system but which involves global politics:  his CIA director appears in several other books. This is a breezy read with an interesting start, although the story fades to conclusion rather than coming to an satisfying end.

Teaser Tuesday (20/4)

"Verily, verily, I say unto you...not only for reading was Tuesday made, but for teasing also. (Jesus, Tweet from the Mount)

"Leia, he was just a boy. Did you think he came out of the womb wearing a breather and black helmet?" 

- p. 138, Tatooine Ghost


From Should be Reading, as ever.

Young Hornblower

Young Hornblower
© 1948, 1951, 1953 C.S. Forester
672 pages

(My library's copy has long lost its dustcover, but this would certainly be eye-catching...)

A few weeks ago I began reading and was immediately taken by the adventures of Captain Horatio Hornblower, an officer in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. I knew I would be reading further, and here I am. Young Hornblower collects three sets of stories set during Hornblower's early career, beginning with his induction into the Royal Navy and first assignment as a midshipman at the start of the French Revolution.  Midshipman Hornblower consists of ten standalone stories that mark Hornblower's service aboard the HMS Indefagtible, where his resourcefulness and audacity serve him, his captain, and the British empire well as it wars against 'red France', a nation that has dared to kill its king.  Hornblower rises steadily through the ranks, becoming his captain's protege and favorite prizemaster. Lieutnant Hornblower sees Hornblower transfer to the Renown, under the command of an increasingly paranoid and violently insane captain whose mental instability puts their mission at risk. Hornblower and his new friend Lieutnant Bush (his first officer in Captain Horatio Hornblower), along with the other senior officers, must find some way of restoring good order on the Renown or they are doomed. Hornblower and the Atropos, in an odd turn, is set ten years following Lieutnant Hornblower: Hornblower is not so young, nor inexperienced, for he is the captain of a ship sent to the Mediterranean on a secret mission.

Hornblower's stories are fast-paced adventure. Technical language abounds, but as general background: it can be blithly ignored in the same way viewers of Star Trek might ignore 'technobabble'. On occasions when naval mechanics influence the story, Hornblower's thoughts or his subordinates' words tell the reader what the consequences might be. Interestingly, Forester doesn't stick to the typical rise-climax-conclusion format of novels. The books' opening and ending sections may be largely unrelated to the conflict that most of the book addressed. Forester seems to find a good 'stopping place', and then ends the novel there. I don't consider this a fault of the book: indeed, the chapters that ended Lieutnant Hornblower seemed like 'extra content', content that you can enjoy but aren't necessarily recquired for the novel's plot. I shall be continuing this series.

Related:
A&E did a series of eight movies based on Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutnant Hornblower. The movies take liberties with the original source, but those liberties add to the novels rather than take away from them. They add whole subplots and allow the viewers to become familar with a set of characters rather than just one or two. You can find all of the movies on Youtube, or on Amazon here. I watched them all in a single weekend. Riveting, for me.

• The Duel ("The Even Chance", "The Cargo of Rice", "The Consequences of Failure", "The Man Who Saw God", "The Man Who Felt Queer")
• The Fire Ships ("The Spanish Galleys", "The Examination for Lieutenant"
• The Frogs and the Lobsters ("The Frogs and the Lobsters")
• The Duchess and the Devil ("the Duchess, and the Devil")
• Mutiny, Retribution, Loyalty, Duty (some from Lieutnant Hornblower)

This Week at the Library (15/4)

Recent reading:

• The Infernova is a modern retelling of Dante's inferno written to amuse skeptics by making religious hypocrites, cult leaders, and other enemies of reason the subject of poetic justice.
• Strength to Love was a collection of sermons by Martin Luther King Jr. that displays his belief in radical love, nonviolence, the importance of reason in discerning the truth, and the necessity of religious institutions acting as progressive forces in society.
• In the mood for an adventure, I read Captain Horatio Hornblower, a collection of three sea adventures set in the Napoleonic era and starring the titular character as captain of a frigate. Happily, the books were not just sea stories but contained political intriuge and land-based adventure. I'll be reading more of the Hornblower series.
• In the same mood, I read Millennium Falcon, a novel that tells the story of Han Solo's attempt to discover the full history of his ship. Although set  far in the extended universe, Luceno uses a character's backstory to cleverly update readers like myself, who aren't familiar with the decades' worth of history that the Extended Universe has created past Return of the Jed. 
• Next up I read Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, not to be confused with 1421: the Year China Discovered America. (I spoonerized the years several times in mentioning the books, to my uncomfortable amusement.) Mann's work reminds me of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel in his scope and approach. His central thesis is that the Americas were not dominated by a lack of progress as we might suppose.
• Max Schulman's Rally Round the Flag Boys! was next. This light comedy set during the early Cold War begins by introducing the readers to a half-dozen eccentric characters and then begins bouncing them off one another relentlessly off of one another. Fifties stereotypes abound.
• I then read a biography of India's first prime minster, Jahwahrlal Nehru, and one that focused on how his passions and princples informed the the path India took in its first decades of independence from Britain. The biography is sympathetic, but not protective, and Nehru emerges as a fascinating character.
• Lastly, I finished the Bhagavad Gita, a poem considered sacred by Hindus for its role in explaining parts of Hindu theology and philosophy. Mitchell's translation is indeed readable, although not having read another translation, I can offer no comparisons.

Pick of the Week(s):  1491, Charles C. Mann.

Quotation of the Week:
"What are we do?" he asked feebly.
"Do?" she replied. "We are lovers, and the world is ours. We do as we will." (Beat to Quarters, C.S. Forester)


Upcoming Reads:

• Young Hornblower, collecting three more Hornblower novels that are set at the beginning of his naval career as a young officer during the French Revolution. 
• The Secret Life of Plants, Sir David Attenborough
• Tatooine Ghost, another Star Wars read. 
• In addition, I'm working on a paper about the development of Anglo-German submarine warfare strategy (1914-1945), but I doubt I'll have time to read anything through properly. 

The Bhagavad Gita

The Bhagavad Gita: a New Translation
© 2000

Our Gita, the Muslims' Koran, your Bible -- it's always the simple things that catch your breath. 'Love thy neighbor as yourself.' - the Mahatma, Gandhi

Back in late 2006 I began a personal but intermittent cultural literacy project in which I aimed to begin reading about global religions, including tackling their originating documents when possible. Since then,  I’ve studied Judaism, Islam, Taoism, and Buddhism but have time and again avoided the vast subject of Hinduism. What prompted me out of my reluctant was the movie Gandhi, given the affectionate way the titular character regarded the book.

What attracted me to this translation was the cover art and a sewn-in burgundy ribbon intended to serve as a bookmark. The inside page quality and coloration were also obviously chosen with care, with an attention to quality that is rare and so much the more appreciated.

The Gita itself takes the form of a conversation between the god Krishna and a human being named Arjuna, who is reluctant to engage in a battle to reclaim his homeland. Although the articles I read introducing the Gita claim that Krishna disguises himself as Arjuna’s charioteer, in Mitchell’s translation he is referred to throughout the book as The Blessed Lord and speaks of himself in the first person as a divine entity. Midway through, he explicitly reveals himself as the God,  the being from which all deities find their source, and shows Arjuna his true physical form.

Before this, and following it, Arjuna and Krishna converse about the meaning of life, suffering, wisdom, the path to righteousness, the value of faith, and many diverse but related concepts. Krishna opens the conversation by encouraging Arjuna to have courage. Their conversation expands from there, Arjuna asking Krishna to elaborate on one question or another.

In reading, I saw the origins of ideas I associate with Hinduism -- reincarnation and universalism, for instance. I also saw the origins of ideas I associated with Buddhism (Krishna identifies desire as the enemy of wisdom).  Even translated into contemporary English, the Gita is not a light read, but Mitchell’s offering is lucid on the average, and I tended to find myself caught up in the narrative flow -- pausing only to refresh my memory of what a particular untranslated Hindi word meant.

Although translated poetry assuredly loses something in the process, Mitchell manages to convey beauty and simplicity here. Unlike his translations of other works (Gilgamesh and the Tao te Ching, which I've previewed but don't have access to), Mitchell refrains from 'updating' the text with modern idioms and allusions. If you're interested in reading the Gita for literacy purposes -- or just looking for poetry that reminds you Hindu and some Buddhist religious principles -- I'd say Mitchell's translation is promising.