Exciting news!

By July 9th,  Reading Freely should be available at the domain I purchased a few months back, ReadingFreely.com.     The transition will mark a big change here, as I plan on redirecting site traffic from thisweekatthelibrary.blogspot.com to the "new" site, which is actually my Wordpress backup in the event that Google turns to evil.  I update the backup periodically every month or so, and will do so again when I've posted this.    Once we're live,  people can still comment without registration -- we'll have to see how Wordpress handles the bots --  and  there will be no advertisements.    Wordpress has been paid off, so it should be free of that kind of intrusion.  Personally, I'm excited about the jump, though I've a bit of work to do beforehand,  as the Wordpress site will be expanding from simply being a backup to having its own content -- and not just book  reviews, as in January I mentioned I'm wanting to include a bit of writing about the pursuit of a meaningful life, as I used to in college when I was trying to figure everything out.  I think I've got a better handle on the basics these days, but the world is constantly changing and merits investigation as to how we adapt.   We're not finished here yet -- there will be reviews posted before it all goes live, I'm sure -- but I will post additional updates as the day grows near.

Top Ten Childhood Favorites

Today the Artsy Reader Girl's topic is.... top ten childhood favorites!

I didn't realize this before, but boy howdy did I read a lot of science fiction as a kid.

1. The Henry Huggins/Beezus and Ramona books. Beverly Cleary was my first 'favorite author'. I think I began with a book about Ribsy getting lost.  I was nuts for dogs as a boy, and I think I read everything my library had after that.

2. The Boxcar Children.  Introduced to me through a scholastic book fair,  I found both the initial book -- about four orphans doing a My Side of the Mountain type thing in the woods, using an abandoned boxcar as their home -- and the mystery series that Warren later developed of interest.  The series got a little odder after the...fourteenth one, I think? That's when the children suddenly reverted to their early ages and were then stuck like that as the decades rolled on, so whoever followed Warren could just write mystery after mystery without having to fuss with age drama.

3. Bruce Coville's SF,  namely the series that grew off of Aliens Ate My Homework! One of the sequels was The Search for Snout.    Want to guess what that was based off of?   Conville's worlds were bizaare to me in a fun way at that age.

4. Goosebumps, Goosebumps, GOOSEBUMPS!   Everyone at school read these, but I had the plots and front-cover taglines memorized. There's a lot you can do as a kid when you don't have TV.  I started with Let's Get Invisible,  in which turning on a mirror's lamp seems to make persons in front of the mirror invisible.   Stine was known for his end-chapter twists, but especially his end of book twists.  The Monster Blood and Haunted Mask series are probably the most memorable, but no one can forget Slappy!

5. ST TNG: Starfleet Academy.  These novels were stories about the TNG crew when they were younger. Meant for junior readers, they and the adult novels were my primary exposure to Star Trek as a kid.  I saw the show for the first time when I dislocated my elbow and was in traction for three weeks, but since we didn't have a television I just read the books. A little later on we did have a television -- local stations only --  so I was able to watch Deep Space Nine, mostly as it aired.

6. Wishbone
Um...mysteries solved by a dog?  A dog recreating old novels? I can't actually remember despite having a shelf full at some time.

That's all the series I can remember from childhood. If we count middle school and beyond, then OF COURSE we'd mention...


7. California Diaries.     I mention this series a lot, and last year I did a full post on them.  Suffice it to say...at a school in fictional Palo City, California, children are required to maintain journals. The series follows a year at the school, experienced through the lives of five kids -- four  eighth grade girls and one 10th grade guy -- who all have their personal drama, in addition to the stuff that happens to them.

8. Animorphs.  Another series I loved, this one had the added appeal of rebellion: my parents didn't like the idea of them, so I came up with ways of buying the books without their knowing,  and traded paperbacks  so I could read more without having to buy more.   I also managed to buy a couple of VHSes when the shows became a series, but those were much harder to enjoy without parental knowledge. I think I had to watch them early in the morning when my mom was at yardsales.

9. Roswell High.   I've also given Roswell High its own post,  and like California Diaries it gets mentioned incessantly.


10. Fear Street. My sister collected these, and I don't know if my parents knew what they were about. For a sheltered kid, I wound up reading an awful lot of grisly murder stories thanks to this series.  Oddly, they inspired me to write fiction of my own -- stuff in the same genre, mostly monster, slasher, and ghosts.   The only one I remember clearly involved a monstrous spider living in a swamp.



Countdown.   I'd like to read this series again, actually: it was the most 'mature' series I read in my youth, following the aftermath of all the adults and kids turning into buttles of goo when the new millenium began.   So...it's a world run by teenagers, who have to rebuild society and figure out WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED.

Progress report

Well, dear readers, we’re sixth months in to 2019, and that’s a good time to do a little check up on my challengs. 

First up,  Science!    For the past few years I’ve organized my science reading into diverse categories to stay out of my well-established biology/anthropology rut.   I’m doing well, with six categories fulfilled, one extra, and two other categories set with planned reads.    Right on target,  though one of the six has a review waiting.

Next...the Classics Club, or more specifically my ambition to read twenty of my remaining 21 books this year. April was a dead loss,  as Red Dead Redemption II  claimed all of my time: not only did I not read any classics that month, but I read very little altogether.     June...well, I’m still working on June. I’m halfway through two Hemingway novels, Catch 22 being unavailable.  (Also: I  dislike Catch 22. I’ve tried it at least two times in the last three years...)   I’ll get through them. Grapes of Wrath, July’s designated read, should be much easier: I’ve already read it once and know the story.   My copy of the book is the same I had in September 2001, when our English class discussion of the novel  was interrupted by breaking news in New York.  

And finally, the TBR of Doom:  I’ve read four books from it this year, so that’s subpar. I did strike quite a few books from the list when  I gave them to Goodwill, though, so I’ve made progress regardless.  

  I’d also planned to do an interesting “American Summer” series that focused on odd bits of American culture – the rise of distinctly American-Chinese food, the role of the Catholic church in the frontier period,   odds and ends like this – but I’ve imposed a moratorium on myself as far as buying books goes*, so...that’ll keep.  I’d like a few more in the set, anyway. 

 All told, I’d give myself a B-.  

*BookBubs discounts excepting. I'm never too scrupulous to pass by a $1 book. 

The Thinking Man's Gangster

Meyer Lansky: The Thinking Man's Gangster
Revised and expanded reprint of Little Man: The Gangster Life of Meyer Lanksy 
457 pages
© 2019 Robert Lacey

There's no such thing as a lucky gambler. There's only winners and losers, and the winners are the ones who control the game.

Meyer Lanksy is the mob associate of legend,  considered with Charles Luciano as the co-creator of the Commission governing the Sicilian mob in America. If Lansky had gone straight, an anonymous FBI agent is supposed to have said,  he could have been the chair of  General Motors.   Judging from Little Man, however,  that may not be the case: every time Lanksy tried to go straight, investing in television distribution or hotels, he lost money. Admittedly, it wasn't always his fault; he wasn't the only one to lose millions on Cuba when it went red.   Lanksy was, from childhood on, a gambler:  he had his introduction as a kid, watching craps games and realizing how it really worked, and  the whole of his fortune at his peak was built on casinos and gaming rooms -- whether in Florida, Nevada, or Cuba.  But Lanksy wasn't just the brains behind the brawn, the grey eminence in the background. Little Man  demonstrates that Lanksy was more than capable of being the brawn himself: he was a teenage union thug who  also tried to make a living for himself as a pimp -- but then came Prohibition, and the partnership with Luciano that would get Lanksy running.   Robert Lacey's biography is far more thorough than I had expected, though not in the most constructive of ways, and -- presumably, given its sources --   cleans and makes  as presentable as possible its subject.

To  be sure, Lanksy is an interesting fellow, with a character much different from those of other gangsters or mob associates. When the FBI first began a detailed investigation of him, they found a quiet man who preferred good, but not flashy, suits -- the kind that any respectable insurance broker or bank executive might wear.  The same was true for his house, which was comfortable but modest.  Lanksy himself was the epitome of self-control and reserve, so much so that his doctor thought such qualities were the cause of his stomach ulcers.   Lanksy left school early, but he was a devoted reader and used his adult wealth to retain a tutor.  The bulk of his illegal income, after Prohibition, came from gambling -- and in the thirties and forties,  law enforcement largely turned a blind eye or was an active participant.   In the fifties, however, moral and red panics meant more stringent and targeted laws, active enforcement, and constant investigation into  Lansky's deep-gray affairs.   Cuba allowed for a partial recovery, at least until Castro destroyed most businesses following his seizure of power --  and it was downhill from there.   The last stages of the book see a weary Lanksy taking refuge in Israel, only to be ousted after two years when he applies for citizenship; he's eventually  apprehended while trying to make for Paraguay,  although in the resulting trial he's acquitted. The state's evidence consisted largely of testimony from a gross loan shark who few on the jury believed.  Eventually cancer would do what the state could not.

Lacey's treatment of Lanksy is interesting; though not denying Meyer's association with men who did evil things, sitting in the shadow of evil and cooperating with it to his own gain, he largely depicts Meyer's business as being in the deep grey area, rather than darkly criminal.  Beyond his youth,  Lacey doesn't depict Lansky as doing anything more than promoting gambling and dodging taxes,  which would hardly make him a bad guy in many readers eyes. I'm sure there was more to him than that, but one can't deny Little Man's depth of coverage into Lansky's family life and the trials. The problem, I think, is that Lanksy's accomplishments were  so under the table -- no flashy murders or robberies, just subtle manipulation of funds -- that there's no positive evidence of him. Even his family didn't even really know how much he was worth, since he seemed to live near poverty for much of his endgame despite the FBI claiming he was worth $300 million.   What I appreciated most about Lacey's work is that he avoided the cutesey nicknames like Lucky and Bugsy in favor of proper ones, like Charlie and Ben. 

If someone is interested in Lansky and doesn't object to  movies with violence, Mobsters may be of interest. I watched it during my Mafia obsession, bought it later on, and have watched it since.   Lansky is depeicted second on the left -- without a Thompson. (In order, the actors are playing Charlie Luciano, Meyer Lansky,   Ben Siegel, and Frank Costello.) Of interest is the presence of Michael Gambon, playing one of the two bosses that Luciano disposes of on his rise to power.  The weird thing about this movie is that it refers to Marazano as Faranzano. I haven't the foggiest idea as to why.

The Lone Warrior

The Lone Warrior
© 2016 Paul Fraser Collard
384 pages

The time for grand strategy was over. The moment had come to put faith in an Enfield rifle, a steel bayonet and the exhausted and bloodied soldier who stood behind it.

Jack Lark is a free man,  and restored to his old name.   Although he’s proven himself a warrior,  his skillful bloodlust in battle unnerves him, and that combined with his general disgust with the  army in India,   see him looking for a boat home. That was the plan, anyway.  Enter a new sweetheart, though, and a mutiny that imperils her, her mother, and every Englisher or Indian associate thereof sweeps the subcontinent, and Jack is back in uniform. The Lone Warrior follows Lark throughout the great mutiny of 1857,   in which  pent-up outrage  spurred on by allegations of religious abuse  turns into a country-wide war that threatens to destroy Jack and all those he loves and admires.     The story is much grimmer than usual, with evidence of child murder and mentions of rape as the mutiny turns into a general civil war. Still, as with The Devil’s Assassin, the novel ends with Lark in a very interesting spot, making me want to read on. 

The mutiny catches most everyone by surprise; Lark’s first hints of danger are fired villages on the horizon, and the arrival of raucous, disheveled troops in the city who appear leaderless.   At first the mutiny seems like a local affair that will be put to rights soon enough, but as it spreads,  Jack and other British soldiers find themselves in the middle of fighting retreats,  routs, or sieges.  Jack is in constant danger , losing  much along the way, and his residual faith in the Cause and in his fellow man is constantly eroded by the horrific abuses of human life he sees perpetuated by both the Brits and the Indians, who by the late novel are also fighting between themselves in the sudden power vacuum created by the empire’s retreat.    Another area of interest in The Lone Warrior is the presence of two officers who were historic personalities, their characters based on the conflicting literature about them.  They’re far more complex than usual as a result, worthy of both admiration and contempt at times.   Jack ends the novel wholly sick of it all, but considering how many novels are left,  obviously something drives him back to stand under the flag. I’ll  just have to see what!

Library Loot Box

One of the libraries that I use for occasional nonfiction reads is going through a massive summer discarding, and – though part of my brain is steadily kicking me – I've taken advantage of it to acquire a box...or two...of books.   Mostly history, as you can imagine. I’ve made a couple of trips, but I missed the week they put out the science stuff, which is disappointing.    Although I’m sure more than few of these will simply be forwarded to Goodwill, I did want to get them while the gettin' was good. 

The Haul

Familiar Poems, Annotated, Isaac Asimov. I’ve read this one before, but I do collect Asimov as I can.
Brave New World, Aldhous Huxley. Read a couple of times, but it and 1984 are ever relevant. 
The Saudis,  Sandra Mackey
Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics,  Martin Ewans. (There were a lot of books about Afghanistan and the Taliban...all purchased in 2002, all read furiously in 2002-2003, and mostly untouched since.)  
From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman
The Encyclopedia of Evolution
Benjamin Franklin: The First American
The Life of Our Lord, Charles Dickens
Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, Henri Daniel-Rops
The World of Rome, Michael Grant
Europe in Our Time
Medieval Lives
The Middle Ages, Morris Bishop
19th Century Britain
The Nazi Seizure of Power
Kristallnacht
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey.  Read this one before, but  the prose roped me into reading more of him and put a yearning to see the Southwest into me.
They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis and Arthur Greaves
The Early Ayn Rand: Unpublished Short Fiction

I was doubtful about Europe in Our Time -- at best it was published in the 1960s or early 1970s -- but  I liked the airplane art on the cover. (In the above picture, it's the dark blue book to the far right near the tire.)   

Here's hoping these get read!

American Detective

American Detective: Behind the Scenes of Famous Criminal Investigations
© 2018  Thomas Reppetto
312 pages

I've been playing through L.A. Noire lately, and its use of real-life crime (the Black Dahlia case)  prompted me to look for anything written about it. American Detective only mentions the Dahlia case,  using it in  Reppetto's history of American detective units,  their decline in the late 20th century, and the need for them to make a comeback.  Reppetto writes from both research and experience, having previous been a commander of detectives in Chicago.  American Detective is a mix of straightforward histories of various crimes and enterprises across the United States (mostly in larger cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and  Cleveland), and including serial killers, bank robbers, and organized crime.    The writing can be dry, especially when it's just one case after another, but Reppetto does warm up, especially when he shifts from fact-delivery to reflection.

  In covering the rise of municipal detective bureaus, Reppetto attributes their takeover of American policing to the complications of mobility and immigration, both of which required more focused, deliberate, and sustained investigations than ordinary patrolmen could offer.  At their prime, American detectives were an elite force  -- patrolling their city, constantly gathering information and building a network of informants who would come in handy in the event of an investigation. Corruption, political and otherwise, coupled with increasing bureaucratization which forced detectives to become specialists who worked cases instead of generalists who worked the city,  diminished their performance , while at the same time  politicians began touting approaches to law enforcement that  emphasized the role of the ordinary patrol officers.  Reppetto believes that "community policing" was never clearly defined, and argues that detective bureaus should reclaim their midcentury prominence. 


As a book, American Detective delivers a lot of interesting back stories behind famous personalities and crimes, along with less interesting ones. That may be a matter of taste, or delivery; I'd liken the book to sitting at a railway intersection and watching a train go by. There's much of interest, but there are also long stretches of literary boxcars,  fairly featureless.    There's a lot of little tidbits in here, though, so  if you're an avid reader of true crime, it's probably worth checking into.  Personally, having spotted that Reppetto has also done some works on the Sicilian Mafia, I may read a little more of him.