Undaunted - My Fight Against America's Enemies, At Home and Abroad

 The holidays seem like an odd time to read John O. Brennan's memoir of his time with the CIA - Undaunted - My Fight Against America's Enemies, at Home and Abroad (#951), but that's when it arrived for me at my local library.

I have to say I found it very accessible, if not fascinating in some sections.  Probably that's because I vividly remember much of what Mr. Brennan covers in his book, especially in the Middle East.  He covers Iraq, Afghanistan, the Saudis and the capture of Osama Bin Laden.  It's interesting to find out what was going on behind the scenes.  Equally fascinating was his take on the Russian interference with our 2016 election and its fallout.

I might not always agree with Mr. Brennan's opinions but I did come away convinced of his sincere devotion to his country and efforts to serve it with integrity.  All public servants should be so dedicated!

The Guest List

I got a little concerned when I saw that the cover blurb for Lucy Foley's best-selling The Guest List (#950) was written by Alex Michaelides, author of another best-seller, The Silent Patient. (See my post of 5/23/20.)  Not a fan of that drivel, but I needn't have worried; The Guest List is trashy, all right, but in a good way.

It features a cast of characters gathered on a remote Irish island for an ultra-exclusive wedding between an attractive power couple.  You know right from the get-go that there's a murder, but that's it.  Who is killed, or why is only gradually unraveled.  In the lead-up to the revelation at the end, there are so many, many people you would like to see as either the a) victim or b) the murderer who will be nailed for the crime.  So many choices...

In the end, it did remind me somewhat of Agatha Christie at the top of her game.  You can't say fairer than that, can you?  Guilty pleasures are often the most fun!

A Wild Winter Swan

Gregory Maguire's latest novel, A Wild Winter Swan (#949) was inspired by the late P.L. Travers (author of the Mary Poppins books) to write about a character in a lesser-known Hans Christian Anderson story.  It concerns an evil stepmother who enchants the noisy boys in her new family and turns them into swans.  Their only sister learns that if she spins and weaves shirts for each of the boys and throws them over the boys when they return for their once-a-year visit in human form, they will remain human forever.  Alas, she isn't able to complete the very last shirt in time; it's minus a sleeve, so one of her youngest brother's arms remains a wing.

Laura Ciardi is a troubled teenager living with her Italian grandparents in a New York City brownstone.  Just before Christmas, she's been expelled from her exclusive school, and her grandparents are at their wits' end trying to cope with her.  They decide to send her to a convent school in Montreal after the holidays.  Of course Laura doesn't want to go.  There's not much she seems to want to do, in fact.  That changes the night a boy with a swan's wing flies onto the ledge outside her attic window.  He's entirely wild and has no idea how he got there.  He just knows he's hungry and he wants out of Laura's room...

I can't decide whether I liked this book or not.  The characters were so unlikeable.  Laura was the root of most her own problems - a typical selfish teenager who can't think beyond her own skin.  Hans, the swan-boy, was mostly repellent.  Personally, I would have pushed him out the window within minutes of meeting him.  The grandparents tried so hard, but were so busy trying to make a go of their imported food business that they neglected Laura and left her to the tender mercies of the Irish cook.  There was no fairy tale ending here, not even for Hans.  At least I read it at the right time of year - it is set in the weeks around Christmas, but frankly I prefer my Christmas stories with a stronger element of redemption.  I guess after re-reading what I've written here, I really didn't like A Wild Winter Swan.

The Man In The High Castle

 I wanted to read Philip K. Dick's The Man In The High Castle (#948) since we've been streaming the adapted show of the same name on Amazon Prime.  Well, the titles of the book and the TV show are the same, and so are the names of the characters Frank Frink, Ed McCarthy, Robert Childan and Trade Minister Tagomi, although their roles are markedly different in the book.  Juliana has morphed from Juliana Frink to Juliana Crane in the series.  Other than the fact that the USA lost World War II, and that the German Reich controls the Eastern States, and the Japanese the Pacific States, all bets are off.  You can recognize a few of the incidents lifted from Dick's novel, but many of the TV series' main characters are entirely missing from the book.  That being said, I have to say I've enjoyed where the script writers have taken the Amazon production.  We're currently watching the fourth and final season, and now I don't have to worry that there were any spoilers in the book because they've diverged so widely.

Philip K. Dick's book originally was published in the 1960s, and it certainly was a different world then in terms of what was acceptable.  Anti-Semitism and racist language are sprinkled throughout the book, playing into the Nazi views.  The Japanese come off as humane (!) in their treatment of the conquered territories, even admirable.  The Man In The High Castle here is the author of a speculative novel in which the US did, in fact, win the war.  The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is sold openly in the Pacific States and read by anyone who is anyone.  In the Reich-controlled East, possessing a copy is a death sentence; they simply haven't been able to impose that on the Man In The High Castle yet.

Usually I think the book version is far superior to the film or TV adaptation, but this is the rare exception for me.  I think the producers have taken an intriguing germ of an idea and fleshed it out more fully, with interesting twists and turns (and great costumes & sets!).  To be honest, I've enjoyed the TV series far more than I did the pedantic novel.  Still, I'm glad I read the original.

Questions About Angels

 I have never been a poetry fan until I ran into the work of Billy Collins via NPR several years ago.  I was in the mood to read some the other day, and luckily, my local library had a few of his volumes.  I picked up Questions About Angels (#947) and have spent the past several weeks savoring one or two at a time, or going back to re-read a few.  My favorites from this volume are Questions About Angels, American Sonnet and Nostalgia.  He grabs you with what at first glance appears to be prosaic bits of life, but as you finish reading with a smile on your lips, or a "Hmm..." you know that the impact of the poem has gone deeper.  Go ahead and treat yourself to dip into Billy Collins' works.  I don't think you'll be sorry.

The Book of Lost Names

 Despite the recent glut of World War II fiction, Kristin Harmel's The Book of Lost Names (#946) stands out for me as an exceptional read.  It was touching, poignant and suspenseful.  Saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied France?  What could be a more noble ambition?  But Eva Traub's heart isn't always in it, torn as it is between her mother's anger over Mr. Traub's deportation, and her perception that Eva is being converted to Catholicism, and a burgeoning romance with a handsome non-Jewish Resistance fighter.  Forging documents for those escaping over the border to Switzerland has become Eva's specialty, but also a chain to a place she doesn't want to be.  Love, danger and betrayal all play a role here.  How  events play out in Paris, a remote French mountain village, and Florida create a page-turning story.

Normally, I would read one novel of this kind and be done with it for a while, but I enjoyed Ms. Harmel's writing so much, I intend to track down some of her other WWII books as well.  What better recommendation can I make for this heartfelt book?

The Empire of Gold

 S.A. Chakraborty's The Empire of Gold (#945) is the third and final volume of her epic science fiction/fantasy Daevebad Trilogy.  I zipped through the The City of Brass (See my post of 8/19/20.) and The Kingdom of Copper (See my post of 9/3/20.) and couldn't wait for The Empire of Gold to show up on my Holds list at the library.  As it turns out, I could have waited.

This engaging Arabian Nights type fantasy series goes back and forth between the human world of Egypt during the Napoleonic and British invasions and the mystical kingdom of Daevebad, shielded from the outside world.  Full of fantastic creatures, magnificent architecture and seething political, religious and cultural divides living uneasily together in the capital city of Daevebad, it is ruled by the Emir Ghasan who wears the Seal of Sulieman on his face as  his magical authority.  Into this mix is dropped Nhari, an Egyptian street girl who accidentally conjured a ghoul in Cairo.  She's rescued by a djinn, Dara, who whisks her off to Daevebad where she is recognized as a Nahid, the beings who founded Daevebad itself. Sought by different factions as a tool to obtain power led to most of the fast-flowing action of the first two volumes, which seems to come to a screeching halt in The Empire of Gold.

Things just seemed to drag on and on here.  I swear it took me a month to finish reading this book, and there were times I wasn't sure I would.  The author keeps going over and over the same psychological and emotional ground with each of the characters as the narrative viewpoint switched from one to another.  The action, when it did take place, was usually gory, but at least it kept the story going until things are more or less resolved at the end according to the ideals of Nahri and her hard-won suitor of choice.  I think this book would have been much better if it had been much shorter.  For what it's worth, my husband agrees with me on this.

I am going to pick a nit here, though.  Chakraborty does a fine job of creating her fantasy world and peopling it with intriguing cultures and languages to match.  I suppose that's the reason that every time she uses the word "okay" (which is often, indeed!) it grated on me, jarring me right out of the fantasy world of Daevebad.  Couldn't she have found a more suitable word?  "Okay" wasn't even used until 1830, but the American adoption of it as a political slogan in 1840 is what cemented its place in our language today.  It made me wonder if Nahri and Jamshid and Alizayd and Dara were going to start Instagramming or Tik-Tokking.  I know it's just me, but I had to say it - I hate anachronisms!