I look forward annually to reading Anne Perry's Christmas novella. This year's offering is A Christmas Gathering (#863).
Lady Vespasia Grey and her husband Victor Narraway are invited to spend the Christmas holiday at Cavendish House, a beautiful country estate with acres of gardens. Neither is pleased to be there, but Lady Vespasia understands that this social gathering has something to do with Victor's previous post as head of Britain's Special Branch. When disastrous events from Victor's past seem destined to play themselves out again, Lady Vespasia realizes that she must step in to save everything she loves.
One of the reasons I love this Christmas series so much is that Ms. Perry always manages to wrap a good mystery story around a moral message. This time it's forgiveness and letting go of the past. I feel better for having read and digested these lessons. Her books are more than a pretty Christmas confection and therein lies the satisfaction.
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Monday, November 25, 2019
Beyond the Call; The True Story of One World War II Pilot's Covert Mission to Rescue POWs on the Eastern Front
It seems I was destined to read Lee Trimble and Jeremy Dronfield's non-fiction work Beyond the Call (#862). Although this book was published in 2015, it somehow got mis-shelved with the NEW non-fiction books at my library. It was quite the read.
Robert Trimble never talked much about his experiences during the War. But after a bad fall at home, his son Lee Trimble realized that if he was ever going to preserve his father's memories for the children and grandchildren, he has better start recording those recollections soon. When his father mentioned time spent in Russia, and a French Croix de Guerre was found in his dad's souvenir box, Lee learned that there was a lot more to his father's war time service than he had ever been told. Beyond the Call tells of the clandestine services Captain Robert Trimble performed in Poland after completing his required thirty-five bombing missions successfully. Rather than going home to be with his wife and baby daughter whom he had not yet met, Trimble was persuaded by his commanding officer to "re-up" for a post salvaging and ferrying damaged American airplanes to an outpost in Russia, where they could be repaired and sent on. No heavy lifting required, and it would keep him out of combat for the duration of the war, then winding to a close.
The reality turned out to be far, far different and put him squarely in harm's way in Red-occupied territory newly liberated from the Germans. His real mission was to find American and British POWs who had either been shot down or liberated from Prison Camps by the Russians who either ignored them or re-jailed them along with captured German soldiers. As bad as the Nazis had been, the Poles in the surrounding countryside feared the Russians more, with good reason as Robert Trimble found for himself. How he was able to smuggle desperate POWs out of Russia right under their noses, and with every conceivable obstacle placed in his path makes for riveting reading.
It wasn't a pretty war from any perspective, but this little-known episode at the tail end of the war is worth knowing about.
Robert Trimble never talked much about his experiences during the War. But after a bad fall at home, his son Lee Trimble realized that if he was ever going to preserve his father's memories for the children and grandchildren, he has better start recording those recollections soon. When his father mentioned time spent in Russia, and a French Croix de Guerre was found in his dad's souvenir box, Lee learned that there was a lot more to his father's war time service than he had ever been told. Beyond the Call tells of the clandestine services Captain Robert Trimble performed in Poland after completing his required thirty-five bombing missions successfully. Rather than going home to be with his wife and baby daughter whom he had not yet met, Trimble was persuaded by his commanding officer to "re-up" for a post salvaging and ferrying damaged American airplanes to an outpost in Russia, where they could be repaired and sent on. No heavy lifting required, and it would keep him out of combat for the duration of the war, then winding to a close.
The reality turned out to be far, far different and put him squarely in harm's way in Red-occupied territory newly liberated from the Germans. His real mission was to find American and British POWs who had either been shot down or liberated from Prison Camps by the Russians who either ignored them or re-jailed them along with captured German soldiers. As bad as the Nazis had been, the Poles in the surrounding countryside feared the Russians more, with good reason as Robert Trimble found for himself. How he was able to smuggle desperate POWs out of Russia right under their noses, and with every conceivable obstacle placed in his path makes for riveting reading.
It wasn't a pretty war from any perspective, but this little-known episode at the tail end of the war is worth knowing about.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Doctor Dogs
Doctor Dogs (#861) is Maria Goodavage's latest volume about working dogs, and it is a fascinating read. We meet dogs who alert diabetics to high and low blood sugars, warn epilepsy sufferers that they are about to have a seizure, sniff out cancers and other diseases, and calm and buffer owners with PTSD and other mental illnesses.
Most of the dogs here are highly trained for their work. Just as drug-sniffing dogs are used in law enforcement to find contraband items, some health canines can be trained to find specific scents, like those bacteria which cause serious hospital infections. Whether the problems are physical or mental, dogs seem to have an ability to sense it in their humans and respond to alert their owners or others who can help.
Ms. Goodavage traveled all over the world to meet the researchers, trainers and dogs themselves in health issues in a variety of settings from private homes to labs to hospitals to court rooms. And it seems that the door is just beginning to open to the roles which dogs (and yes, other animals as well) can play in keeping humans healthy.
Some dogs are already doing it without formal training, as several anecdotes in her book prove. When I recently had an imaging test at my local clinic, somehow the tech who was handling my exam and I got into a discussion about Doctor Dogs. She told me that when her mother had come to visit her a few years ago, her dog kept right by her mother's left leg, and every time her mother sat down, her dog would begin to lick her left foot. The tech made her mother promise to see her doctor after she returned home. Sure enough, her mother had circulatory problems in her left leg, with an ulcer which refused to heal. The tech's dog had never been trained to alert to any health problems, but she certainly was able to sniff out something wrong in her "grandmother". The tech was convinced of her dog's role in diagnosing her mother's problem and prompting her to seek swift medical attention.
Plus, one other thing I really liked about this book was the cover art - a smiling Golden (Don't they all look like they are smiling?) with a stethoscope draped around his neck. It's an appealing cover - The Dog is In!
Most of the dogs here are highly trained for their work. Just as drug-sniffing dogs are used in law enforcement to find contraband items, some health canines can be trained to find specific scents, like those bacteria which cause serious hospital infections. Whether the problems are physical or mental, dogs seem to have an ability to sense it in their humans and respond to alert their owners or others who can help.
Ms. Goodavage traveled all over the world to meet the researchers, trainers and dogs themselves in health issues in a variety of settings from private homes to labs to hospitals to court rooms. And it seems that the door is just beginning to open to the roles which dogs (and yes, other animals as well) can play in keeping humans healthy.
Some dogs are already doing it without formal training, as several anecdotes in her book prove. When I recently had an imaging test at my local clinic, somehow the tech who was handling my exam and I got into a discussion about Doctor Dogs. She told me that when her mother had come to visit her a few years ago, her dog kept right by her mother's left leg, and every time her mother sat down, her dog would begin to lick her left foot. The tech made her mother promise to see her doctor after she returned home. Sure enough, her mother had circulatory problems in her left leg, with an ulcer which refused to heal. The tech's dog had never been trained to alert to any health problems, but she certainly was able to sniff out something wrong in her "grandmother". The tech was convinced of her dog's role in diagnosing her mother's problem and prompting her to seek swift medical attention.
Plus, one other thing I really liked about this book was the cover art - a smiling Golden (Don't they all look like they are smiling?) with a stethoscope draped around his neck. It's an appealing cover - The Dog is In!
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
The Years of Rice and Salt
I decided to read Kim Stanley Robinson's science fiction classic The Years of Rice and Salt (#860) for two reasons: it was listed on GoodReads list of 100 Top Science Fiction Books, and when I recently read Robert Crais's latest Elvis Cole/Joe Pike thriller A Dangerous Man (See my post of October 23, 2019.) his dedication was to Kim Stanley Robinson. The premise of the novel was intriguing; what if Western Civilization died out during the period of the Black Death in the Middle Ages, so that the modern world evolved from other cultures instead? Sign me up!
Alas, I found this ponderous tome disappointing, and the writing uneven. It began with an interesting story of a member of Tamerlane's Golden Horde discovering with his scouting party that the Hungarians they were planning to conquer were all dead. Alas, this episode ended all too soon, and the characters spent inordinate amounts of time in the book in the bardo, a place between incarnations that does not sound like a place you would want to spend any time. At first there is a thread to tie the characters in each episode together as they reincarnate as a group - a jati - of souls traveling together throughout eternity. That soon peters out, and in the last three to four hundred pages, it becomes less narrative and more textbook treatises on Islamic philosophy and physics with some Buddhism and North American native cultural norms thrown in for good measure. It was so tedious, I can't believe I spent literally weeks to finish this book. In contrast, I actually enjoyed reading Stephen Hawkings' A Brief History of Time (See my post of August 13, 2016.). This I did not.
Alas, I found this ponderous tome disappointing, and the writing uneven. It began with an interesting story of a member of Tamerlane's Golden Horde discovering with his scouting party that the Hungarians they were planning to conquer were all dead. Alas, this episode ended all too soon, and the characters spent inordinate amounts of time in the book in the bardo, a place between incarnations that does not sound like a place you would want to spend any time. At first there is a thread to tie the characters in each episode together as they reincarnate as a group - a jati - of souls traveling together throughout eternity. That soon peters out, and in the last three to four hundred pages, it becomes less narrative and more textbook treatises on Islamic philosophy and physics with some Buddhism and North American native cultural norms thrown in for good measure. It was so tedious, I can't believe I spent literally weeks to finish this book. In contrast, I actually enjoyed reading Stephen Hawkings' A Brief History of Time (See my post of August 13, 2016.). This I did not.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Beloved
Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved (#859). Since no one in my book club had ever succeeded in making it all the way through one of her books, this seemed like a good choice to sample.
I'm glad I read it. I am equally glad that I will not have to ever read anything else in her oeuvre. I found it weird in every sense of that word. Enough said.
I'm glad I read it. I am equally glad that I will not have to ever read anything else in her oeuvre. I found it weird in every sense of that word. Enough said.
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