Monthly Archives: August 2016

*** A Certain Justice by P.D. James

A brilliant lawyer is found dead in her office and there are many suspects, including a criminal she defended, her ex-lover who worries about his reputation in politics (more than his pregnant wife, sadly), jealous colleagues and coworkers, and the relatives of victims killed by people she defended successfully. A Certain Justice unravels the complicated relationships and finds the murderer, but can it prove it?
A delightfully intricate story with a vast cast of characters, including a surly young adult daughter who is pictured perfectly.
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Filed under Mystery

** Being a Beast by Charles Foster

Ever wondered what it’s really like to be a bird? A worm? The author of Being a Beast: Adventures Across the Species Divide did not attempt being a worm, although he ate worms and lived for weeks in a man-sized badger den (bringing his young son with him!), slept under rhododendrons on urban lawns to live like a fox (it turns out not to be a good explanation for curious police officers, who knew?), and tried valiantly to be a river otter (wetsuits are not as cosy as otter pelts). His adventures are, literally, fantastic, all the more since, in between eating worms and venturing outside only at night, as badgers do, he will suddenly wonder if badgers may, well, use adjectives. Never mind that it doesn’t exactly make sense to explore another species life in a human body, the exploration of alternative points of view will stay with you.

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Filed under New fiction

** The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale

The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer starts with a brutal matricide, which the author meticulously reconstructs from archives, followed by the dispatch of the murderer, aged 13, to an insane asylum, and eventually his immigration to Australia, proud service during WW1, and life as a peaceful and kind man. The detailed reconstruction of events can get a little tedious, but the book nicely recreates transatlantic voyages (with live cattle imported from the US), the uproar at how cheap crime novels may have fostered the crime (which sounds exactly like today’s apocalyptic descriptions of the internet), and the primitive state of psychiatry, pre-drugs of any kind. It also show how important it is to be able to recreate oneself. In those days, moving to Australia seemed to do it. Today, not so easy…

 

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Filed under New fiction

*** Pacific by Simon Winchester

The hyperactive subtitle of Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers announces it: this book may be focused on the Pacific Ocean, but adeptly serves stories as diverse as navigating without instruments, how Larry Ellison spends his money (apparently paying someone to retrieve basketballs shot from his yacht), the discovery of entirely new life forms at the dark bottom of the ocean, and how a mostly unknown American Colonel divided Korea into two countries. There are lighter moments, such the history of surfing, but each chapter cleverly moves from a specific anecdote to a larger topic. Entirely enjoyable, even for readers who do not live right by the Pacific.

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Filed under Non fiction

** Beer Money by Frances Stroh

As a descendant of the Stroh family, of beer-making fame, Frances Stroh could expect a privileged childhood followed by a comfortable adulthood financed by a hefty trust fund. Instead, as she tells in Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss, she got a rich but difficult childhood growing up with an alcoholic and tyrannical father, followed by little money as the once-flourishing family business shrank drastically, victim of changing times and not-so-great business decisions. The first part of the story reminds us that children desperately need parents who are present rather than rich, and we feel very sorry for the author. The second part shows how entitled heirs can be, expecting “their” share of the money to somehow fall in their laps without having to do anything about it. No more pity, or perhaps only pity for how ill-prepared she was.

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Filed under True story

** Labor of Love by Moira Weigel

Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating talks about dating, from its early beginnings in the early 20th century to today. It is not a scholarly work, as it quotes abundantly and occasionally gratingly from the popular press and the author’s own experience. The author does make interesting points about how the rules of dating are linked to economic power, and how modern technology does not radically change the game.

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Filed under Non fiction

* Bullies by Alex Abramovich

It must be fashionable for grown men to write about their childhood bullies. Unlike Whipping Boy, however, Bullies: A Friendship focuses on the present. The author’s one-time bully is now the president of a motorcycle club in Oakland, CA, and the author, somewhat strangely, sets out to explore in great detail the activities of the club, depicting Oakland as a drug-infested den of violence and hopelessness which leaves locals, and even semi-locals like me shaking our heads. Yes, there are very dangerous places in Oakland but even the author acknowledges that he managed to live there for months in complete safety, apart from his repeated trips to the infamous triangle where his ex-bully, now supposedly “friend”, operates. It turns out that motorcycle “clubs” (I would say gangs) are very violent and 200 pages of that simultaneously turned my stomach and bore me immensely. Stay away from psychopaths.

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Filed under True story
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