Category: books

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The Name of the Rose

So I’m starting early this year with what I’m going to classify as literature. And yeah, it felt like lit. This was a long, slow read for me but it was rewarding when it was over; not so much because it was exciting or dramatic, but because I feel like I learned a few things.

As I’ve already stated, I’m getting in touch with my inner Catholic this year so this book goes along with that effort. It’s a mystery that takes place in an abbey in Italy that is accused by the Pope of heresy (year 1327). Set against the backdrop of a visit from the Pope’s envoy to assess the heresy are some grisly murders in the abbey. William, a visiting monk from England, arrives at the abbey in advance of the envoy as somewhat of an unbiased interlocutor (did I use that correctly?) but he seems to be sympathetic to the abbey. He also voraciously pursues the evildoer who is committing the murders.

The story is told from the first person perspective of William’s sidekick, a young monk named Adso. It takes place during one of the many upheavals in the church. In this time period, Michael of Cesena is in a serious disagreement with the Pope about how strictly to practice the vow of poverty. Michael believed in the strictest teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi and the Pope viewed this as heretical. Michael is at this abbey during the time, so the book combines some history and fiction.

Interesting stuff to me because this is roughly the same time period as World Without End and gives a little deeper insight into how the church was being affected by forward thinking types who combined science and philosophy with theology, like Sir Roger Bacon and William of Occam. Both of these men were coming at things from a philosophical and scientific perspective that often made the church uncomfortable.

William, the fictional main character, uses logic and science to track down the killer and to try and reason with the inquisitors who seem to be biased against Michael of Cesena and his followers. It was, at times, an exciting mystery and interesting character study. William appears to have the ability to remain faithful to his religion while relying heavily on the scientific method for his daily work. I think this is one of the messages, that science and faith can coexist.

Unfortunately, the book was full of side trips into fantastical dreams and theological discussions that were lost on me. It would have been a much better read had I done my research on the people and times before hand.

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Fallen Angels

Myers writes mostly teen lit. This is a war story about a group of guys in Vietnam during a twelve month period in the late 60’s. It’s told from the first person perspective by a young soldier named Richie Perry. It’s a horrors-of-war story for the most part but with some hopefulness.

As far as teen lit goes, Myers doesn’t sugar coat much in this book. I think Myers wants to paint a realistic picture so there is plenty of swearing and a fair amount of graphic violence, including some intense scenes involving civilians. I don’t mention this to suggest that you shouldn’t let your teen read it, and I certainly can’t claim any knowledge of parenting, but I just thought you should know.

The violence is not depicted like action/adventure style violence. There is definitely no glorification of war in this book. I didn’t really expect that. I figured since it was teen lit that Myers would make it more of an adventure to hold the attention of young readers. But it’s more of a slog, which is probably the point.

I don’t read enough teen lit to know what to expect but I’m consuming more of it, so I’ll get there. When my nieces and nephews start hammering through books I want to be able to relate in some form.

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The Shooters

This book is just about all dialogue. I noticed it earlier in the series but it really seemed to stand out in this one. Especially in the first half. Griffin basically tells the bulk of the story with dialogue. It’s amazing, and really cool. It’s non-stop chatter that moves rather rapidly. The violence and action found in most thrillers is hardly even described; it’s glossed over so he can get to more dialogue.

Since 2007, I’ve finished one book annually in the Presidential Agent series. But I may end up finishing two this year because it’s early and I’m pretty fired up to get to the next one. There are five books in this series so I have one left. Hopefully he churns out more, but I have the sneaky feeling that Griffin is running out of steam. I say this because his last few books (although not in this series) were co-written with his son; a sure sign of decline. Griffin is, after all, 80 years old.

He’s not off his game though. I love the macho, sarcastic, and sometimes hilarious dialogue. And he continues to craft interesting characters and really digs deep into their psyche. I’m not worried about running out of material, he is very prolific so I may have trouble finishing them all before I die.

He’s also a member, according to his official website, of the Flat Earth Society. Here are the search results. I’ve never heard of this. I guess there are people out there who still think the earth is flat. I had no idea. Oh well. I guess that’s what keeps the earth goin’ around…er, or not, I guess.

Still great stuff.

** PLOT KILLERS **

Oh yeah, I didn’t see the twist of Castillo’s kid coming. Wacky stuff. Can’t wait to see how he’s going to treat that in the next book. And I can’t recall what happened to Castillo’s love interest, I think her name was Betty Schneider. I know she got shot in Book Two, but I thought she survived, hmmm.

I’ll be back for more shortly, for sure.

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Designing With Web Standards

Yeah, it’s basically a textbook. But I’ve read them before and I’ll probably read them again. Lately I’ve become infatuated with web design and I think that people in the occupations of finance and controllership need to become more familiar with the associated concepts. I certainly see plenty of applications for my clients. I think the future is bountiful for finance people who can quickly build a user interface to access, utilize, and present financial data on the web.

So that about summarizes my motivation for reading this stuff, besides the fact that I’m kind of a dork. I’m guessing though, that you’re begging for more insight into my motivation.

Let’s talk about what financial people are doing today. They analyze a bunch of data that they’ve pulled out of a financial system (SAP, Oracle, Hyperion) and gussy it up using any number tools (Excel, Powerpoint) so that it’s usable by management. Even in this day and age I see people (finance people, CEO’s, and middle management) printing huge documents every month and hauling them around so they can use them to run their business. We are trying, but we can’t completely wean ourselves off paper.

That 8.5 x 11 piece of white paper (at least in the USA) is a great unifier. Any type of data can be presented on it, nothing special is required to consume it, it can be copied and passed on with notes, and it can be easily filed and retrieved when needed. A little more advanced than this simple sheet of paper is the PDF file, which is like a piece of paper, just digital. With a PDF someone can print it or file it electronically (in their email program for example) and access it on the road. It’s still somewhat unified because a PDF can be read with any number of free software programs and it remains very convertible to the classic white sheet of paper just by clicking the print icon.

It would be nice to just send management a darn spreadsheet, but when financial people start sending spreadsheets or presentations, the unification I’ve been talking about starts to degrade. I’ve seen even tech-savvy managers crumble in the face of navigating a multi-tabbed spreadsheet, let alone try to print it. Then there are those who think that giving management an ID to the operating system and telling them to log on and print their own reports is actually an option. Even the most tech-savvy, non-financial managers are revolted by the idea of pulling up the company’s operating system, so this option rarely works.

But the web browser – now there’s a unifier. Just tell the CEO to fire up the internet and click on monthly financial reports, problem solved! Well, not really I guess, because to do that the financial and IT staffs have to build a bunch of infrastructure with tools they may not be familiar with. For example, building a table on the web is much different from building a pivot table in Excel. And formatting some nice bullet points on the web is a little different from typing them into Powerpoint.

But think about the possibilities – what if the tool you extracted and analyzed the data with was tightly integrated with the tool you present and review the data with? That’s unification. That’s the web browser! Management already knows how to use the web browser, so the ball is in finance’s and IT’s court.

So what’s going to happen? All this development in information management is happening in the web browser space, but it hasn’t made much of a dent in the day-to-day operations in the finance departments that I’ve seen. Microsoft Office is still the tool of choice for just about every finance person on the globe.

But this can’t last. All of this stuff is moving to the web browser and we’re going to have to adjust accordingly. That means learning new tools (MySQL, PHP, HTML, CSS) so that we can do old fashioned things, like distribute financial reports, on the web. Designing web pages, or at least being familiar with designing web pages, is one of these skill sets that financial departments will find within their purview shortly, whether they like it or not. So I’m getting on top of it, it’s a matter of survival.

That’s why I bought this book. It’s a damn fine overview of the web design space, and it even includes a lot of practical applications and detailed directions. Plus, the writer throws in a ton of dork humor, I love it.

Here’s a main point from the book (pg 155):

A logical outline structure, when applied correctly, helps search engines find your content; its absence helps search engines find someone else’s content instead. I’ll make this point over and over in this book, but it can’t be overstated. If you want people to find your content, the first thing you must do is write great content, and the second thing you must do is mark up that content semantically. There is no third thing to do, although fiddling with page titles can help.

If I may, the content is the input. The markup translates that input so it looks nice on the page and can be consumed by the reader. Semantic markup makes the consumption easier for people and processes that don’t necessarily read your words on the screen (search bots, blind people). In my mind, this translates nicely into presenting financial data via a web browser. Stay with me.

The financial data is the input (the content). It needs to be relevant and accurate data (great content) that can be used for decision making. The next question is how to “mark it up” so that it can be used by management? Historically it was Excel and Powerpoint. It is transitioning somewhat to Hyperion and Access. In the future it’s going to be MySQL and PHP or some other database and retrieval methodology that works in the web browser. And those who can semantically mark this stuff up to make retrieval and presentation easy by those other than skilled analysts are going to be the rock star financial people of the future. They are going to combine skills throughout the range of the process; pulling data from the operating systems, analyzing and summarizing it using technical tools, marking it up so that it can be presented to management, and designing the user interface so that management can navigate the information to answer real questions quickly.

Those are the skills I’m going to work on in 2010. In fact, I’ve purchased PHP & MySQL for Dummies to keep my momentum on this topic. I have a lot of stuff to flush out on this issue.

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World Without End

This is the follow-up to Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth, which I read about two years ago. It takes place about 200 years after Pillars so I don’t think it deserves to be termed a sequel. You certainly don’t need to read the first one before this one. But they are similar and the first one adds some context. They are both 1,000 page epic period-pieces that I found virtually impossible to put down.

I’m telling you man, if you love reading just for the pure entertainment value of a good story, you have to grab these books. They’re just great stories that keep you engaged no matter what’s going on around you. Sure, I predicted a few things and I’m not calling it literature. But there are so many twists and turns that even if you get something right, it doesn’t ruin the book because you couldn’t have plotted the route Follett took.

I may start ranting here, but I especially noticed the greatness of Follett’s story because I finished this book on the same weekend that I saw Avatar. Avatar was a great movie and by all accounts it will break plenty of box office records over the next few months. I’ve heard critics say it will do so because it combines “visually stunning” cinema techniques with a great story.

I disagree somewhat, although I did like the movie a lot. I just don’t think the story is that great.

Side-by-side with this book, Avatar looks kind of formulaic. I know, there’s only so much story you can tell in a three hour movie; I get that. But don’t be fooled when Cameron goes on during his interviews about how he’s had this story in his mind for years. It’s mostly a war story where the side you’re rooting for is seriously undermanned, combined with a love story. Kind of like Dances With Wolves meets She’s All That. As I said, I loved the movie, but Cameron is a better movie maker than a story teller. I thought Terminator was better and a more original story.

Now this Follett book, that’s storytelling. Like Pillars, there are five protagonists who’s stories intertwine with each other along with that of the cathedral. And again the Catholic church figures prominently with the historical backdrop being reign of King Edward III and the Black Death. But it’s slightly different than Pillars in that one of the five protagonists, Caris, stands out more prominently than the rest of the characters. She, in my view, could probably be termed the hero of this book.

Caris is inquisitive and in a constant battle with the role of women in 14th Century England. She wants to be a doctor but only priests and and monks can be so. She still gets belittled by the priests even after she becomes well-known across England for devising innovative techniques to deal with the Black Death. It may sound like Follett is going a little Jane Austen with this story line (power to the women!), but that’s an improper conclusion. I’ll let you read it to understand why I say that.

It’s a very enjoyable read. The fastest 1,000 pages in fiction!

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Uncommon

My brother heard Tony Dungy on the radio the other day and called me up after. He said he thought Dungy had a lot of good things to say, so I grabbed it on the Kindle. That’s where the Kindle is most insidious; you are literally seconds away from buying a book that you hear about, so it takes a big man to resist the temptation and defer the gratification. That’s appropriate, because part of Dungy’s quest with this book is help men do less of that, to think about their decisions and make the right ones instead of the easy ones.

There aren’t many stunning revelations in this book. It’s a very basic treatise on leading what Dungy refers to as a significant life. Near the end he puts it succinctly like this:

Real, true significance doesn’t come from winning games or running a successful business. It comes from having a positive impact on the people around us.

If one non-religious thread runs through this book, it’s that Dungy continually stresses how important it is to love, listen to, and help the people around you. He extends this call beyond the family. It extends to friends, co-workers, and even casual acquaintances. The guy has the idealistic view that the simple act of one individual helping another can make the world a better place. He says:

I read last summer that Indianapolis’s public schools had the nation’s lowest graduation rate for males—19 percent. That’s fewer than one in five. My goal shouldn’t be to cast blame but rather to determine what I can do to make an impact on that statistic, even if it’s “only” for one kid. One kid, or one small group—and then another and another. And, who knows? As the word gets out about my one-man crusade, maybe someone else will join the effort. How many kids could we reach then?

I love this view. It’s good to hear it from someone who has devoted a large amount of time to helping troubled youths. I think he’s saying that there is hope, we all just have to wade in and start helping.

Dungy delivers this stuff to the reader in 31 chapters, each themed for a lesson that he wants to teach. He is responding in some respects to a religious calling. He is about as religious as can be without actually being a pastor. You have to wait until the end to get to this, but here is where he is coming from:

I believe my purpose is this: to serve the Lord and use all that He has given me to help others to the best of my ability. When I’m staying focused on that, it allows me to find the joy and abundant life that Christ promised, even if we don’t win the Super Bowl or I don’t meet every goal that I have for my life.

I didn’t, however, feel like I was being preached to. He doesn’t couch his whole message in religious values. I don’t think it clouds the message.

I’m reading this stuff because I live in a big city and that’s had a horrible year for student homicides and I often wonder if there is any hope of changing this trend. Chicago is my home. I love this city. It’s full of vibrant businesses, great people, and endless opportunity for work and pleasure. Yet in big chunks of this city, kids cannot walk to school without being afraid of being shot. Can you imagine that? In this place I call home, there are thousands and thousands of teenagers that need to carefully plot their route to school every day to insure that they have the best chance of making it there alive.

Dungy is trying to change this, one man at a time. He is reaching out to males, speaking directly to them, and telling them to be uncommon. This is his tone:

At the end of the day, I’m sure of one thing: accumulating stuff and women and titles and money are wrong keys. Fitting in, following the crowd, and being common are not what we’re supposed to do. There’s more in store for us.

He does it by telling a lot of stories, quoting a lot of philosophers and the Bible, and using a lot of folksy straight talk.

It’s an appropriate time to be talking to any male because it has been a rough year for high-profile men. I note:

  • South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford tells his constituents that he is hiking in the mountains, when actually he’s visiting his mistress in Argentina.
  • A-Rod has to go on national TV and apologize for using steroids. He actually teared up a couple of times I think.
  • Letterman has his own mea culpa during his show and comes clean on years of sleeping with female staffers so as to thwart an extortion scheme against him.
  • Kanye gets drunk during the VMAs and wanders up on stage while Taylor Swift is accepting her award, grabs it from her, and says it should have gone to Beyonce. Then he weepily apologizes on Letterman.
  • And finally, Tiger Woods. ‘Nuff said on that.

Like I said, rough year for testosterone. These are certainly not the role models that Dungy has in mind. This is how Dungy feels about being a role model:

This idea of stewardship is another area where I think our young men have gotten the wrong message over the years. I see it in our players a lot. They are told that because they’ve worked hard and sacrificed, now that they’ve made it into professional football, they deserve the rewards that go along with it. And it is tempting to get the nice car and the nice clothes, to acquire some of the things that you’ve always wanted. There’s also a great deal of peer pressure to “look like a professional athlete.” But the idea of being a role model, of giving back to the community where you grew up or where you live now, is not talked about much. It doesn’t have to be money that you give back. It can be time, encouragement, or simply role modeling—letting our young men know that they don’t have to follow the crowd; they don’t have to do the stereotypical things. I tell our players that being good role models is one way we can be good stewards of the positions God has put us in.

It’s clear that Dungy is speaking to all of maledom, not just high school boys on the wrong track. And he’s not the type of guy who’s going to get frustrated and feel like he’s beating his head against the wall. He’s almost puritanical. I mean, the guy gave up golf to spend more time with his wife and kids.

One of the things I decided to give up was golf. Although I enjoyed playing, I was never very good at it, and we had such limited time off in Kansas City that I couldn’t justify not being home when I got the chance. I’ve never really picked it back up, and I’m sure if I did, my game wouldn’t be pretty anyway. Maybe, however, if one of our younger children takes up the game and needs a playing partner or a caddy—we’ll just have to see.

Who does that? And that’s just a smattering of his parenting and relationship advice. Here is his take on balancing work and family:

To me, “balance” cannot be achieved simply by walking out the door at a set time or by scheduling a certain number of family activities. Rather, it is a function of our preparation and performance in those realms that we are seeking to balance, measured against our prescribed priorities. In other words, if I work hard and get my work done, I can go home knowing that I have given my employer my best. If I am diligent when I am at home about being present for Lauren and my children, then I can leave with a clear conscience and right relationships when it is time to go back to the office. The two biggest obstacles I have seen to creating margins in our lives are poor time management and workaholism. The former keeps you from ever feeling like you can allow yourself to leave the office, while the latter is a function of misaligned priorities, a distorted self-image, or some combination of both.

I don’t think this flowcart pertains to Dungy. He’s also anti-video game and anti-TV violence.

I am troubled by a society that devalues life directly and insidiously and then markets that idea to our kids through video games, music, movies, and television. This, in turn, contributes to kids not realizing that life should be respected, nurtured, and protected.

Maybe he’s on to something. I’ve always thought that watching violent movies or playing violent video games doesn’t contribute to real violence. I’ve given humanity enough credit to discern between real and fake. I figured most people could watch Kill Bill without actually killing Bill. But Dungy disagrees strongly with me. He abhors this part of our culture.

The guy has a lot of good things to say. Makes you think.

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Maximum City

Mehta grew up in Mumbai but he left after his formative years for the US (New York City, mostly, for 20 years). This book documents a homecoming of sorts. He brings his wife and two young kids back to Mumbai to live for a few years and documents his personal experiences. It’s deeper though than a personal story; he picks a few (semi) famous people and describes their lives in an effort to give the reader a better description of what Mumbai is really like.

Let me first throw out a caveat: I have not dug into the veracity of any of this stuff. Mehta spends time with murderers, gang leaders, strippers, cops, rich people, poor people, friends, foes; you name it. Many of whom he does not paint in a very positive light. In many cases he disguised his intentions. In many cases he was very up front. In all cases, he had access. Some of it is pretty unbelievable. But I’m assuming it was vetted properly because the book was up for a Pulitzer in 2005. Call me crazy.

It’s clear that Mehta has many, many wonderful memories of growing up in Mumbai. Those memories of a kid in the 1970’s give way to the perspective of a guy in his late thirties around the turn of the millennium. Who better to give you a feeling for the place? Mehta shows his Indian home great love, but it’s often tough love, so he doesn’t sugar-coat anything. I loved the book and it makes me want to find a similar style of book for Chicago.

It’s basically a book full of stories about people in Mumbai. He starts out with the story of his move back. He then moves on to a large section on Hindu and Muslim gangs, the police force trying to keep them in check, and the culture of corruption in Mumbai. He lightens things up and transitions to entertainment, discussing local food, strip clubs/dance bars, and Bollywood. He returns to his personal story and recounts his high school class reunion. Then he gives us the point of view of someone from a rural area coming to the big city to pursue their dreams followed by an account of a whole family becoming Jain monks. Finally, he finishes up with some more personal reflection.

They are all great stories. Early on I was riveted by the stories of the 1992-93 riots told to Mehta by people who were there. He even got to meet Bal Thackeray; Mehta has this thought upon shaking the man’s hand:

Then I shake the hand of the one man most directly responsible for ruining the city I grew up in. (pg 97)

That’s what I mean by access and it also highlights the emotional attachment Mehta has to his subject matter.

The Hindu and Muslim strife in Mumbai seems palpable, at least the way Mehta describes it, exacerbated by overcrowding, poverty, and general corruption. Talk about overcrowding:

The Greater Bombay region has an annual deficit of 45,000 houses a year. … Thus these 45,000 households every year add to the ranks of the slums. … The slum population doubles every decade. (pg 117)

Then a little further along:

Prahlad Kakkar, an ad filmmaker, has made a film called Bumbay, a film about shitting in the metropolis. … “Half the population doesn’t have a toilet to shit in, so they shit outside. That’s five million people…” (pg 127)

And about the gangs:

The gangs flourish because they form a parallel justice system in a country with the world’s largest backlog of court cases. Indicative of this judicial paralysis is the fact that as of 2003, a decade after the Bombay blasts, the trial of the plotters is still dragging on. (pg 144)

But it’s not all bad:

Bombay is still a city where I can travel pretty much anywhere at all hours of the day or night. Muggings are virtually unknown. Women aren’t molested like they are in Delhi. …

Bombay’s menace is not street crime. It’s bigger and more organized than that. (pg 145)

I guess you have to take the good with the bad. I think they just get used to it because they don’t have any choice.

The judge/population ratio in the United States is 107 judges per million people; in India it is 13 judges per million. Forty percent of the judgeships in the Bombay High Court are vacant; each judge has over three thousand cases pending. (pg 176)

So you do what you gotta do, according to Mehta:

You have to break the law to survive. I break the law often and casually. I dislike giving bribes, I dislike buying movie tickets in the black. But since the legal option is so ridiculously arduous – in getting a driver’s license, in buying a movie ticket – I take the easy way out. (pg 177)

Despite this, his heart is clearly in India. About half way through he talks about getting things figured out.

The kids stop getting sick all the time, and when they do we don’t worry so much. All the kids in Bombay are sick much of the time. It is the bad air, the bad water, the bad food – and the country still has 1 billion people. One billion thin, often sickly, but alive people, some of them magnificently alive. (pg 255)

I love that passage.

Shortly after this passage he dives into a few hundred pages on the club scene and forges and friendship with a bar dancer (not really a stripper). Here is how he starts things off:

I started going to beer bars because I was puzzled. I couldn’t figure out why men would want to spend colossal amounts of money there. On a good night a dancer in a Bombay bar can make twice as much as a high-class stripper in a New York bar. The difference is that the dancer in Bombay doesn’t have to sleep with the customers, is forbidden to touch them in the bar, and wears more clothes on her body than the average Bombay secretary does on the broad public street. (pg 269)

Hmm. Interesting. He’s still just a journalist though and stays detached, he says about his new friend:

… I haven’t told her about my wife and children. I remember that Monalisa is still under the protection of the don’s grandson. She is of the shadow world; I keep my family insulated from such people. Hit men, dancing girls, rioters: As far as they are concerned, I live alone in the apartment in Elco, which is actually my office. If there is a problem later, if they decide to take a violent dislike to me or what I write about them, it is only me they can hurt. (pg 295)

Then he starts talking Bollywood, a term that they hate in India.

India is one of the few territories in which Hollywood has been unable to make more than a dent; Hollywood films make up barely 5 percent of the country’s market. (pg 349)

I tell ya, it’s a different movie-going experience:

An Indian cinema hall is never the chamber of mass unconsciousness it is in the West. For one thing, you can never tell anyone to shut up. Everyone talks at will, often keeping up a running dialogue with the characters. If a god appears onscreen, people might throw coins or prostrate themselves in the aisles. Babies howl; during a song, a quarter of the audience might get up and procure refreshment in the lobby. Complex dialogue doesn’t work, because most of the time the audience doesn’t hear it. … (pg 366)

Fascinating, huh?

This book gives me a new perspective on the city. You really do need to adjust and pay more attention to your fellow man. We’re all packed into these confined spaces together so let’s just make the best of it. That’s what they’ve figured out in India. That’s why they thrive everywhere, because they can adapt:

Bombay is a fast-paced, even hectic city, but it is not, in the end, a competitive city.

Anyone who has a “reservation” on an Indian train is familiar with this word: Adjust. You might be sitting there on your seat, the prescribed three people along it, and a fourth and a fifth person will loom over you and say, “Psst…Adjust.” You move over. You adjust. (pg 491)

What a lesson, a great lesson for all of us. Most people in Bombay live in one room. According to Mehta, that’s the same room for “sleeping, cooking, eating.” You just make due. You make due not only for the people you love, by letting your extended family stay for months in your smallish place, but for your fellow man on the bus or train.

There’s a vibrancy in the city that I think Mehta sometimes doesn’t feel in the US. It’s like you have to try so hard to retain your individuality within the hugeness of at all, that you become an expert at being an individual.

The battle is Man against the Metropolis, which is only the infinite extension of Man and the demon against which he must constantly strive to establish himself or be annihilated. A city is an agglomeration of individual dreams, a mass dream of the crowd. In order for the dream life of a city to stay vital, each individual dream has to stay vital. (pg 539)

I’m inspired by Mehta, by India, and by the people of Mumbai. This book is a lot deeper than the soundbites I’ve chosen above. Mehta doesn’t gloss over stories or just give informed summaries, he throws his heart and soul at it and let’s it rip. I think I have to see Slumdog Millionaire now.

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The Hoopster

The earliest memory I have of a “chapter book” is one called Powerhouse Five. I think I may have read it in 5th or 6th grade. It feels like yesterday. In fact, I can picture the grade-school bookshelf with all of the basketball books. All I can recall about the book was that it had a basketball player named Studs Magruder. At least I think it did. Well, I’m going to find out because I just ordered it from Abe Books.

I was inspired to find this book from my childhood because of The Hoopster; a solid piece of teen fiction written by California’s 2003 Teacher of the Year. The Hoopster is about Andre, a basketball junkie and budding teenage writer with a summer internship at a local magazine. He gets a chance to get published if he can write an article about race with a fresh take. He does so and gets front page billing, but some thugs from the PPA (fictional organization, stands for People for a Pure America) don’t like it and beat him up.

The book has a few good lessons in race relations. Andre is black, his best friend is white, and his girlfriend is Latino, so Sitomer sets out to prove that we can all get along. Along the way he exposes some of the nastiness in race relations.

This is an excellent book for any teenager. It’s funny, has plenty of dialogue, includes a lot of interesting characters, and sends plenty of good messages along the way.

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The Company of Strangers

I was looking for a serious spy novel – I got a serious spy novel. There’s nothing light about this book. I read one of Wilson’s novels before I started Booktakes and I recall thinking it was really cool. Well, this one is even better. In fact, it’s the best book I’ve read so far this year.

It starts out in Hitler’s bunker in the middle of the war but quickly transitions to Lisbon, Portugal during the summer of 1944. Lisbon was interesting during this time because it was a neutral city, so delegates and spies from the Axis and the Allies coexisted. That’s where double agent Karl Voss, German spy working for the Brits, ends up after his brother gets killed in Stalingrad and his dad shoots himself. It’s also where Voss meets English spy Andrea Aspinall.

The Third Reich was in a weakened state after D-Day and they incurred heavy losses on the Russian Front. A faction of the German establishment, including Voss, wanted to assassinate Hitler, sabotage German efforts to build a bomb, and smooth relations with the US and GB so that a conditional surrender could be negotiated. The meat of the book depicts a few furious weeks in Lisbon where Karl and Andrea navigate the landscape of spies and double agents from the Third Reich, the US, GB, and Russia in an effort to figure out who’s buying and selling secrets to build the bomb.

** PLOT KILLERS START HERE **

It culminates with the failed attempt by Claus von Stauffenberg to kill Hitler, depicted in the movie Valkyrie, resulting in Voss being rounded up with all of the other traitors and sent back to Germany for interrogation. But we are still only two thirds through the book, yet Voss has had time to save Andrea’s life, fall in love with her, and unknowingly conceive a child with her.

Fast forward twenty plus to years to 1968. Andrea thinks Voss died in 1944 (he didn’t, but the reader does not know that). She’s back in London because her mother is on the brink of death. Her marriage, to a Portuguese military man, is on the rocks because he’s embroiled in another military exercise in Africa which she opposes. She hasn’t told anyone about the real father of her son, who is in Africa fighting along side her husband.

It sounds kind of messy, but it get’s messier. In another furious few weeks, Andrea’s mom dies of cancer, her son gets killed in Africa, and her husband kills himself as a result. She tries to get her life back on track by working in her field at Cambridge, but gets entangled in a dysfunctional relationship with a math professor, who is also connected to the Communist party, which has a special place in her heart because it was the only viable deterrent to fascism in Portugal. Was that a run-on sentence?

Eventually, she rejoins the Company, the British Secret Service, to spy for the communists.

Let me digress into a discussion about spy novels. I think of spy novels as a very specific genre, much different from international intrigue (ie…Robert Ludlum) or thrillers (ie…Dan Brown). The spy novel is a thoughtful, complicated, often dark, character study, the best example of which is probably John Le Carre. I didn’t like spy novels growing up. I can remember struggling through a Le Carre novel as a kid, all the while wishing I was reading something by Ludlum. I haven’t read anything by Le Carre since, but I liked this Wilson book so much that I’m inspired to do so.

Back to the story. In Andrea’s second stint as an agent, she eventually runs into Voss during an operation in Cold War East Berlin. It’s an emotional few scenes. They save each other’s lives and diverge for another twenty years.

They eventually meet in their 70’s I guess, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She moves to the country in a small house in a quaint town and one day he shows up. He’s writing a book that’s going to blow the lid off the British Secret Service. They take a quick trip down memory lane back to Lisbon, where Andrea gives Voss a box of family memorabilia that she salvaged from his apartment when he was busted. It felt like loose ends were tied up. I had some warm fuzzy feelings. I was premature.

When they get back home, Andrea gets strangled by her next door neighbor, who I assume was a British agent trying to make sure Voss didn’t publish his secrets. That ending friggin’ rocked. Great book. Classic spy novel.

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R is for Ricochet

Grafton is not having any problems keeping me interested in the continuing adventures of her private investigator Kinsey Millhone. There are a few new developments this time around. First of all, Grafton throws in a lot of material about Kinsey’s landlord/neighbor Henry and his quirky family. But that’s not all.

I’m noticing a straying from the grittiness. Kinsey is wearing more makeup, gettin’ mo’ lovin’, and buying more clothes than ever before. It could just be the nature of this book, in which there isn’t a mystery that she’s engaged to resolve, per se.

Grafton is 69 and still appears to be going strong. I have three books to get caught up then I’ll finish them up as she writes them. That should be fun. She writes one about every year or two, so she’s gotta live to be about mid-70’s. Here’s a great interview at Powell’s where Grafton says that she is going to name the z book “Z” is for Zero.

I’m anticipating the run-up to the last book, that should be fun. She is noncommittal on continuing the series after that.

It’s so relaxing reading her books. I don’t really think about what I want her books to be like. I don’t say, “oh, I want to learn more about her family,” or “damn, I wish the villains were more sinister.” I just let these books happen and enjoy them. I have other interests/leisure activities that aren’t quite so relaxing, like college football and golf. Those have a different type of fulfillment.

Keep it up Sue.