D's Notebook

Month: November 2013 (Page 2 of 2)

Books

November 6, 2013 /

A Spy By Nature – Charles Cumming.
I read Cumming’s Trinity Six earlier this year. After a slow start, I really liked it. I keep hearing Cumming’s name listed as one of the best young espionage writers going, so dove back in for another.

Here, he focuses on a young British man, Alec Milius, who is drifting through his early 20s in the early 90s without any direction while his friends from school find success and fortune. Eager to move his own life forward, he accepts an invitation to apply to MI6, the British foreign intelligence service, only to fail to earn appointment after a rigorous interview process. However, a family friend who steered him to MI6 quickly steers him to an oil company, and the opportunity to both build a career and do some light corporate espionage.

Milius ends up working as a double-agent, providing false information to American spies who believe he is working for them. His greed, arrogance, and inexperience cause things to go poorly, and he’s denied a chance to join MI5, the domestic intelligence service.

It’s a pretty good book. There is tension and intrigue aplenty. And while Milius isn’t someone you necessarily empathize with, or even like, his journey is interesting.

Dead Space – Lee Goldberg.
Occasionally I try one of the books that Amazon Prime members can borrow for free on the Kindle. Results have been very mixed. I could read Moneyball again, for example. And there are about a million trashy romantic books if I ever wanted to get into those.

This came with good reviews not only from readers, but from mainstream reviewers, too. I didn’t get it. It was silly, but not in a good way. It was violent, but not in a fun way. If it had been any longer, I would have given up on it. At least it was free.

The Fault In Our Stars – John Green
Man, I avoided this book for quite a while. Sure, I saw it on so many Best Of lists last year, and watched it finish second in the Tournament of Books.1 But two things kept it off my To Read list:

1 – People kept saying it was a Young Adult novel. Not that I’m philosophically opposed to reading a YA novel. But with so many other books to read, that made it a little less appealing.

2 – Every blurb or review or comment I read about the book mentioned that it was about kids with cancer and it was impossible not to cry while reading it. Not every book I read has to be happy and up-lifting. But reading about sick kids when I have kids of my own wasn’t a big draw.

But, as I’ve said before, one of the great things about walking through a library is sometimes books jump out at you. And there this book was a couple weeks ago, when I was glancing at the librarian’s recommendations shelf, something I rarely do. It was a sign from the Reading Gods, I guess. So I put all my reservations aside, picked it up, and checked it out.

Jesus, this freaking book…

It’s utterly charming and delightful and wonderful. And totally heartbreaking and devastating and draining. I had to stay up and finish it well after midnight so the girls wouldn’t see how dusty the room was while I was reading the second half.

Bonus points for being set in Indianapolis and written by an author who lives here.

Live By Night – Dennis Lehane.
I guess Lehane is up there amongst the authors I’ve read most. I can’t keep track of how many of his Kenzie-Gennaro books I’ve read, and I’ve read a couple of his period pieces.

This falls into the later category, taking place during and immediately after Prohibition. Joe Coughlin is the son of a Boston cop, but firmly entrenched in the Boston underworld. He crosses the wrong people, ends up in prison, and there quickly comes under the protection of the boss that runs much of Boston from behind bars. After his hard two years, Coughlin is sent to Tampa to take over the town and stabilize the pipeline of rum from Cuba. Soon he is the local boss and life is good. Until it’s not.

There’s violence, double-crossings, bad guys who are good guys and good guys who are as crooked as the people they chase. And since Lehane is writing it, it’s all good.

Red Sparrow – Jason Matthews.
Finally, this, which came from a Twitter thread recommending the best recent spy novels. This was the overwhelming choice as best of the lot, and for good reason. Rather than moving away from political/military espionage and more towards industrial espionage as Charles Cumming did in A Spy By Nature, Matthews jumps into the new cold war between the US and Russia. And he does it really, really well. Which makes sense since he’s a retired CIA officer who spent time in Moscow during the first Cold War.

I’ve never read LeCarre’s classics, but I understand this is very much in that vein. It’s a great spy book, with lots of nuance and slow builds rather than Bond-like moments of cinematic chases and fights. Although there are a couple of those. And rather than being just a spy novel, there’s other stuff going on, too. A nascent romance between a CIA officer and the Russian spy charged with recruiting him. There are some terrific secondary characters. And the main character, the red sparrow, has an unforgettable backstory that sets up her path towards being a spy.

It’s a page-turner, it’s deep and smart, it’s well written, and given Matthews background, it has a level of authenticity other spy novels lack.

  1. To The Orphan Master’s Son, another of my favorite recent books, it’s worth noting. ↩

For The Love Of Baseball And Radio

November 4, 2013 /

OK, cramming three things together that aren’t each related to the others, but I can link them enough to justify the single post. And, I know, all of these would have been much more timely a week ago. You were busy, too. Let’s get caught up together.

First, radio. Last week was the 75th anniversary of the War of the Worlds broadcast. I’ve always been fascinated by it for a variety of reasons. And I had heard many times before that the “panic” wasn’t nearly as widespread as legend insisted.

But this piece does the math, checks the historical record, and then delves into why there was a “panic” in the first place. The answer is awfully interesting.

How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America’s newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.

Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Did Not Touch Off a Nationwide Hysteria. Few Americans Listened. Even Fewer Panicked.

Now, radio and baseball.

A wonderful look at the tremendous reach of St. Louis station KMOX, and how its power and the geography of baseball before expansion made the Cardinals, arguably, the most popular team in America, even at the height of the Yankees dynasties.

Supposedly, it still is, despite the proliferation of televisions and Internet access. But can it really still be heard clearly in other states, without the harsh accompaniment of static and interference from other stations trying to muscle in on the signal? Surely there must be some exaggeration.
To put it to the test, I set out in my rental car Sunday, the day of Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox, and headed south, the radio tuned to 1120 AM, to see if I could I outdrive the signal before the end of the game.

Trying to Outrun The Cardinals’ Long Reach

And, finally, just baseball.

I love the site Flip Flop Flyball. Artist Craig Robinson uses his mastery of Photoshop and his new-found love of baseball (He’s a native of England), to create kickass, 8-bit-style graphics of famous players and historical moments. He also makes cool infographics that are not necessarily 8-bit.

He currently resides in Mexico and using the Mexican sculpture style known as Árbol de Vida (Tree of Life), he created an Árbol de Béisbol: the history of baseball in one, cool, 8-bit graphic. Here is the image, but he sure to go to the page and read up on all the elements. It’s really fantastic.

arbol

Árbol de Béisbol

And while you’re over there, look at some of his other work.

Busy Times

November 4, 2013 /

A very busy few days. So let’s catch up quickly.

Halloween was postponed a night in most of central Indiana thanks to some heavy rain and dangerous winds that rolled through Thursday. It actually wasn’t bad until most kids would have been inside, but I doubt walking through the rain would have been very much fun for anyone. Friday was a gorgeous, mid-fall evening. We had a peacock (M.), cat (C.), and Power Ranger (L., of course). They were quite successful in the 90 minutes or so we were out.

We hooked up with a couple other families and at one point had 10 or so girls in our group. Which of course is all kinds of difficult, as certain kids are running ahead while others are dragging behind. At one point a few of the girls were yelling at others “WE’VE ALREADY BEEN TO THAT HOUSE!” The parents had to let the screamers know they were two houses ahead of the rest of the group and needed to chill out so everyone could catch up.

Friday was also All Saints Day, as my Catholic friends know. This one was especially poignant as it was the final year one of our girls was participating in the St. E’s parade of saints. L. reprised her role of St. Margaret of Scotland, and did so with aplomb. She marched right up to the mic and owned it. “I’m St. Margaret of Scotland. I helped feed the poor.” Of course, she said the same thing last year. And she saw M. rock the St. Margie gear at least once. Still, not every kid was as confident as she was.

Saturday I covered the state cross country meet, which meant a long, boring drive out to Terre Haute. It was brisk but dry, and really a fine day for early November. I only had three kids to worry about, but one of them had a legitimate chance to do well in the boys race. He did extremely well, running in one of the top three spots for the entire race, well ahead of the main pack after about the first kilometer. He finished second, partially because the kid who was leading by 20 meters collapsed about 200 yards short of the finish. But still, my kid did great.

His sister took 10th in the girls race a few minutes later, and I had a nice little theme to build my story around. Never mind that I did the same thing when I covered the regional meet two weeks ago, or the writer who covered the semistate race between just wrote about them, too.

We hosted some of our soccer team friends Sunday night for dinner and fun.1 I drank some good beer and ate a lot of good food. So with the Colts down 18 at halftime, I packed it in. You’d think I would know better by now. But in my defense, Houston looked fantastic in the first half, the Colts awful, and two huge calls went against Indy as well. Just seemed like one of those nights when it wasn’t meant to be. I even woke up in the middle of the night and wondered if I should check the score to see what happened, just in case the Colts made a game of it. I’m glad I passed. I may not have gotten back to sleep if I had seen the score at 2:00 AM. 6-2, 2-0 in the division.

Now soccer is over and we can move on to important things like blowing leaves three times a week. We need one more good storm to clear out most of the trees, although just about everything left is a gorgeous gold right now.

Coming up this week, some leftover baseball links, the books of October, and the giddy look ahead to the Andrew Wiggins experience, which officially begins Friday. Oh, and I think I already have a groovy vid picked out for Friday.

  1. A soccer season round-up is coming later this week. ↩
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