Perfect Spy<\/a><\/em> set aside for the end of the month, but got sidetracked.<\/p>\nAnyway, O\u2019Brien\u2019s work is one of the classic stories that came out of the Vietnam era. It\u2019s a collection of his short stories about his days in the war, how he battled with himself over whether to enlist or run to Canada when his draft number came up, and how one of his comrades reacted upon returning home. All interspersed with vignettes about his encounters with his old buddies after the war.<\/p>\n
Green\u2019s work often comes up on lists of both best spy novels and best novels about Vietnam. I found it fascinating for how it foretold what would happen a decade later. It was originally printed in 1956, when Vietnam was still France\u2019s problem. But his protagonists\u2019 predictions that America would one day be the foreign power that was most involved in Vietnam obviously came true.<\/p>\n
Two very different views of the Vietnam era.<\/p>\n
Emily, Alone<\/em> – Stewart O\u2019Nan.
\nI try to knock out one O\u2019Nan book each year. Normally, I love his books because in most, I forged a quick emotional bond with the characters. I never really felt that here, in a story about an elderly woman going through her daily routines. Maybe that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t connect: this felt almost like a running list of the things that Emily did rather than some insight into the lives of retired widows living alone. I didn\u2019t hate it. But I also didn\u2019t love it.<\/p>\nThe Kill Artist<\/em>– Daniel Silva.
\nI\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve read one of Silva\u2019s espionage thrillers before, but I wanted to go back and start his Gabriel Allon series from the beginning, so I have a default \u201cI\u2019m not sure what to read right now and need something quick\u201d choice. I think I chose wisely, and the Allon series will help me through 2014.<\/p>\nAllon is a former Israeli assassin – retired from service after his wife was injured and children killed in an attack by Palestinian terrorists – restoring paintings in the English countryside. But he is pulled back into duty when the man who harmed his family is discovered in the midst of a plot to destroy an imminent peace agreement.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s some good, tense action. A nice angle when an Israeli agent goes undercover to seduce a Palestinian, and is forced to listen to his litanies of Israeli crimes committed against his people. An unexpected turn at the moment of climax, and another fun twist during the denouement. All-in-all, an entertaining piece of espionage\/terror fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A full month of books, but also one in which I got obsessed by a specific topic late. So I\u2019ll chop this into two entries: one for the non-obsession books then a second, tomorrow, for the books that haunted my dreams for a couple weeks. The Things They Carried – Tim O\u2019Brien The Quiet American – Graham Green I began the month in a bit of a Vietnam jag. I read an article about Pham Xuan An, \u201cthe perfect spy\u201d of the Vietnam War, which got me interested in reading more about the war years. I had Perfect Spy set aside for the end of the month, but got sidetracked. Anyway, O\u2019Brien\u2019s work is one of the classic stories that came out of the Vietnam era. It\u2019s a collection of his short stories about his days in the war, how he battled with himself over whether to enlist or run to Canada when his draft number came up, and how one of his comrades reacted upon returning home. All interspersed with vignettes about his encounters with his old buddies after the war. Green\u2019s work often comes up on lists of both best spy novels and best novels about Vietnam. I found it fascinating for how it foretold what would happen a decade later. It was originally printed in 1956, when Vietnam was still France\u2019s problem. But his protagonists\u2019 predictions that America would one day be the foreign power that was most involved in Vietnam obviously came true. Two very different views of the Vietnam era. Emily, Alone – Stewart O\u2019Nan. I try to knock out one O\u2019Nan book each year. Normally, I love his books because in most, I forged a quick emotional bond with the characters. I never really felt that here, in a story about an elderly woman going through her daily routines. Maybe that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t connect: this felt almost like a running list of the things that Emily did rather than some insight into the lives of retired widows living alone. I didn\u2019t hate it. But I also didn\u2019t love it. The Kill Artist– Daniel Silva. I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve read one of Silva\u2019s espionage thrillers before, but I wanted to go back and start his Gabriel Allon series from the beginning, so I have a default \u201cI\u2019m not sure what to read right now and need something quick\u201d choice. I think I chose wisely, and the Allon series will help me through 2014. Allon is a former Israeli assassin – retired from service after his wife was injured and children killed in an attack by Palestinian terrorists – restoring paintings in the English countryside. But he is pulled back into duty when the man who harmed his family is discovered in the midst of a plot to destroy an imminent peace agreement. There\u2019s some good, tense action. A nice angle when an Israeli agent goes undercover to seduce a Palestinian, and is forced to listen to his litanies of Israeli crimes committed against his people. An unexpected turn at the moment of climax, and another fun twist during the denouement. All-in-all, an entertaining piece of espionage\/terror fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-2974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14396,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2974\/revisions\/14396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}