Glynns Book Reviews

Duck and Cover Redux

2007-08-02T14:04:00.000-05:00

A review by Glynn Compton Harper
of
The Oblivion Society
By Marcus Alexander Hart
An Outpost 132 Book, 2006, 363 Pages

This is not an easy book to get “into,” especially for someone who’s not a great fan of science fiction or science fantasy or end of the world books, or whatever genre The Oblivion Society belongs to. The characters, although very well-described and believable, are certainly not “heroes:” a minimum-wage shelf shocker at a run down grocery store, her brother, an obese TV and junk food addict, his friend, a nerdy geek, a skinny Goth woman whose only concern is maintaining a steady supply of drugs and alcohol, and a sex and self-obsessed frat boy. They are cynical, burned out with life, and, well, pretty hopeless. Wow! No heroes here! From the very first page, however, I was hooked, but not because of the story or the setting or even a certain degree of suspense; there is not much of these at the beginning. What hooked me was the quality of the writing and the ability of the author to tease me on from one page to the next. What also hooked me was the real mystery for a reviewer: “What the hell is this book about?” And I had to read on and finish the story to find out that there is a real story here. Literature? That’s a hard label to justify, but I think so.

For one thing, the book is a virtual glossary of the icons of western civilization. The characters speak a patois of cultural symbols and references that, although the words are natural enough coming out of the characters’ mouths, the patois provides clues that the book is about much more than the plot, or the horror, or the blood, or the strange goings on with mutants and marauding, cross-species DNA infections.

The story itself reveals a bizarre DNA of its own. To name just a few that lurk around among its ancestors are The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy and her mis-fit companions), Gulliver’s Travels, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Robinson Crusoe, Spider Man, Wonder Woman, The Hulk, The Fly, The Frankenstein Monster, The Addams Family, and The Wolfman. Although Hart never actually crosses the line into parody, he certainly skates close to it.

So what is the story about? Like many of its ancestors such as, The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy’s search for the Emerald City, it is a book about self discovery and self respect. For the characters, it is very much a “Marine Boot Camp of the soul.”

One is aware early on that the world is about to come to an end, or at least civilization was doomed by a nuclear holocaust. Now this reviewer grew up in the fifties and sixties, during the days of “duck and cover” when a nuclear attack was a ever present danger. Today, of course the major fear is from terrorists–who may or may not also present the threat of a nuclear catastrophe.

In those duck-and-cover days the world was a very different place from the world of The Oblivion Society. Young people were (mostly) clean-cut, morally straight (at least were supposed to be,) patriotic, and trusted their government. People still believed in and practiced bravery, loyalty, sobriety, shined shoes, and pressed trousers (for guys) and minimal visible cleavage (for gals.) Underlying the self image of young people in those days was hope and faith in the future. Not so in The Oblivion Society. In fact, the world Hart writes about is essentially the opposite. If the world of the fifties and sixties was worth saving, Hart’s world of 1999 scarcely seems to be.

By the end of the book, however, their travels, trials and tribulations bring the surviving characters to an Emerald City of their own. They arrive there riding in a shiny, restored 1953 Cadillac, a symbol of what they have become. Like the Cadillac, they have been "restored" (at least the ones that survived) from cynical, unkept, flotsam and jetsam–the dregs of a burned out society with neither faith nor hope. Their journey has made them better, stronger human beings. They are now human in a way that they were not at the beginning of the story. They have survived and are undefeated. They are now Self-sacrificing, altruistic people of faith and hope.

I’m glad Marcus Alexander Hart wrote this story. I’m glad that someone still writes books that champion the finer qualities of being human, even if he spills a lot of blood and guts in doing so. Order it here from Amazon.com by clicking on the link below.

Book Review Update

2007-07-07T13:03:00.000-05:00

I am currently reading the books submitted for the $100.00 award for books copyrighted in 2006. I have now read three books that make the cut as finalists: Queen of Diamonds by R.O. Palmer (ISBN 1-58939-944-7) Order it here:

The Oblivion Society by Marcus Alexander Hart (ISBN 1-4116-8575-X) Order it here:

And Conviction, a sequel of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice by Skylar Hamilton Burris. Order it from Amazon by clicking on the link below.

The deadline for submissions was March 31, 2007 to be eligible for the $100.00 award. I sincerely appreciate the authors who submitted their work and apologize for the delay in getting them read. Check back here periodically for updates on the review competition, or better still subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog by clicking on the RSS symbol in your Google tool bar while you're logged in to Glynns Book Reviews.

In the Footsteps of Jane Austin

2007-07-07T06:45:00.000-05:00

A Review of Conviction by Skyler Hamilton Burris
a sequel of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
Double Edge Press, paperback, 299 pages

Burris’ novel Conviction is a clever and well written “sequel” of Jane Austen’s classic romance Pride and Prejudice. All of Austen’s original characters either make an appearance or a brief mention in Burris’ book, but as in most sequels, even those by the original author, the characters lack the believability they have in the original work because in a sequel the arc of their personalities are not developed in the course of the story. For example Elizabeth (Bennet) Darcy lacks the sharp tongue and the intellect of the original. And we are not convinced that her husband Fitzwilliam Darcy has the same majesty of high social status he has in Pride and Prejudice. Instead he comes across as merely snappish and aloof in Conviction. The same sense of acute portrayal is lacking in Elizabeth’s Bennet sisters. Elizabeth’s youngest sister, Kitty, however rises to greater importance in Conviction, and Mr. Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, is the "star" of Conviction and has a pivotal role in the book.The character in the book closest to the original is the snobbish Miss Caroline Bingley, who in Conviction matches her social climbing and husband-chasing self as portrayed in Pride and Prejudice. In Conviction Burris introduces some especially well-drawn characters in the vicar, Jacob Markman, his brother Aaron Markman–who is revealed to be a staunch abolitionist–their father, Sir Robert Markman, and Major Arthur Talbot, an army officer.

Burris includes in Conviction a sly reflection of Jane Austen’s biography in the character of Sir Robert Markman, who lives for a time, makes a fortune, and raises his sons in the West Indies, as did Jane Austin’s youngest brother Charles John Austen, who was stationed in the West Indies in the navy where he remained for seven years returning at the end of that time with a wife and child.

It is often noted in discussioning Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that although her father and three brothers were members of the clergy, and as a clergyman’s daughter, she would have been well aware of the duties of a country pastor, especially among the poor, she did not write about her father’s or brothers’ work. In Pride and Prejudice, she mentions none of the religious aspects of a calling to the ministry. Of her characters, only Mr. Collins is a cleric and he is not portrayed favorably, but rather as an example of snobbery to the point of caricature. Burris remedies this “oversight." In the character of Jacob Markman she gives a believable portrayal of a man truly “called” by God to minister to all his parishioners, especially the lower classes, and to forsake wealth and social prominence to serve in the Church. Burris even provides an example of Markman’s “Evangelical” preaching with a skill that reveals that the author has more than a casual knowledge of the 18th, 19th, and even 20th-century tensions of Anglican theology. She also shows a solid knowledge of the structure and inner workings of the Church of England at the time, which are still present in many provinces of today’s Anglican Communion. In addition to Markman, Burris provides us with another cleric, Markman's curate, Peter Bailee, who is a competent shepherd of his flock but who lacks any special religious calling. For him "it's just a job."

Another interesting omission in Austen’s work is her lack of interest in the military, except in the case of the wastrel George Wickham: this in spite of the fact that both her brothers Francis and Charles joined the Royal Navy and ultimately attained the rank of Admiral; Francis even earned a knighthood. Her fourth brother, Henry, was first a soldier in the Oxfordshire militia, and finally a clergyman. Burris remedies Austin's lack of interest in the military in her portrayal of Arthur Talbot’s commitment to his military career and the difficulties it presents in his engagement to Georgiana Darcy and his suitability to wed at all.

Although Austen does explore the failings of society to some degree in looking with a critical eye at the class structure of her world, she does not explore any other substantive social or political issues of her day. Again Burris remedies this lack in exploring Aaron Markman's commitment to the cause of abolition, a major social issue of the time.

The major theme of Conviction, like Pride and Prejudice is about love and its many obstacles. Also like Pride and Prejudice, these obstacles include the complications of wealth (or the lack of it) social class, professional conviction, and the personalities of the characters. In the end, the complications are overcome in a satisfying way, even if at the end of the book, Burris employs a bit of Deus ex machina to resolve the rivalry between Major Talbot and the reverend Jacob Markman in winning Georgiana’s hand. This problem could have been overcome by some rewriting that better foreshadowed the complications of Talbot’s dedication to his military calling and Georgiana’s rejection of it.

Conviction is in most respects an excellent work. It is well-written and compares very favorably to its original inspiration. Incidentally, the book itself is remarkably free of printing errors especially for a self-published or small press book. Double Edge Press and/or the author has a fine proof-reader's eye. The cover illustration looks amateurish however and suggests that what's inside is amateurish. It should be replaced with something else that matches the quality of the writing.

Conviction would undoubtedly have won my award for the best 2006 book that I reviewed if it were not for he cover illustration and my prejudice against “sequels” of the work of another writer. I believe that the responsibility of creating original characters in an original story and in an original setting is a major task for a writer and it is "cheating" somehow to start with the characters and world of another writer. It is a great shame because with a small amount of tweaking, Burris could have written Conviction as an original story. Its success as a story depends very little on Austen’s work, except some small debt to the atmosphere of the late 18th and early 19th century world of Pride and Prejudice. Her main characters (including Georgiana Darcy) owe little or nothing to Austen's book. Austen's characters who appear in Conviction could have been easily altered from the originals with only minor changes or omitted entirely. By all means, buy Conviction and read it. It’s well written and a good story. Order it from Amazon.com by clicking the link below:

Slow Progress in Posting Reviews

2007-06-19T07:20:00.000-05:00

I apologize for my slow progress in posting reviews. I have been under the weather and up to my *** in alligators in a dark swamp of despond (See swamp on the left.) Some of the books got soggy, hence I've been unable to do much reading. I do appreciate all the submissions I've received and I promise I'll get them read asap. However, I have chosen the winner of for the best 2006 book I reviewed and will announce it as soon as I can get the review written. I do appreciate your submissions, many of which are pretty good writing and a few excellent, and don't despair or give up on me.

MySpace

2007-03-31T09:03:00.000-05:00

I've joined MySpace--which nowadays seems as necessary as having an email address. The link is here: http://www.myspace.com/glynn936

Book Review Update

2007-03-29T11:36:00.000-05:00

I am currently reading the books submitted for the $100.00 award for books copyrighted in 2006. So far, I've read only two that will make the cut as finalists: Queen of Diamonds by R.O. Palmer (ISBN 1-58939-944-7) Order it here:

And The Oblivion Society by Marcus Alexander Hart (ISBN 1-4116-8575-X) Order it here:

The deadline for submissions is March 31 to be eligible for the $100.00 award. Email me if your submission is in the mail and I'll consider it submitted on time. Check back here periodically for updates on the review competition.

Interesting Article about the disconnect between Writers and "Literary Professionals"

2007-03-08T07:19:00.001-06:00

Think you know how to read do you?

Here's the link:http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2007/03/08/reading/

Podcasts

2007-03-01T07:38:00.001-06:00

A creative use of the Internet: Authors Find Their Voice, and Audience, in Podcasts.

/>The link is here:

http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?emc=tnt&tntget=2007/03/01/books/01podb.html&tntemail1=y

The Author Trap

2007-02-20T06:53:00.001-06:00

New on Buzz, Balls, & Hype: An interesting discussion of marketing your book on MySpace, etc.

A New Way to Sell Books

2007-01-31T07:28:00.001-06:00

I'm already trying this in a limited, experimental way. It's a good idea.

Here's the link:

http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/2007/01/a_new_way_to_se.html

Mahatma Ghandi Meets Annie Oakley and Who Wins

2007-01-29T10:45:00.000-06:00

A review of Snake Mountain
A novel By Jerry Craven
Texas Christian University Press
Fort Worth
2000
Cover design by Shadetree Studios
Hardcover
234 Pages

Snake Mountain is everything a “western” novel is supposed to be, but it’s a lot more. It has all the gun-play, sinister bad guys, beautiful women and beautiful (and sometimes pitiful) horses and fist-fights one expects in the genre, but it transcends the genre in so many ways that merely assigning it to the western genre is an injustice.

The main character, Jason White, is a complicated character from the git-go. He’s the son of a Texan, born in Texas himself, with a mother from India. He’s been raised in the Far East and returns to Texas (west Texas Panhandle to be precise) a half-breed, at the age of 22 to attend college. When he arrives he’s a vegetarian, sometime Muslim, who speaks with a British expatriate accent, and has the mind set of a pacifist. His first encounter with the United States is witnessing a murder at the Los Angeles airport. Although the encounter seems at first to be extraneous to the story that follows, it’s not for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious is that the experience reaffirms the opinion he has that the U.S. is a violent country, very alien to the way he believes himself to be. The second is more subtle and easily missed because the story moves on quickly to his arrival in Texas. What’s also important about the encounter in the Los Angeles airport is that although he prevents the murderer from escaping by tripping him with his cane (he’s nursing a broken leg from a tennis accident suffered before the story begins.) he has a brief fantasy in which he envisions himself as having prevented the murder by being more aggressive. Although it may seem to be a flaw in Jerry Craven’s constructing the Jason character by including Jason’s fantasy of being more aggressive, it’s not at all. It foreshadows what is to come in the arc of Jason’s character from the beginning of the tale to its conclusion.

The story takes lots of twists and turns. What’s coming next is never totally predictable, but predictable enough to make it believable. Jason gets mixed up with two women, and entangled in the lives of both, including the hostility of the estranged husband of one (a really mean, ornery character) and the Lesbian pursuer of the other (another mean and very devious character.) Befriended by a Texas-style “uncle”–who’s actually an old college chum of his father’s–and a crusty cowboy or two, Jason learns to navigate and adapt to the strange ways and language of cowboy culture (like the culture of a “tribe” as his “uncle” describes it.)

Some may take offense at the comic, crude, and offensive mannerisms of this particular “tribe” as being demeaning and unflattering for Texas and Texans. Perhaps Craven’s description of cowboy culture seems a bit over-the-top at times (Think Urban Cowboy.) But it’s true to life. Craven never strays far from the truth as this reviewer knows it, and he’s a native born Texan himself with experience in living during his early adolescence (very like Jason’s Sitz im Leben) among the very tribe Craven describes, and growing up in Pasadena, Texas, the setting of Urban Cowboy.

The particular genius and meaning of Craven’s story is not found in its plot nor the superficial setting of West Texas–a modern version of the “old west.” The real importance of the book is the anthropology--what it tells about human beings; the way in which human culture adapts and thrives in the challenge of surviving in the land where it lives.

The west Texas part of the planet is a savage, unforgiving, semi-arid region filled with natural danger, unpredictable changes of weather, and hazards that spring up without warning, such as being surprised by a rattle snake on the trail and the sudden danger of wild fires (some natural and some the result of human contrivance.) It’s not a land for sissies or those governed by altruistic notions of fairness or preset ideas about good and evil. Both are sure-fired ways of getting hurt real bad–or killed in west Texas.

Human survival in such a place has its own rules of behavior–some subtle and some outright. Sentimentality about love and the appreciation of the beauty of nature are present as part of human nature, and Craven shows us examples, but in doing so, he shows us why in west Texas they have to be cloaked by a veneer of hardness and spoken in a particular “code” as Craven describes it. The crude, tasteless limericks of dirty songs cloak what are in truth expressions of love, and spiritual connections with nature are literally hidden in darkness and performed in secret. This is all very true: “I been there” and I know.

Human beings are adaptable creatures; that’s why we can survive and thrive in hostile environments--even in space--but the essential qualities of what makes us human are always present–both the goodness and the inherent evil, which we pass on from generation to generation in our genes.

A minor character (who Jason meets as a child long before he goes to Texas) is his first encounter with gratuitous violence and because the character is an Australian (a tribe of people who have learned to survive in a hostile land) the incident foreshadows Jason’s encounter with violence in Texas among the Texas tribe. Human beings must adapt to the land in which they live if they are to survive, or they have to leave. Perhaps much of our trouble as a nation when we try to impose our own, northern and western culture on others stems from our lack of understanding for the tribes in other regions, such as desert nomads (think Lawrence of Arabia for an example) and the native tribes of Somalia and other parts of Africa, as well as in South and Central America–and of course, Iraq and Iran. They’re like they are in part because of the nature of the land in which they live.

Craven’s west Texas tale, at its heart, is a study in how Texans through crassness, crudeness, and their seemingly arbitrary judgments of right and wrong–law and order–live and let live–shows us a great deal about human beings and the human condition. There is an old story about how a no-nonsense (female) Texas judge explained something to another judge from a more “civilized” part of the country. He asked her why in Texas a man can go scot-free after killing a man he caught in bed with his wife–exonerated because it was justifiable homicide–while a man would always be strung up for stealing a horse. Her reply was: “Well, some men need killing, but there was never a horse that needed stealing.” For those who don’t understand; you steal a cowboy’s horse and you steal his way of making a living. In west Texas there are places a cowboy has to go that you can’t get to, even today, on an ATV, in a pickup truck, or on foot. Steal his horse and you endanger his livelihood as well as his life. For a west Texan, a horse thief needs killing.

That little antidote explains Craven’s Texas and the Texans in Snake Mountain. He’s written a great book that ought to be considered literature and certainly not dismissed as just another shoot-em-up story about the west. Buy it, read it, and appreciate it for what it teaches about our survival as human beings in hostile country.

Order it from Amazon.com by clicking below:

The Way We Were

2007-01-27T10:02:00.001-06:00

Before movies, TV, the Internet, ebooks, etc., but not before self-publishing and POD.

Best-Seller Big Bang: When Words Started Off to Market
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: January 27, 2007

Read the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/27/arts/27vict.html?th&emc=th

More About WWII Submarines (Revised)

2007-01-25T11:12:00.000-06:00

The revision includes more details about "my sub." USS Bream (SSK-243)

U.S. Subs Down Under: Brisbane, 1942-1945
by David Jones and Peter Nunan

U.S. Subs Down Under is an excellent reference work about an important part of the war in the Southwestern Pacific during WWII. It is thoroughly researched and the writing is clear and accessible. Although the book does not provide a reader with the excitement of undersea warfare in more dramatic books, such as William Touhy’s The Bravest Man, which covers the exploits of submarine commander Richard O’Kane, nevertheless it is a valuable reference work.

Jones and Nunan sort out the complexities of the two major operating commands in the Pacific theater; in the Southwest Pacific, under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur in Australia, and those commanded in the rest of the Pacific by Admiral Nimitz from his headquarters in Pearl Harbor. Because submarines and other forces were constantly moving from one command to the other, it is sometimes difficult to determine who reported to whom from one month to the next, and Jones and Nunan are a great help in keeping track of who was directing their missions.

U.S. Subs Down Under also provides a great deal of detail about shore-based support of the submarines operating out of Australian ports; the rest facilities, repair facilities, and of course the degree to which the citizens and government of Australia both encouraged, fed, and entertained submarine sailors. The book also includes many details about the tasks submarines performed besides sinking enemy ships: in landing coast watchers, rescuing downed aviators, evacuating civilians, reconnaissance, and supporting invasions forces.

Jones and Nunan also provide statistics on the patrols and sinkings of individual submarines (including the dates of their patrols and the names of the Japanese ships they sunk) and the dates, names and circumstances of each submarine that was lost during the war in the Southwest Pacific theater of operations.

Because I served on the USS Bream (SS-243) from 1960 to 1963, reading about Bream’s operations during the war was of particular interest to me. Although the book included information about Bream’s two patrols and the fact that "my" sub sunk the freighter Yuki Maru on June 16, 1944 and torpedoed and damaged the Japanese cruiser Aoba on October 23, 1944, a mystery remains for me. I learned when I served in Bream that the boat had been depth-charged sometime during the war and the hull was permanently deformed by the attack, which limited the submarine’s test depth. Unfortunately U.S. Subs Down Under did not mention the depth-charging, although it does state that Bream and was fired on (although not hit) by an American Liberty ship in April of 1944. Perhaps the depth-charging occurred after Bream attacked the cruiser Aoba, but U.S. Subs Down Under does not mention it. To the left above is a picture of Bream during the time I served in her in 1962. After the war she was modified as an SSK, or hunter-killer sub for anti-submarine warfare. She had a large, bulbous sonar dome on her bow, which reduced her surface speed to about 11 knots.

Since posting this review, I had an email from Myron Howard another BREAM crew member. He know a bit more about BREAM, including some discussion about BREAM's misshapen hull. He writes:

I just saw your page with your personal information. I too was on BREAM.
However I left her in April, '60. The thing that struck me was the comment
on your page about a misshaped hull as a result of Japanese depth charge
attacks. That is news to me.

I was in contact with a WWII vet who was on BREAM when she got stuck in
the mud while avoiding a depth charge attack. That event resulted in a
warpped shaft that had to be changed out and a fire in the motor room but
no hull damage.

And I recall several dives to test depth (312 ft) while I was aboard BREAM
from July, '57 until April, '60.

He adds:

The rumor may have been a result not of Japanese depth charges but an event that occurred in 1959.

I don't recall the exact depths but we had an excursion. If you recall, the
depth guage valves were behind the gauge board in the Control Room.
When going below 150 it was SOP for the A ganger on watch to close the
shallow guage valves on the way down and open them on the way up.
Well, we were going down and the fellow on the stern planes, who had
reported aboard in late 1957, told the A ganger he'd do it. A ganger figured
the guy had a couple years on the boat what could go wrong? Well a lot
went wrong.

First he closed the deep guage valves. When he realized that, instead of
opening the deep guage valves he opened the vent valves on the guage
system. By the time the A ganger got everything lined up properly, we had
about a 25+ up angle and were sinking by the stern. Al Packard had the
After Torpedo Room and he told me he thought the ATR was around 350 or
deeper based on the pressure guages on the tubes.

Guess I was lucky. I had the forward port upper skid rack in the ATR and
slept right through it.

And though my sig doesn't say so, I have several pages of BREAM photos
and history on my web site. There is brief mention of the fire in Maneuvering.
Also the warped shaft, both scopes being replaced and the forward tubes
having to be repaired as a result of depth charges.

Note: Myron's web site address is here:

http://myweb.cebridge.net/myron/submarines/bream/index.html

There's more good sites available too, both about BREAM and other WWII boats:
www.navsource.org/archives/08/08243.htm
www.fleetsubmarine.com/ss-243.html
www.rddesigns.com/ww2/bream.html
uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/2989.html
www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ships/SS/SS-243_Bream.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bream_(SS-243)
and lots of others from a Google search here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=USS+Bream&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7DKUS

Click on the link below to buy U.S. Subs Down Under directly from Amazon.com

I Decided Against the Microsoft Expressions Web Program

2007-01-25T09:34:00.000-06:00

I indicated in a prior post that I was going to try the Microsoft Expressions Web program for building web sites. I've decided against it because it is way too complex for my needs and abilities.

My New Novel is Available at Amazon.com

2007-01-13T09:34:00.000-06:00

My latest novel Arise Beloved is available at Amazon.com.

Arise Beloved, is a WWII story about a WASP, Becky Bright, her first lover, Troy McNutt, a navy pilot, their separation, his combat in the South Pacific, her dangerous mission to exchange a German POW for her faithless POW husband, and Becky and Troy's reconciliation after the war.

Click on the link below to order the book.

My God,” the king of Norway cried “Someone’s stealing my secrets!"

2006-12-15T14:02:00.000-06:00

Review of Billy Boyle
By James R. Benn

A Rookie Cop Goes to War

There is a classic formula for telling a detective story in one sentence which goes: “My God,” the king cried, “Someone’s stolen royal secrets, purloined the national treasury, diddled my secretary, and murdered the prime minister; who done it?” In his novel Billy Boyle, James R. Benn manages with skill to hit all the elements for a successful detective story: religion (at least on the level of personal morality) espionage, theft, murder, and mystery.

Billy Boyle, a rookie police detective is commissioned a second lieutenant in the Army and assigned to the staff of his “Uncle Ike” at Eisenhower’s Supreme Allied Headquarters in England during the runup to an invasion of Norway. Eisenhower and the British Intelligence service assign Billy to track down a spy from among the Norwegian Patriots training for a "secret" invasion of Norway. For reasons that are not clear in the beginning, they are counting on Billy Boyle’s youth and ineptitude as a detective to botch the investigation.

Billy, with his own personal sense of inadequacy takes on the assignment and in the process, in company with the daughter of a British aristocrat and her lover, a Polish Baron with a heart condition, rushes around the England and Scotland following a conflicting set of clues trying not only to identify the spy, but also to solve an attempted murder, two actual murders, and the theft of part of the Norwegian national treasure. Their quest in England involves a great deal of danger and suspense while providing a scenic tour of the wartime countryside in the bargain. Boyle, having identified the person whom he suspects of all five crimes, makes a dangerous and perilous trip to Norway running from and into German patrols and suspicious and dangerous Norwegians. Once in Norway, he ties up all the loose ends of the mystery except one; the reason Eisenhower and British Intelligence assigned him the mission with expectation that he would fail. In the final twist of the plot, he discovers, as does Eisenhower and the British, that he has not, by solving the mystery, frustrated their plans when they sent him in pursuit of the spy, but has succeeded in a fashion that exceeded their initial plans in expecting him to fail.

Billy Boyle succeeds both as a story and, unexpectedly for a book in the detective genre, in providing characters with depth, especially with a protagonist whose personal and moral struggles not only provide a look at the difficulties a young man faces who must overcome his youthful sense of professional inadequacy but also his moral struggle in dealing with the dilemmas presented by what he discovers in the course of his investigation. Good Book. Order it here.

They Matter for A Writer As Well as A Reader

2006-11-14T11:50:00.000-06:00

The Things That Matter
by Edward Mendelson
Pantheon Books, New York 200

On page 116 of his book, Mendelson includes the following footnote: “Virginia Woolf promulgated the legend that the scholarly London Library kept George Eliot’s novels on the shelves when everyone else’s novels were banished as frivolous, but the legend reflects a genuine nineteenth-century sense that George Eliot was different from writers of mere fiction.”

Mendelson’s footnote provides the key to the issue of what constitutes literature (as far as it applies to works of fiction) as opposed to “mere fiction,” and in The Things That Matter Mendelson provides the reader with tools for discerning the literary merits of what he or she reads. But this is true not only for a reader but for a writer as well; at least one who sets lofty goals for himself when he sits down at his keyboard and tries, vainly perhaps, to craft something that transcends “mere fiction.” The Things that Matter, do matter for a writer (at least this one) as well as for a reader.

The structure of Mendelson’s book takes seven classic novels and explains in clear and accessible prose what each of these novels has to say about the stages of human life. The novels and the life stages they address are: Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein (birth), Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (childhood), Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (growth), George Eliot’s (Maryian Evan’s) Middlemarch (marriage), Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (love), To the Lighthouse (parenthood), and Between the Acts (the future). One of the dust jacket blurbs says of Mendelson’s book: “Mendelson . . one of the finest literary scholars of our time shows us how seven novels can help us with the stages through which we all must pass. Another blurb tells us that The Things That Matter shows “the connection between literature and life.”

These statements are true and one could add many more without being accused of hyperbole: Mendelson’s book is one that any serious reader or writer will be the richer for reading. Having said all this, it is perhaps permissible (if perhaps also temerity) to suggest that the book is not exhaustive in exploring the subject. These are not criticisms in the sense that the things that matter to Mendelson do not matter, but that the things he writes about are not necessarily all the things that matter. I doubt he would make the claim that his book is all-inclusive in this sense.

For one thing, all the novels he discusses are written by women and three of his choices are all written by the same woman, Virginia Woolf. They are all British women, and they all wrote well before divorce became available and (relatively) accepted. The point of view of male writers on each of the stages of life would undoubtedly show that things that matter to men are sometimes different, especially in love, marriage, parenting and the future. In looking at only the feminine point of view, if one can only look at the point of view of one sex, Mendelson chose the right one if only because women, at least Mendelson’s choices, lived in a paternalistic society and were able to view the stages in life from both the feminine side (their personal experience) and the masculine side (the world in which they lived) much as a writer from a racial minority can write with insights into the dominant culture as well as the minority culture, whereas a member of the dominant culture would have more difficulty doing so from his point of view.

But a man’s point of view would be worthwhile. For example, Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin seafaring stories show a masculine point of view about all seven stages of life, including a radically different view of love and marriage, that is quite different from the novels Mendelson explores. Certainly O’Brian’s novels are “men’s books” and are very much adventure stories, but they are still literature and address the same seven stages of life with just as much seriousness and insight as the books Mendelson cites in spite of the fact that the “wham-bam, blood and guts” of O’Brian’s books appeal more to men than to women. Men's lives also include issues at each of the stages that are not always as important or are considered very differently by a man than a woman, e.g., duty, honor, loyalty, obedience, success, and physical courage.

In a world in which divorce is more accessible and has less social stigma–as well as a world in which single motherhood in all its manifestations (including "bastardy") is more common and acceptable–books written since the mid-twentieth century provide contemporary insights into these seven stages of life. Books from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century are not always helpful to a reader at the beginning of the 21st century in sorting out and (for a writer) resolving the conflicts in relationships and marriages. Contemporary novels address these issues from an entirely different point of view than did the books Mendelson uses as examples.

One could also say that American, Canadian, and Australian writers–not to mention the many and diverse nationalities who have English as a first or second language, or who don’t write in English at all–might have entirely different takes on the stages of life than British writers, and their voices would also add something to understanding life.

The same comment can be made in suggesting that a homosexual viewpoint on the issues, especially growth, love, marriage, parenting, and the future would be worthwhile because their experience, and the context in which they live with these issues, are also part of the human experience. Addressing Gay and Lesbian points of view is as important in the modern world as addressing the classic issues of male/female relationships and those of racial or ethnic minorities. Michael Cunningham’s work would provide an example, especially because his The Hours is an interesting retelling of sorts of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

But, to return to all that is good in Edward Mendelson’s book, nothing he writes should be overlooked or devalued because he did not write a 200-volume study covering the things that matter in the entire universe of worthwhile and significant classic and contemporary novels. He’s done an excellent job on the subject and provides excellent tools for looking at the books we read (and the ones we write.)

Order the book directly from Amazon.com by clicking on the link below.

$100.00 Cash Award best POD/Self-Published Book reviewed here

2006-11-09T10:48:00.000-06:00

I prefer to review POD and Conventional Self-Published fiction, but it is difficult amidst the numerous blogs, review sites, etc., to get much attention for this site and I don't get as many submissions as I would like. In order to generate more interest in my reviews, I am offering a prize of $100.00 for the best book published in 2006 submitted for review at my site.

Although I have no special credentials as a reviewer, I am a self-published author myself. I have written two novels, and I assume that the prize money will provide an incentive for submission; in other words, an author will have nothing to lose by making a submission other than one copy of his/her book.

My motives for this competition, other than to generate interest in my book reviews, are to see what my fellow, self-published writers are doing, and to draw attention to POD/self-published works of fiction and works of fiction published by small (10 titles or fewer) publishers.

Although I may make criticisms of the books I review, I will review only those titles I think have merit and are worth buying and reading. I will make no negative, humiliating or "slash and burn" reviews.

The following are the criteria for entries in the competition:

1. The book must be submitted for review in accordance with the following rules.

2. The book must be an original work of fiction of any genre except children’s books, and books intended for young-adult readers. Erotica is acceptable, but it must have some revelance other than mere purience. Books of poetry must have fewer than 100 pages.

3. The book must be written in the English language.

4. The book must be submitted for review by March 31, 2007.

5. The submission must be in book form: no e-books or digital manuscripts.

6. The book must have its own International Standard Book Number (ISBN).

7. The book must be published and first appear in print during the 2006 calendar year, although it may have a 2007 copyright date.

8. The book must be published using either Print on Demand (POD) technology or conventional self-publishing.

9. The book must be self-published by the author or by a press with 10 or fewer titles.

10. The book must be available for purchase at Amazon.com or a comparable Internet source that can be linked for purchase from this blog.

11. No books written by anyone that would represent a conflict of interest will be eligible for the award although such books may be reviewed at this blog. Conflict of interest will include, but not necessarily be limited to, any books written by myself, any members of my family, books published by my publisher, Aydy Press, or my own imprint, Anchor Chain Books.

12. Submissions must be sent through the U.S. Postal service to Glynn's Book Reviews, P.O. Box 802, San Augustine, Texas 75972 and must be accompanied by a one-page cover letter that includes the author or publisher's return address and a short biography of the author if one is not included on the cover of the book. Novels should also include a one-page synopsis of the story. Books of poetry should have a brief themactic description of the work. Receipt of the submission will be sent either by email or by mail if a SASE accompanies the submission.

Books will be judged on the writing style and quality, character development, pace, realism (believability), plot and social relevance. Front cover, back cover description of the book, and interior design, as well as care in editing will also be considered. Not all submissions will be reviewed, although all those that are reviewed (with the exceptions noted above) will be acknolwedged as finalists. I will make the final choice for awarding the prize myself, although others may participate in the selection process.

The winner of the $100.00 prize will be announced here and at the Absolute Write Self-Publishing forum in August of 2007 at which time the winner will be sent a cashier’s check for $100.00.

Write me at glynn at glynnsbooks dot com if you have questions

Self-Publishing and POD Awards and Contests

2006-11-04T08:11:00.000-06:00

Peter Bowerman gives the following list of awards and contests for self-publishing in his book The Well-fed Self Publisher which I have reviewed here. I can't vouch for the integrity or worth of any of them personally, but I intend to enter my novel Arise Beloved if it meets the entry criteria. Does anyone have any information on any of the others?

Bejamin Franklin Awards
Sponsor: PMA,the Independent Book Publishers Association
Web site: www.pma-online.org

The IPPY Awards
Sponsor: Independent Publisher
Web site: www.independentpublisher.com
Aydy Press the publisher of my first novel A Perfect Peace was a finalist in the IPPY competition last year for Brian S. Matthews's sci-fi novel New Wilderness.

ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Awards
Sponsor: ForeWord magazine
Web site: www.forewordmagazine.com

Writer's Digest International Self-Published Book Awards
Sponsor: Writer's Digest magazine
Web site: www.writersdigest.com

And, for a larger list of competitions (including ones for conventionally published books)
www.writing-world.com/contests/index.shtml

I also received the following email inviting me to enter the Nautilus Books Awards 2007. This is a new one for me, so I am including the entire text of the email. Note that the Nautilus Awards are associted with Jenkins Group Inc. which has been mentioned before in this forum.

The Nautilus Book Awards 2007 – Call for Entries "Recognizing Books that Promote Spiritual Growth, Conscious Living, and Positive Social Change" Orcas Island, WA -- The sixth annual Nautilus Book Awards are now accepting entries in 20 subject categories, honoring books that contribute to our society’s awareness and well-being, and that embrace spiritual and ecological values such as compassion, sustainability, simplicity, and global peace. Any book copyrighted or released in 2005 or2006, in English, is eligible. Final deadline for entering is January 15, 2007. A downloadable, four-page PDF with complete guidelines and entry form, and online, secure entry are both available at www.independentpublisher.com/nautilus. Why Nautilus? Since ancient times, storytellers and scribes worldwide have gathered and shared the culture’s words and ideas in ways that encourage its people to think, feel, and improve the lives of upcoming generations. For centuries, the world’s great philosophers and leaders have used books to inspire the masses and affect their attitudes and emotions – not always for the better. Today, with mass global communication, political unrest, and religious and secular fanaticism all growing at an alarming rate, the need for books that promote “green living” and positive social change is great, and the phrase, “Changing the World One Book at a Time” is more meaningful than ever before. Authors and publishers and their books CAN and ARE making a difference. The Nautilus Book Awards were conceived to recognize and reward these world-changing books, and celebrate how they contribute to positive social change, spiritual growth, high-level wellness, and responsible leadership. 20 categories in all, including three children’s book categories and both adult and juvenile Visionary Fiction, will showcase the most creative, inspirational, and life-changing books available today. Award winners will be announced during a Nautilus Book Awards presentation at BookExpo America on Saturday, June 2, 2007, at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. A winner, runner-up, and 3-4 finalists will be named for each category, a special award will be given to the top small press or self-published title, and two overall Grand Prize winners (one adult and one children’s) will be presented with the Nautilus Book of the Year Awards. Winning titles will be featured in a Nautilus Book Awards exhibit booth at BookExpo America, and will be promoted on the Nautilus website for one year. Visit the Nautilus Book Awards website at www.marilynmcguire.com for background information, or contact Awards Producer Marilyn McGuire at marilyn@marilynmcguire.com with any questions. A downloadable, four-page PDF with complete guidelines and entry form, and online, secure entry are both available at www.independentpublisher.com/nautilus. The Nautilus Book Awards 2007 are presented by Marilyn McGuire & Associates, Inc. of Eastsound, WA and co-sponsored and administered by Independent Publisher Online of Traverse City, MI.
>
> Marilyn McGuire & Associates, Inc. have assisted and supported the creation, publication, marketing and sales of books, music and other products that make a distinguished contribution to the world in the areas of holistic health, self-help & psychology, responsible leadership, spiritual growth, positive social change, and the principle of sustainability in all human enterprise for twenty years. www.marilynmcguire.com Independent Publisher Online is an electronic magazine containing news and features about the world of independent publishing. It is owned and operated by Jenkins Group Inc., a provider of marketing and custom book publishing services for independent publishers. www.bookpublishing.com .

The Well-Fed Self Publisher

2006-10-24T18:34:00.000-05:00

The Well-Fed Self Publisher
by Peter Bowerman

Fanove Publishing 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-9670598-6-0
ISBN-10: 0-9670598-6-0

In the interest of making a full disclosure: Peter Bowerman sent me a free copy of The Well-Fed Self Publisher and asked me to review it. I begin my review in making this disclosure not just because of ethical considerations, but because it is the best way to illustrate the valuable, insightful, and honest way in which Mr. Bowerman approaches his subject. In fact, he emphasizes the value (and methods) of soliciting reviews as an essential marketing strategy for a self-publisher. This is only one of the many ways in which The Well-Fed Self Publisher becomes a “must have” for those who hope to succeed in selling their writing in a tight, competitive marketplace–especially if they do not have access to traditional publishing: he tells us why gaining that access can be, and often is, the least profitable way in which to sell the products of their creative (writing) genius. Furthermore in his writing style he speaks to his readers in clear, direct, cheerful and encouraging prose that makes you want to know him as a friend–another valuable illustration of how a self-publisher ought to appear if he expects to sell his work.

Although as Bowerman admits, even emphasizes, the fact that self-publishing works better for non-fiction than for fiction, nevertheless, for me as a writer of fiction, ninety percent of what he says about self-publishing is useful–and necessary–information for publishing fiction as well. In fact, if anything, he underestimates the value of his ideas and information for fiction writers. The fact that selling fiction to agents, publishers, and ultimately readers is tougher for fiction than non-fiction is pretty well acknowledged in the book-writing world and most fiction writers are aware of the fact: the mechanics of publishing and marketing are the same however, and having a resource and reference like The Well-Fed Self Publisher is as important to the fiction writer as it is for the writer of non-fiction.

I have one novel in print (soon to be republished in a revised edition) by a small independent press and a second novel that I am publishing under my own imprint in November using a print on demand (POD) technology. Whereas I don’t think I have made a huge mistake in choosing either route, I think that I might have gained immeasurably (and probably sold more books) if I had read The Well-Fed Self Publisher before I made the decisions I did–especially since Mr. Bowerman so clearly explains the difference between Self Publishing and POD.

If you are not already a famous writer with an agent and publisher ready to make you one of their in-house brand names, you will make a big mistake if you don’t read The Well-Fed Self Publisher.

Buy it from Amazon.com by clicking here.

Hiatus in Posting to this Blog

2006-10-18T10:36:00.000-05:00

Regrettably, I was not able to post to this blog for the past few weeks because of vision problems which required cataract surgery on my right eye on October 16. The surgery went well, and although I am now able to do some limited reading, etc., I still do not have complete used of my right eye, which necessarily slows me down. The surgery came at an awkward time with respect to my reading in order to do the book reviews I wanted to post, as well in doing the final proofreading of the publication galleys for both my novels: a revised edition of A Perfect Peace, to be published soon by Aydy Press, and the initial publication of my second novel Arise Beloved, being published in early November by Anchor Chain Books.

If you would like to be notified when the books are available at Amazon.com, please let me know by emailing me at glynn@glynnsbooks.com.

San Augustine Book Club Selection

2006-10-10T11:59:00.000-05:00

The San Augustine Book Club will be discussing An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser on October 19 at the Chamber of Commerce "Log Cabin." You can order the book directly from Amazon.com by clicking on the link below:

New Wilderness

2006-09-15T10:00:00.000-05:00

New Wilderness

Four Horses of the Apocalypse (plus dogs, cats, squirrels, wasps, whales, et al)
New Wilderness
by Brian S. Matthews
AD Press, 2005

On June 10th, sometime in the late nineties, for an undetermined reason (or reasons), the animal kingdom turned on the human race and brought about a world-wide devastation of civilization. The day the animals went crazy was christened “New Wilderness Day” by a field reporter on CNN and the name stuck.

Knowing even before opening the cover of Brian S. Matthew’s new addition to the end-of-civilization genre calls to mind all the previous literary attempts at assessing how civilized human beings will act in a world suddenly stripped of most of the cultural and scientific advances since the last end of civilization at the fall of the Roman Empire. There have been many previous contributions to the genre: Hitchcock’s The Birds, Huxley’s Brave New World, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, H. Ron Hubbard’s mammoth contributions to name a few classics, plus a zillion lesser science fiction and science fantasy works the titles and authors of which escape memory. None of these, however, except perhaps Hitchcock's, comes close to the horror depicted in New Wilderness.

All these have a great deal in common and the cause of the disaster is usually clear: alien invasion, nuclear holocaust, and scariest of all, perhaps because it presently seems to be a real possibility, destruction of the environment caused by human avarice and greed abetted by complicity of the government. In the case of New Wilderness, however, as in Hitchcock’s The Birds, the cause is not clear. We can guess, but Matthews provides few clues to suggest why the animal kingdom has turned against us, which makes it all the scarier.

Matthews’ brief biographical sketch on the book jacket informs us that he is among other things, a stand-up comic. This makes one suspect that from time to time he is gently pulling the reader’s leg: one of his main characters, for instance, a comely youth named Noah, who of all the other characters has escaped major scarring and mutilation by the “teeth,” the slang reference to the marauding animals. Another Old Testament name also shows up in the form of Lot, a bad guy from a Sodom-like enclave, who is responsible for major Sodom-like? devastation of Compton Pit, the home-enclave of the major good guy protagonists. The New Testament escapes Matthews’ subtle macabre wit unless one counts the sadistic, pederast high-priest named Luke who is a primary "Gospeler" of a bogus goddess cult.

The book opens with a confrontation between Loggers and Tree Huggers, suggesting that the animals are angry over the rape of the natural environment, but when the animals attack, they attack both the rapers and the defenders of the forests alike. What follows is a list of creatures straight out of the Benedicite, omnia opera Domini: O whales and all that move in the waters. All birds of the air. O beasts of the wild and all you flocks and herds. Add to that insects, primarily ants, hornets, honey bees and wasps, and suddenly humankind is beset by the vengeance of not only the feral kingdom but the domesticated realm of animals as well. The only creatures missing from the list are reptiles: alligators and snakes do not play an important role in the book, but probably because the battle ground is in the Canadian west in the summertime. One can only shudder at the possibilities if the book had be set in Southern Louisiana where the population must always be wary of cockroaches, snakes and ‘gators in the best of times.

Ten years after New Wilderness Day, we find that human beings have taken refuge in scattered enclaves surviving on guile, limited trade with each other, and salvaged technology from before the “change.” True to form, humanity still has its good guys and its bad guys.

The good guys, although badly scarred physically and emotionally struggle to preserve their humanity. Sex (both deviant and regular) continues as a major activity, but since children are favorite targets of the marauding animals, bearing children is discouraged (except by a bizarre remnant group in Vancouver that uses newborns for human sacrifice.) Homosexuality is still present in the “changed” world, but except in one isolated and vague inference where it might be considered acceptable, it survives only in particularly perverse instances of pederasty and sadism. Human loathing of homosexual pederasty is also evident: the boy-toy object of Luke, the high priest of the goddess cult had rather have his tongue cut out than endure one more day of the priest’s attentions. One suspects, however, that this may have been purely a plot device necessary to save Noah, the particularly attractive and previously unblemished protagonist, from a ghastly maiming rather than representive of a universal loathing on the part of everyone towards gay sex.

Human greed has also survived, manifested by cornering the market of certain commodities principally gasoline, medicines, and technology. Thieves flourish, preying on weakness, trust, and goodwill.

Religion survives, but only in its symbols. Clergy, dogma, theology, and creed have disappeared except in the most primitive, destructive, and deluded versions. Very little faith is evident even in friends, loved ones or even oneself. Love is also scarce. Loved ones are too easily and frequently lost to the perils of life in a savage, unforgiving environment.

In spite of occasional visible seams in an otherwise tightly structured and extremely horrific world, Matthews proves himself to be a master story teller. One never escapes the sense of danger lurking in the darkness even in the safest places, which are very few and far between. The book is too long to be read in one sitting, but only weariness, stinging eyes, raging hunger, and the calls of nature are strong enough to make one put it down. Even if sometimes the characters take on almost comic-book dimensions in the wham, bang, boom, growl and slash of their lives, they are believable as real human beings. They are sympathetic and the reader truly cares about them even when at times their damaged psyches reveal some serious pathology.

I, the reviewer, live in an old house on top of a hill in an ancient village in East Texas that was first settled when the area was a no-man’s land west of the Sabine River. My home is across the street from the site of the first university in Texas and next door to the former home of the chronicler of the first two centuries of Anglo settlement in East Texas. Both the university and the historian’s home have long-since disappeared, burned during the devastation of Reconstruction after the Civil war and never rebuilt. The land is overgrown with weeds, underbrush and giant trees and is overrun with perhaps a hundred squirrels per square foot and no telling how many wasps and hornets’ nests. When reading New Wilderness, I paused from time to time, aware of the oddly opaque gaze of my benign pet Shih Tsu and of the squirrel-infested grounds around the house, and I was not unaware of the possibility that for some strange reason, my world might suddenly be severely beset by a “change” in the animals round me. I would caution anyone who starts reading New Wilderness, to have quick meals readily at hand, be prepared for late nights of compulsive reading, and perhaps have a contingency plan for defense against a surprise attack from an unexpected quarter. I loved the book and you will too if you like survivalist stories and being scared. You can order it by clicking on the amazon.com link below.

Stay tuned right here: New Wilderness is the first of a trilogy. The second City on the Currents is nearing completion and I will review it here as soon as it's available.

City on the Currents

2006-09-15T09:52:00.000-05:00

AYDY Press Receives Award

2006-09-15T09:31:00.000-05:00

AYDY Press is the Publisher of my novel A Perfect Peace. This is good news for me as well as wonderful news for Brian.

Independent Publishers Award to AYDY Press for New Wilderness by Brian S. Matthews

In the Science Fiction category, AYDY Press secured one of two finalist positions for New Wilderness by Brian S. Matthews. ISBN 1-897242-01-8 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada May 24, 2006 -- United States based Independent Publishers honoured Victoria’s AYDY Press at ceremonies in Washington, DC, on May 19. AYDY Press was one of two finalists in this international competition in the Science Fiction category for the novel New Wilderness by Brian S. Matthews.

The Independent Publisher Book Awards are in their ninth year and acknowledge “deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers.” Searching for innovation and excellence rather than budget, the IPPY Awards strive to raise awareness of exceptional writing in an industry where large publishers dominate.

“Brian was the inspiration for AYDY”, said President Tom Bulmer. “The acronym stands for Aren’t You Dead Yet? It’s an off hand salute to the perseverance and tenacity of quality authors who simply won’t give up.”

New Wilderness is an ecological thriller that has received rave reviews in Canada and in the United States. It is the first of a trilogy with its second, City on the Currents, just released. Bulmer and Matthews recently returned from a month in Brisbane, Australia researching the final episode, The Last Walkabout, scheduled for release this year.

In the trilogy, human kind loses the biblical promise of dominion over nature. Society crumbles and the animal instincts in people rise to the fore.

What happened? What caused this change?

The story begins in the Pacific Northwest and then travels to California where the tale moves to Australia. There, the trilogy will conclude with an ecological message almost ten years in the making. The story has attracted interest in the motion picture world.

“It is an honor to be associated with Brian. New Wilderness is just good writing. We are very proud of him. Bulmer concluded.

AYDY selects undervalued literary titles that could also be taken into film, television or live theatre.

For more information call:

Gayle Milliken 250-384-7116
Tom Bulmer 250-412-4307

http://www.aydy.ca

Click on the images below to order New Wilderness and City on the Currents here.

This Book Looks Interesting

2006-08-24T06:53:00.000-05:00

This is next on my reading list. Order it here and see if you agree with my review.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills by Thomas Cahill

2006-08-19T13:54:00.000-05:00

Tom Cahill has two classics under his belt: How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews, both of which I have read, so when a friend loaned me her copy of Desire of the Everlasting Hills, (as a writer, of course, I believe someone should buy books, but when someone--or a library--allows my work to be read by passing it along, I make an exception. I'd rather be read than not be read if buying the book is an obstacle.) I was delighted to have an opportunity to read his latest as well.

In his previous books, Cahill has shown that he is a master of writing popular history and his latest is no exception. At the present time Christians and Christianists are shouting at each other over very basic and opposing ideas about the interpretation of the Bible. Cahill, it seems to me, has grasped the way in which the modern world must read scripture if either Christianity or the Bible is to remain relevant. The Bible is the underlying authority of the Christian faith, but that authority is diluted and debased if what the Bible means is restricted to what the Bible says "literally." In the first place, there is no true "literal" version of scripture. Even the most ancient versions in the original languages in which they were written are not authentically literal if one means that they are error free in transcription or translation.

It is a most rediculous position and a somewhat superstitious one (but unfortunately a common one) to believe that the King James' version of the Bible in English speaks with God's true, error free authority because God somehow guided the 15th century fingers that wrote it down. This is not the usual position of the more "enlightened" literalists however. They acknowledge that later translations and more modern exegetes and interpreters are correct, but they are highly selective when it comes to which texts are "literally" true and which are not. As a general rule, you can expect that literal authority will be the one that favors the rights and prejudices of heterosexual, white, males in the northern hemisphere.

The real key to understanding the Bible and applying it to life in the modern world, however, requires that one go beneath the surface of what the text says and try to determine the principal that can be applied in modern life. This means of course that everything has to be stripped away that had meaning only in the social context of the time it was written, especially in terms of race, ethnicity, and sex--by that I mean male and female not sexual practices or orientation.

Secondly one has to evaluate the ancient texts in terms of their knowledge of the natural world--i.e., the age of the earth, the source of thunder; all the natural phenomina that modern science has revealed. That means that much of what the Bible says about the natural world; the sun, stars and planets, the oceans and life; has to be evaluated in a poetical sense, and not in a literal sense. This also applies to what modern science knows in terms of disease and human psychology. People may have had demons in the ancient world and mant still do in the modern world, but that does not necessarily mean the same thing as it did prior to the modern age. This also applies to phenomena such as sexual orientation and gender identity. This is the area where the so-called "enlightened" literalist has the most trouble; having to meet head-on the specific prohibitions in the Bible--homosexuality to be specific--and understand that when the Bible uses homosexuality as an example of "sexual perversion" as Paul does in 1 Corinthians to condemn a man or woman for "turning away from Christl" his premise is right, we do turn away from Christ, but his example is flawed because he did not understand homosexuality as it is understood in the modern world--at least by those who are not invincible ignorant.

So, back to Thomas Cahill's book. He does approach the Bible from a truely enlightened perspective and judges everything he comments on in the Bible in the proper light of modern revelation--under that understanding (correctly I think) that the Holy Spirit has indeed been active in the world for the last 2000 years, and if we ignore what we have learned through the Holy Spirit, we do so at our peril.

The subtitle of Cahill's book is "The World Before and After Jesus" and he uses that perspective for what he has to say. He divides the book into seven parts: 1. Greeks, Jews, and Romans in which he explains each of these cultures and the differences among them and how they interacted during Biblical times; 2. The Last of the Prophets, the age and writings that set the stage and the expectations for the coming of the "Messiah;" 3. The Cosmic Christ, which is an explanation of the mythic Christ of Paul's writings as opposed to the historical Jesus that is sought by modern "Jesus" scholars; 4. The Gentile Messiah portrayed in Luke's Gospel, which separates the Jewishness of Christianity in Mark and Matthew and makes Jesus a figure acceptable to a gentile audience; 5. Drunk in the Morning Light, the record and development of the Post Ressurrection church and the inpouring of influence by the Holy Spirit; 6. The Word Made Flesh the theological development of salvation through Christ of the Eucharist in John's Gospel; and 7. Yesterday, Today, and Forever, a summing up of the meaning of the previous six parts of the book and what they mean in terms of the on-going Church, its practices, its value (and values) and the danger of its becoming irrelevant in a secular world.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills is beautifully written, clear and easy to follow and understand and immanently convincing. Unfortunately I suspect that it will not convince all those who had rather use scripture to further their own selfish interests--but the fact that some will not appreciate Cahill's work does not diminish its importance.

You can order the book from Amazon.com by clicking on the link below.

Jaroslav Pelican's New Book

2006-08-17T06:42:00.000-05:00

I heard Pelican lecture when I was in seminary. He died recently but he was a Russian Orthodox priest who taught in the Orthodox seminary in New York. I just noticed this book, Whose Bible is It? History of the Scriptures, which must have been published post-postumously. I'll order it as soon as I finish my review of Cahill's book. (See below.)

Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin Books

2006-08-16T09:30:00.000-05:00

I am re-reading Pat O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series about a Royal Navy Captain in the late 18th, early19th century British Navy. Not only are the books (some 20 in the series) exciting sea stories, the two main characters, Jack Aubrey, RN and his companion Stephen Maturin, a Navy surgeon and occasional spy, are "buddies" in the classic example of tightly bonded (thoroughly heterosexual) men, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which have a lasting appeal in male-oriented literature. The first three books in the series are Captain and Commander, Post Captain, and HMS Surprise. You can order them here by clicking on the Amazon.com links below.

Another Article About "The Long Tail"

2006-08-10T08:47:00.000-05:00

The first thing I'll do when Arise Beloved is published is get Amazon.com to list it with "similar" titles.

‘The Long Tail’ Foresees a Marketplace of Pixel-Size Niches

By LORNE MANLY
Published: August 10, 2006

This, and other articles like it seem to be pointing the way toward writers being able to "wire around" conventional publishing. Another miracle of the Internet.

The Bravest Man by William Tuohy

2006-08-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

William Tuohy’s The Bravest Man is a great read and as good as it gets in describing the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, and life aboard a WW2 vintage submarine. I have first-hand experience of both. I was a midshipman at the Academy from the summer of 1954 until I graduated with the class of 1958 and served in USS Bream (SS-243) a “fleet boat” stationed in Pearl Harbor from 1960 until 1963, when I was transferred to new construction of a Polaris boat, USS Alexander Hamilton (SSBN 617).

My time at the Academy was 20 years after the period described during the time of Richard O’Kane, the Bravest Man of Tuohy’s book, but things had not changed much during the interim. In fact, I doubt if things had changed much since the 1920s. We still wore dress shirts with detachable collars and the Academy laundry was the only facility left in the country that still had the machines to iron them into the stiff, neck chaffing torture devices they were; almost impossible to get buttoned on to a shirt and a necktie tied without destroying their perfection.

We still wore sock garters; elastic, calf encircling devices that attached to the top of non-elastic, calf-length cotton socks to hold them up–no elastic-topped socks for us. The elastic in the garters deteriorated rapidly as a result of sweaty calves and not only wouldn’t stay up, but were notorious for coming undone while marching in formation leaving the garter dragging behind a drooping sock, resulting in the unfortunate victim of the garter getting “gigged” by an observant duty officer and a five-demerit (one-hour extra duty marching with a rifle) penalty for “being out of uniform.”

During my time, plebes (freshmen) were still subjected to harassment by upperclassmen, but it fell short of “hazing,” and was confined to enforcing strict discipline and to learning a high standard of professionalism. Mealtimes were especially hectic with the plebe sitting on a 2-inch edge of his chair, “eyes in the boat” i.e. looking straight ahead, and being barraged with questions: “What’s the main armament of an Iowa-class battleship, what’s the movie in the yard (the Academy campus), and what’s the menu for evening meal." If the answer was one you were supposed to know because it was “plebe knowledge,” and you didn’t know, the answer had to be “I”ll find out sir.” and never, never under any circumstances was “I don’t know.” acceptable–even if it was a question that you weren’t supposed to know. Failure to correctly answer a question correctly resulted in a “come around.” from the upperclassman and the dreaded “Bring your atlas.” The atlas, a broad, flat book, was not for the purposes of a geography lesson, but rather used to deliver “swats” to your behind. I still have mine after 50 years and it is still bent to the shape of my 18-year-old ass. No plebe I knew ever thought the discipline or the punishments were excessive and were in fact a source of pride that one could “take it.” If there were ever excesses in dealing with plebes, I have long since forgotten them.

Tuohy also has the New London Submarine School and the fleet boat experience down pat. Although my time in subs in the Pacific was after WW2, it was not that long afterward and we sailed in the same boats with many of the same men who sailed them during the war. My boat Bream had a permanently misshappen hull due to depth charging by the Japanese during the war, which restricted its maximum depth during dives. Other than the fact that the boats had been retrofitted with snorkels, which allowed for charging batteries while submerged at periscope depth, the boats still smelled the same, the torpedoes still occasionally misbehaved the same, the food was still the best in the navy, and the boats were still just as dangerous as ever when riding out a typhoon. I spent a watch or two topside on the surface, chained to the compass binnacle to keep from being washed overboard, and under water for as long as a minute at a time when huge waves washed over the bridge. And except for the fact (a huge except I’ll admit) that we weren’t facing danger from the Japanese, we still had some anxious times with Russian submarines and “trawlers” as well as a bit of harassment from the Chinese in the South China Sea. The Pacific ocean was still as treacherous and the same shallow water shoals were still in the same unpredictable places.

And the submariners were still the same intrepid, brave, adventurous, and sometimes mischievous men depicted so accurately by William Tuohy. I was proud to be one of them then and I am still proud to have faced the perils without ever thinking of quitting when the going was uphill.

I enjoyed William’s Tuohy’s book tremendously and I recommend it heartily. It’s real. It’s honest. And it’s accurate. My only complaint was Tuohy's grave mistake in calling midshipment "Middies." That term was especially offensive to a midshipman and I'm surprised that no one pointed it out to him. We were either "mids" or "midshipmen," and never, ever, "middies."

You can order the book directly from Amazon.com by clicking on the link below.

More Books About World War 2 Submariners

2006-08-03T09:55:00.000-05:00

I will be reading and reviewing these books as research for a possible novel about submariners in WW2.

More about the Long Tail

2006-07-30T08:22:00.000-05:00

Backlist to the Future

Article Tools Sponsored By
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: July 30, 2006

Interesting Link About Self-Publishing

2006-07-20T08:46:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting link that appeared today on the Internet
(from the New York Times, Thursday, July 20, 2006)

Technology Rewrites the Book

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Digital Camera for Book Jacket Design

2006-07-11T08:43:00.000-05:00

I recommend the following digital camera and accessories for designing your own book jackets.

Yahoo Alerts Link

2006-05-27T12:40:00.000-05:00

It's now possible to be notified by e-mail any time new content is added to this site for Glynns Book Reviews. Alerts will also be provided here whenever the content is changed at my "literary" web site: Glynns Books.

Click on the Yahoo! button in the column of "Links" on the right hand side of the page and follow the instructions that appear. You will need to enter the URL for this site which is: http://wwwglynnsbooks.blogspot.com/atom.mxl.

New Book by Brian S. Matthews

2006-05-15T13:34:00.000-05:00

Brian S. Matthews' latest novel, City on the Currents, the second in a trilogy that began with New Wilderness is now in print. I will be writing a review as soon as I've finished reading it. Check back in a couple of weeks.

Wanna Get Published??

2006-02-02T08:46:00.000-06:00

If you're serious about getting your book published, I recommend the following books. You may think you're too good to need help, but you're wrong. First you have to have a product that publishers want to look at, then it has to take the form they want to see. You can order them directly from Amazon.com by clicking on the ad.

Now--assuming you have a killer manuscript, you want to find an agent. Most publishers will not look at "over the transom" submissions. You GOTTA get an agent.

Here's a list of agents. Be sure and search for one that is taking submissions and obey exactly the submission requirements. If you get the submission wrong, your work will end up in the trash without being read.

GOOD LUCK!!!

US Literary Agents

Of Mountains and Molehills

2006-01-16T12:31:00.001-06:00

Brokeback Mountain
by Annie Proulx.

This is a small book (55 double-spaced pages) that originally appeared in the New Yorker Magazine as a short story. It has been published in book form as a result of the hipe for a Focus Features movie of the same name. I read the story in the New Yorker, but ordered the book and read it again in preparation for seeing the movie, which I saw twice. In the movie, neither the Ennis Del Mar nor the Jack Twist character speaks clearly; it takes two viewings to understand the dialog--although understanding the dialog is not that important in following the movie.

Brokeback Mountain is a good story, and Annie Proulx is an excellent writer, especially of short stories, but as tragedy, the story is flawed. Brokeback Mountain tells the story of a homosexual (as opposed to Gay) daliance between two uneducated men of average-to-low intelligence who meet and have sex during a summer they spend together caring for a flock of sheep in the mountains of Wyoming. After their initial encounter, both marry and have children. Although Jack's marriage to the daughter of well-off dealer of farm machinery lifts him out of the poverty--both material and intellectual--that both men share in the beginning of the story, Ennis is not so lucky and drifts from one menial, low-wage job to another throughout the story. For 20 years after the first summer together, their homosexual encounters continue as the two periodically meet "to go fishing." When meeting for one of these "fishing trips", Ennis's wife sees the two kissing passionately and she subsequently divorces Ennis--he's not that great a husband or father as it turns out, so there is adequate reason for divorcing him without knowing about his affair with Jack. Although Jack's wife does not discover Jack's 'secret,' the progress of the story suggests she has her suspicions.

If the definition of a tragic story is one in which the outcome is pre-ordained and unavoidable, then Brokeback Mountain, while sad, is not tragic. Both Ennis and Jack had an "out" that would have saved them, but they did not take it. Although the two men talk ocassionally of "striking out and making a life together" neither, (especially Ennis) can or will make the break with his heterosexual identity that such an action would require.

I grew up in, and live in Texas, and all the tension about the sexual ambivalence and social restraint was tiresome and aggravating: I kept thinking "Haven't you two assholes ever heard of San Francisco, New York, or New Orleans--or for that matter Houston and Denver forGod'sake?" Of course they were ignorant and borderline stupid, but that describes a host of dumb-ass queer cowboys that flock to the cited cities and manage to escape the tire-iron solution. That's not to say that Gay bashing and murder didn't happen in the cities in the sixties--and still does happen there--but there are many places (even in Bush/Cheny Country) where violence against homosexuals was and is considered to be evil and against the law, and the perps did and still do go to prison. True, BBM is a sad story, but so is a dog getting run-over trotting across a freeway. The reality is that Ennis and Jack are homophobic themselves, even if their homophobia is a result of stupidity and ignorance.

The social blindspot (shared by Ennnis and Jack) that prevents understanding and tolerance of homosexuality, is the assumpton that sexual orientation is strictly either/or. It's not. A person's sexual orientation is much more complex. It sure is in the case of Ennis and Jack, and perhaps that's where the real, unacknowledged tragedy lies: forcing a specie that is frequently "omni-sexual" to obey an ideal that posits an unresolvable conflict between exclusive monogamous heterosexuality and homosexuality (whether monogamous or not.) The tragedy is being forced to live in a society that does not allow a man (or woman) to marry the opposite sex and raise children while at the same time permit him (or her) to have a "fishing buddy." Brokeback Mountain takes a peek behind the curtain at the complexity and paradox of human relationships, but it only hints at the real tragedy: sex canons that limit the scope of human emotional connection and physical desire. Underlying all the heartbreak and tragedy proposed in Breakback Mountain is society's fear that civilization will crumble if human beings are allowed to "love" too broadly. A pathological insecurity on the part of the human race tries without success to enforce inadequate and unworkable rules under the general rubric of "faithfulness."

Some may think this is insensitive and parallel to Bill Cosby's criticisms of some African-Americans, but in spite of my mostly left-leaning, libertarian tendencies, even lefties like me should not deny the fact that everyone has a responsibility at least to try and overcome life's difficulties for him/herself; no one ought to be excused from that. But overcoming difficulty requires courage, the essential missing element in both Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar.

A better movie with 'gay' tendencies, and a truly poignant tragedy is Capote. If you've not seen it, it is a mini-biography of Truman Capote during the time he was writing In Cold Blood. I had not read In Cold Blood before seeing the movie, but I have read it since and Great Living Jesus! what a wonderful writer Capote was.

My criticism notwithstanding, by all means order Brokeback Mountain (by clicking below) and go see the movie. They are both well worth the investment in time and money.

New Books I'm Reading

2006-01-15T16:20:00.000-06:00

New book by Michael LaCroix

2006-01-09T09:04:00.000-06:00

God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible

2005-12-02T09:00:00.000-06:00

Author: Adam Nicolson
Publisher: HarperCollins, Copyright 2003
ISBN 0-06-018516-3

Complex, Overwritten and Opinion-Ridden Pseudo-history, But (with some caution on the part of the reader) Worth the Effort
(More later)

Will in the World

2005-11-24T10:23:00.000-06:00

This is a great book. I have never paid much attention to Shakespeare's sonnets, but Greenblatt's book makes studying them richly rewarding.

The following are representative book jacket reviews that I agree with heartily.

"Stephen Greenblatt's book is a tour de force. The immediacy and forcefulness of his prose creates an Elizabethan England bristling with authenticity. His reading of Shakespeare's mind is both startling and stimulating, strengthening the connections between life and art in a way that all creative people instinctively understand. Indeed, it is a book for artists and ordinary people as well as scholars and students." --Tina Packer, artistic director, president, Shakespeare & Company.

"This compulsively readable and deeply imaginative book represents the most sympathecitc investigation yet made into the ways in which Shakespeare's life experiences inform his writings." Stanley Wells, general editor, The Oxford Shakespeare

A Compliment for "Will in the World"

2005-11-24T10:16:00.000-06:00

I wanted to see how and if the movie Shakespeare in Love had any relationship to the book Will in the World. I began watching the movie with the expectation that it would be a biography in the same sense as Will in the World. Well..... it was and it wasn't. The book did give a more-or-less chronological telling of Shakespeare's life while trying to discover the "real" Will by looking for parallels between his work and his life. The movie made no serious attempt at an actual biography, but was instead a fictional depiction of Shakespeare as a character in his plays, primarily Romeo and Juliet. The limited compass of the movie made it successful as entertainment, but too fanciful to carry any weight as biography. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the movie. I did. But I learned a great deal about the real Shakespeare (and his work) from the book and very little about the man Shakespeare from the movie.

Man Does Not Live By Bread Alone

2005-11-22T09:51:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

It may be true that man does not live by bread alone, but a good loaf of home-baked bread can make life better. I hate store-bought bread and I've worn out my old bread maker, so this is my choice for a replacement. I don't like baking the loaves in the bread maker, but it is wonderful for mixing the dough. I'll let you know how I like this new one.

Followup! This is a great machine. It has 5 separate settings for different breads: basic,sweet,whole wheat, French, "InstaBread", dough, and (wonder of all wonders) it even churns butter. I've used the French bread setting and it is delicious: great crunchy crust, chewy inside--as good as a New Orleans neighborhood bakery. At $69.95 it is a real bargain. I've also churned some butter: delicious. I used the resultant buttermilk in a batch of bread. Works great.

New Wilderness

2005-11-19T12:02:00.000-06:00

The Last Days of Publishing

2005-11-11T08:45:00.000-06:00

A Novel by Tom Engelhardt
University of Massachusetts Press, 2003

Tom Engelhardt, a veteran editor with 15 years experience at Pantheon, has written a first-person narrative told by a ‘fictional’ veteran editor who has worked for many years in a small prestigious publishing house that has been adsorbed into a multi-media entertainment conglomerate. In what must be a classic ‘art imitating life’ story, Engelhardt has written a compelling human story about a man struggling with his own mortality, his existential loneliness, and his professional obsolescence in an industry that seems to have lost its relevance. This human story is wrapped in a chronicle of the “decline unto death” of traditional small-press publishing and the loss to ‘literature’ the death implies. Within the tale the narrator struggles with the loss of a love (both an ex-wife and a lover) and friendships, which run parallel to the loss of his livelihood and his professional identity. At the end of the story, Engelhardt suggests that there is hope; all is not lost: literary fiction and low-profit-margin books of all types will survive. The life force that drives the creation of low-profit books is too strong to disappear even if the venue for publication changes. It is interesting to note that the publisher of The Last Days of Publishing is the University of Massachusetts Press. University presses traditionally have been a venue for books of limited interest.

1491

2005-10-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

A knowledge of history is the principal conduit of civilization, but history is not a static thing that remains unchanged. History is a creative rediscovery, reinterpretation and re-evaluation of the past: ever changing, ever evolving. Charles C. Mann's 1491 is just such a creative rediscovery of the Americas. He has harvested the most recent scholarship and discovery from both archaeology and anthropology and presented an accessible text that paints a new picture of North and South America as it existed prior to Columbus's "discovery." He presents a world that was "new" only to Europeans. In 1491 Mann paints the picture of a world that is new and which displaces a severely outdated understanding of Native American culture.

A Perfect Peace

2005-05-03T11:06:00.000-05:00

This is a shameless plug for my own novel. You can order it here by clicking on the link below, or if you like, you can download sample chapters at my web site by clicking on the title of the book above.

Add to "Writers' Toolbox

2005-04-15T08:33:00.001-05:00

Books in the Queue

2005-03-22T09:50:00.000-06:00

These are books I have ordered to review.

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The Line of Beauty

2005-01-13T09:19:00.000-06:00

Alan Hollinghurst's new novel The Line of Beauty (Bloomsbury, 438 pp., $24.95)is a good read. It was reviewed in great detail by The New Republic Online
The issue date was December 13, 2004. Click on the link below.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041213&s=wood121304

My thoughts about the novel: The author is obviously a great fan (as are lots of us) of the great novelist Henry James. Hollinghurt's admiration is refected not just in internal references to James, but also in the tone and style of the novel. Hollinghurt makes a telling and somewhat unflattering comparison of British upperclass society in the mid 20th-century with James' 19th Century descriptions of the same society. The principal difference is not just in the loss of manners and morals, but in the moral and social decline of the aristocracy itself. In the 100 years between Hollinghurst's society and James', British aristocracy has lost touch with its historical roots in dignity, privilege, government, and most of all, the difficulty of access to a title. Ancient inherited titles have been replaced with titles with less than a century of existence. The most ancient in The Line of Beauty dates only from the late 19th century and the most recent are created as we watch. Most titles have been purchased by political contributions or awarded for political service. None (at least in the characters we meet in The Line of Beauty) was earned through artistic, scientific, or military service. The overall tone of the British (political) upperclass is crass, vulgar, and degenerate: druggies, philanderers, adulterers, drunks, wanton homosexuals, etc. All in all Hollinghurt's upper crust is a far cry from James'.

Aside from the social aspects of the novel, it captures the excesses of the 1970s and 1980s exactly. Reading the book gives the reader a sense of how life was changed for gay men (and those they lived among) during the beginnings and the disaster of the Aids epidemic.

Click below to order the book.

Agent Oranje

2005-01-10T10:57:00.000-06:00

The Face Behind the Window
by Adriana J. de Roos
(Electric eBook Publishing, http://www.electricebookpublishing.com, 139 Pages)

In May of 1940 when the German Nazi regime invaded Holland, the Dutch queen Wilhelmina and her government escaped to London and the rest of the Dutch royal family, the house of Orange (spelled ‘oranje’ in Dutch) moved to Canada. The epic story of the people of Holland they left behind, and their struggle against the tyranny of the German occupation is one of the most enduring stories of courage to come out of World War II. It is on this historical canvas that author Adriana de Roos paints her poignant story of a young girl caught up in the danger, intrigue, and tragedy of enemy occupation and the Dutch Resistance movement.

The story is told in first-person narrative by the fictional protagonist Saskia Verlaan, and one can not escape the knowledge that young Saskia is almost exactly the same age as another young Dutch girl, Anne Frank, whose life had an even more tragic outcome from the Nazi occupation than Saskia Verlaan’s.

Ms. De Roos tells a compelling story even if her writing exhibits a somewhat clumsy style that would certainly have been solved by more competent editing. The problems are primarily in the attempt to translate a colloquial form of Dutch into a comparable form of colloquial English. The results are clunky at best. In particular the English renderings often involve expressions that were not common in English until well past the period in question. For instance, the statement that someone had been “brainwashed,” an expression not introduced into English until the Korean War in the 1950s. Another was the term “big time,” a term of very recent origin, as in “. . . Mom and Dad were overacting. Big Time.” Another jarring choice was the nickname “Buck” given to a Nazi officer. Although “Buck” may accurately translate a common Dutch nickname, it’s connotations in English conjure up an image completely inconsistent with the nasty German in the story.

These deficiencies of style, however are not sufficient to take away the power of the narrative. The reviewer was a child at the same time as the events that take place in the story and therefore was a contemporary of the narrator. Ms. de Roos’ description of the bucolic land of windmills, tulips, green fields, canals, and Holsteins matches exactly his childhood images of the Dutch landscape. The reviewer remembers well the horror he felt as a child in Texas imagining the Dutch boys with their trousers of blue and Dutch girls in wooden shoes being held hostage by the Nazis. It is exactly this horror, described so well by Ms. de Roos, taking place as it does in such a pretty setting, that jolts him back to his own childhood memories of the war.

The author’s age however indicates that she was not born until after the time during which her story takes place. Although she spent her childhood during a time in which her native country was still deeply traumatized by the war, there are some clues that the events she describes were not drawn from first-person experiences. One gets the impression that the author’s impressions were made during a time of reconciliation after the war, when the people of Holland wanted very much to return to social stability and to put the bitterness, anger, and hostility of war behind them. For instance, the Verlaan farm was adjacent to the German border and Saskia from time to time tells us of seeing a German woman plowing the field on the other side of the border. Saskia seems to have no anger or hostility at all towards the woman in whose name and the soil she tills the Nazis have invaded Holland. Such a benign attitude might be understandable if Saskia had let the reader know that she knew that her neighbors on the German side of the border were also suffering from lack of food and an oppressive government like the Dutch, but we are given no such information–although it was most likely true at the time. Instead, the only thought Saskia shares with us is once, when seeing that the woman has left her field, she speculates that it must mean that it is lunchtime! That seeing the citizen of an enemy country serves only as a timepiece is somewhat remarkable unless the author had grown up during a later time when reconciliation with the former enemy across the border was more important than continued hostility and anger.

Another example concerns the rehabilitation of a German sympathizer, a member of the hated NSM–the National Socialistic Movement–the Dutch equivalent of the German Nazi party. This particular man had betrayed his countrymen not once but twice: the second time after repenting of the first, and yet before the reader can focus his anger on the man’s self-serving duplicity, the author quickly makes him an object of pity, portraying him bare-foot, humiliated, and the victim of his own greed and opportunism. Surely this attitude toward an enemy sympathizer who had endangered his neighbors and been the cause of their deportation and death could not have represented the attitude during the time of his evil, but rather a time afterward when such forgiveness was required by a return to a normal life in a country ravaged by war. As a reader, I would have liked to have been allowed to feel more thoroughly the anger engendered by the telling of the story rather than have it yanked away so abruptly. Why include evil characters and their acts in a story if not to provoke a response to evil in the reader? Why tell a story if a genuine emotional response is not allowed? Forgiveness is of course necessary in the long run, but not before one has been convinced that doing evil is wicked. Only then is repentance and forgiveness in order.

These criticisms of The Face Behind the Window are not meant to detract from the importance and power of the story, however, but rather to provide illumination of the time in which the story takes place. The Face Behind the Window is indeed an important book in that it reminds us again how war effects not just those who serve in uniform, but all those caught up in its path. No one can adequately understand the dynamics of the Second World War without a knowledge of the terrible violence done to the people of Holland and the other nations overrun by the Nazis. Ms. de Roos’ book makes an important contribution to telling the story of the war. I recommend it highly. Order it from Amazon.com by clicking on the link below.

The Five Books of Moses

2004-12-30T09:38:00.000-06:00

I will be reviewing this book when I finish reading it.

Books in the Queue

2004-11-30T09:07:00.000-06:00

Latest News from the National Book Awards War

2004-11-14T09:09:00.000-06:00

BOOKS / SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW | November 14, 2004
And the Winner Is . . .
By LAURA MILLER (NYT)

A quote:

"Readers, as a rule, care more about what an author writes; other writers are often more impressed with how. Beautiful sentences, formal experiments and infinitely delicate evocations of emotional states abound in these five books, but those woebegone souls in search of a good story will have to keep looking, elsewhere."

A comment:

To paraphrase a recent political rule: "It's the story, stupid!"

Yet Even More Crap from Big Time Publishing

2004-11-04T08:03:00.000-06:00

NY Times | November 4, 2004
A Spunky Heroine, and an Officer's Improbable Rise
By JANET MASLIN (NYT)

Two quotes from Ms. Maslin's review:

About Metro Girl By Janet Evanovich 296 pages. HarperCollins. $26.95.

"Writing novels isn't like working on an assembly line. Or at least it isn't supposed to be. But there are literary dynamos who crank out installment after installment, using titles that serve as brand names and replicating the same sausagelike structure over and over. A show of creativity just means dreaming up an additional product line."

About The Prince of Beverly Hills By Stuart Woods 321 pages. Putnam. $25.95.
". . .one reader's comment about the dauntless, tireless Mr. Woods on Amazon.com is: "Did he write this over a weekend, while watching a football game?"

More Crap from Big Time Publishing

2004-10-29T09:47:00.000-05:00

So Where's the Zeitgeist? It Looks Just Like College
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

Yet once again one of the "don't trouble us with your submissions, you nobodies" big time publishers has issued another piece of crap, in this case Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Priced at $28.95, I wish they'd give the weight rather than the number of pages (676.) That way we'd know how much they want per ounce for crap.

Not only has a mega-publisher issued more expensive feces from one of their brand-name writers into the world of reading, but the New York Times has wasted ink and space reviewing it.

A quote from the review: "Though Mr. Wolfe tries to gussy things up with his hyperventilated prose and a noisy arsenal of narrative bells and whistles, most of his observations will be overwhelmingly familiar to anyone who has been to college, sent children to college or gone to the movies. We're told that athletes look down on studious types as pathetic wonks, academic types look down on athletes as stupid jocks, and the wildest of wild frat boys look down on just about everyone else. We're also told that there are racial tensions between the black and white players on the basketball team, and that most of the players get academic breaks their classmates don't.

Other observations feel peculiarly dated: gallons and gallons of beer are consumed by the characters but drugs are hardly mentioned, and Britney Spears and the 1978 movie "Animal House" are cited as cultural touchstones. Mr. Wolfe's depictions of the cultural wars on campus over multiculturalism and gay rights have a faintly stale 90's smell to them, as do his depictions of arguments about athletics and academic standards."

Alas and alack! And why is the publishing world in decline? This sure doesn't deepen the mystery. It will stay in decline until publishers look for new talent and reviewers start writing about it.

Improbable Cause

2004-09-28T13:50:00.000-05:00

Medium Blue: A Travis Berringer Novel
by Dennis Jenkins and Jim Backes
(Electric eBook Publishing, http://www.electricebookpublishing.com, 277 Pages)

Even for someone who has only seen one episode of Law and Order (if such a person exists) or one Cops show–even reaching all the way back to Perry Mason trials–it ought not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a story about a psychic cop would butt heads pretty quickly with the issue of probable cause, and it happens in Medium Blue by page 14. Saying right off that the protagonist, rooky cop Travis Berringer “sees things unseen by others”(to paraphrase the book jacket blurb) will not give away any of the story. Neither will mentioning that the fine grind of the plot is a serial murder investigation. That is also revealed by the book jacket blurb.

As a matter of fact, Medium Blue is a strange whodoneit for the fact that both who the main bad guy is and what it will take to catch him are pretty clear early on. The first big hint is in the initial FBI profile and the Jenkins/Backes team hits that drum several times, and we all have been convinced by the second drum beat what kind of idiots the FBI are. The story works its way though the slim of everyday crime like the drive-by shooting of a baby, incest, weeny-wavers, burglaries, teenaged crazies, and other everyday inhabitants of the zoo (“It really is a zoo out there,” says Frank Fauser, Berringer’s cop partner, “only instead of bars, separating the animals from the public, there’s us.”) while a serial killer stalks his victims and practices his “art.”

Against a background of tough-talking, dirty-mouthed cops and perps, Jenkins and Backes pretty much lay it all out for us to know in advance: who the villain is, who his final victim will be, how he will be found out, and what his fate will be. Doing so however takes nothing away from their masterful storytelling, because we have already been told the major problem: with a mind-reading cop, how do you establish a probable cause for arresting a killer and stopping the killing without the criminal justice system letting him go because psychic powers are not a justifiable reason for searching, seizing, and arresting a criminal. (This of course assumes that Congress has not passed a revised American Patriot Act that removes Probable Cause altogether as one of the criteria for making arrests.)

This reviewer as an observer rather than an actor in the story could have come up with a number of ways to trap the killer without incurring the problems with probable cause the cops had in Medium Blue, but the reviewer’s genius might have led to a few more victims, and stopping the killer was the real consideration, plus the clay feet of the story’s very human characters, that led to the story’s final spurt that solved in the last few pages all the problems it had raised.

One criticism might be the blatant deus ex machina on the final page that saves the very likeable protagonist Travis Berringer both from failure as an unemployed ex-cop or the pursuit of a career as a failure as a policeman. Being psychic and a cop are just not professionally compatible. One is inclined to forgive even a very large deus ex machina, however, when it serves the purpose of saving the ass of a thoroughly likable character, keeps his romantic life on track, and sets him up for the next “Travis Berringer Novel.” I really liked Travis Berringer and I want to read more about his adventures. Get back to your word processor, Jenkins and Bakes. Order Medium Blue directly from Amazon.com by clicking on the link below.

Bejing

2004-07-25T21:57:00.000-05:00

A novel by Philip Gambone. An excellent, well written gay-theme novel. “Bejing will entertain and amuse many readers who aren’t gay or who don’t often read about travel.”(Quote from the book jacket by Gillian Kendall.) I was truly surprised by how engrossed I became in the story Gambone tells. I had to keep reminding myself that it was fiction and not a real life story. Highly Recommended.

Remembering Trauma

2004-07-25T21:47:00.000-05:00

by Richard J. McNally. A very good discussion of the controversal subject of "recovered memory," particularly in the areas of child molestation and incest. Recommended. Click below to order the book from amazon.com

PBY: The Catalina Flying Boat

2004-07-25T21:45:00.000-05:00

by Roscoe Creed. Non-fiction. Another book I'm reading for my novel Escape from Eden. This one goes into the history of the development of the PBY more than the war-time service of the airplane. Recommended. Click below to order the book from Amazon.com

Black Cats and Dumbos (WWII's Fighting PBY's)

2004-07-25T21:43:00.000-05:00

by Mel Crocker. Non-fiction. Personal accounts of PBY pilots. Another piece I read researching my novel Escape from Eden. Recommended. Click below to order from Amazon.com

Blogging: Genius Stratigies for Instant Web Content

2004-07-25T21:33:00.000-05:00

by Biz Stone: How-to. Good, easily understood instructions for building your own blog site. He's a bit off-hand in his writing style for my tastes, but once you get used to his silliness, he's easy to follow. Recommended. Click below to order from Amazon.com

Black Cat Raiders of WWII

2004-07-25T21:31:00.000-05:00

by Richard C. Knott. Non-fiction. Interesting history of the Catalina PBY flying boats of the Second World War. I read it as research for my new novel Escape from Eden (which you can read about at www.glynnsbooks.com.) I recommend Knott's book highly.
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The Offshore Islanders

2004-07-25T21:12:00.000-05:00

by Paul Johnson. Non Fiction. Stuffy and fairly boring, but better than Ungrateful Daughters (See above.) Recommended only if you're a British Isles Junkie. Click below to order from Amazon.com

Ungrateful Daughters: The Stuart Princesses Who Stole Their Father's Crown

2004-07-25T21:09:00.000-05:00

by Maureen Waller. Non-fiction. Boooooooring! I didn't think it was possible to make reading about the history of the English Crown tiresome, but Ms. Waller has managed. Not recommended, but you can order it from Amazon.com as a soporific by clicking below.

By the Light of the Moon

2004-07-25T21:07:00.000-05:00

by Dean Koontz. Fiction. Yuck! A very good example of why many people no longer bother to read. Bantam Books (and Random House, the behemoth publishing conglomerate that owns Bantam and a horde of associated imprints) as well as the Book of the Month Club ought to be ashamed. I didn't finish it, but this junk ought to encourage anyone thinking of writing a novel. If this junk can get in print, your junk and my junk ought to be able to as well. Not Recommended. You can find it yourself if you want, but I won't be a part of selling junk books.

Who Wrote the Bible?

2004-07-25T21:05:00.000-05:00

by Richard Elliott Friedman. An excellent, very accessible discussion of the
authorship of the Bible based on the latest archaeological discoveries. Very illuminating, but a Biblical literalist won't like it much. Recommended.

The Neanderthal's Necklace

2004-07-25T21:03:00.000-05:00

The Neanderthal's Necklace by Juan-Luis Arsuaga. Non-fiction. "A lively and very personal account of the earliest inhabitants of Europe by the Continent's leading paleoanthropoligist and hominid fossil finder." Quoted from the dust cover and a very accurate description of the book. I enjoyed it very much. Recommended. Click below to order from Amazon.com

The Future of Freedom

2004-07-25T20:54:00.000-05:00

The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria. Non-fiction. Excellent book on the origins of liberal democracy and how it can survive in a time of terrorism. The author, now a U.S. citizen, grew up in India and he brings to the discussion a unique perspective of liberal democracy, particularly in North America and Western Europe. He also has an extremely persuasive understanding of the problems with Arab states in the Middle East. His book was written before the war in Iraq, but it ought to be required reading by those in our government who are trying to figure out how to win the peace in Iraq. Recommended. Click below to order from Amazon.com

Benjamin Franklin

2004-07-25T19:14:00.000-05:00

by Edmond S. Morgan. Biography. Good book. I enjoyed reading it because Ben Franklin has not had much written about him in recent times. Recommended. Click below to order from Amazon.com

Virtually Normal

2004-07-21T00:34:00.000-05:00

by Andrew Sullivan. Non fiction. This was first published back in 1988 but it has never lost its revelance for homosexuals. Now with the relaxing of laws in the U.S. and elsewhere around civil unions for gay man and women, it is more topical than ever. Sullivan is an unreconstructed libertarian, which allies him (as a Gay man himself) perhaps too often with arch conservatives, but he is a firm champion of liberal constitutional democracy. I recommend this book highly. See the next review for an excellent discussion of liberty, constitutionalism, and democracy.To aroder from Amazon.com click the box below.

The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals our Genetic Ancestry

2004-07-21T00:16:00.000-05:00

by Bryan Sykes: Non fiction. A great read! This book describes the author's successful quest using DNA to map both an individual's genetic paths back through the maternal and paternal lines. He can trace your ancestors back 20,000 years. That's right, 20,000. That's a lot of ancestors. If you are a man, you can have your Y chromosome tested and entered into a data base that can possibly connect you with male kinfolks with the same last name. It costs under $200.00 for the first 25 markers. To order directly from Amazon.com,click the link below.