BOOKS THREAD

Just finished Erik Larson's new one, "In the Garden of Beasts," about U.S. ambassador William Dodd and his family's life in Germany as Hitler came to power in 1933-34.

This one is not as brilliant as Larson's "Devil in the White City," but it's plenty entertaining. I'd recommend it.

Half the book is about Dodd's political dealings with the stubborn Nazis in the State Department (and the real ones in Germany, too), and half the book is about Dodd's impressionable 26-year-old daughter sleeping with a Soviet KGB agent, the head of the Gestapo, the head of the Foreign Press Bureau in Berlin, a French diplomat, a future Nobel Laureate biophysicist and various other nationalities in her own personal version of "Capture the Flag." She later became an infamous (if unimportant) Soviet spy and spent the rest of her life in Russia, Cuba and died in Prague.

And one more note: The book really shows just how public and pervasive was the Nazi persecution of Jews, even in the very earliest stages of the Third Reich. Dodd did everything he could possibly do to stop the madness, but so many high-ranking people on both sides of the pond just weren't interested enough to pay attention.

 

I've been reading The Lincoln Lawyer, and loving it. I am a little pissed I watched the film first because I know how the book ends now.

 

"I Want My MTV" a history of the cable channel done in the style of the SNL and ESPN books. Very entertaining stuff, often hilaious.

 

I read it, terrific stuff. Still can't believe BYH hasn't weighed in with a 50,000 word review.

 

"Not So Quiet ..." by Helen Z. Smith.

A book I hadn't touched since college, but what a great read. Historical fiction about British women who drove ambulances in World War I. If I recall, in college we read it and "All Quiet On the Western Front" and compared the two (female vs. male perspective, British vs. German, etc.). I'll have to re-read Erich Maria Remarque's classic next.

It will be interesting to see how people remember and/or re-examine World War I as its 100th anniversary approaches.

"Not So Quiet ..." really hammered home to me how WW I was when the insane amounts of death and destruction known as modern warfare was "perfected." It horrified people at the time; unfortunately, we're not so easily shocked and horrified these days by the killing and maiming of other human beings with chemical and hi-tech weaponry.

 

"All Quiet on the Western Front" is a brilliant book, not to mention an easy read. I've read it probably a dozen times -- the first time when I was in 10th grade and wrote a paper comparing its view of war with Leon Uris' in "Exodus" -- and it never loses it's impact.

I've always said there wasn't a worse war to be a soldier in than WW I. You had the aforementioned new weapons of modern warfare: poison gas, the machine gun, the airplane, combined with idiot generals (yes, I'm talking about you, Doug Haig) who had no idea how to use/neutralize those weapons in any manner that didn't require sacrificing tens of thousands of men.

In otherwords, 20th-century weapons fought with 18th-century tactics for a cause that was nothing more than an incestuous, giant prick-waving dickfest. And virtualy an entire generation of British, French and German youth were brow-beaten/volunteered to serve as cannon fodder for that.

 

Have to say I thoroughly enjoyed 11/22/63.

 

Also just read Robert Harris' "The Fear Index." Great little thought-provoking, fast-paced book.

 

Plan to start Richard Ford's "Canada" tonight .... his Frank Bascombe novels rocked the party

 

Canada is amazing!!! Let me know how you like it. I also finished "Gone Girl" and have now begun reading the new Dan Rather book, "Rather Outspoken." He's telling the truth about the Bush controversy.

 

How was Gone Girl? It's received flattering press/reviews.