I read this to the boys as a bedtime story, and as a reward to myself for
actually finishing The Bad Beginning. ’nuff said.

Apropos of nothing in particular, this happens to be Jane’s favorite of
all of the Narnia books.

A serial killer has been fascinating and terrifying London. Dubbed the
“Flower Killer” by the press, he strangles women, drops flowers on their
bodies, and walks away singing. The final victim is found on the London docks
just as the freighter Cape Farewell pulls away; the freighter is
carrying eight passengers. The victim had a torn piece of embarkation
notice for the Cape Farewell in her hand. The inference is clear;
the Flower Killer might be on board the ship. There isn’t enough
evidence to call the Cape Farewell back to port, but plenty enough
to be worried, and so Inspector Alleyn boards the freighter at
Southhampton as “Mr. Broderick”, an official of the shipping line.

What follows is an interesting variant of the snowbound country house
mystery. The passengers are trapped on board the ship with a demented
killer, and only Alleyn and the ship’s captain are aware of it. Without
alarming the passengers, Alleyn must determine who the killer is, and
prevent him from killing again.

As a mystery it’s enjoyable enough, but Alleyn’s reflections on serial
killing and serial killers are dated, and the psychological
explanation for why the killer kills is ridiculously facile. But hey, it
was 1958.

This is a book I got at a book fair at my kids’ elementary school a year
or two ago, with the expectation that maybe I’d read it to them as a
bedtime story. It looked somewhat interesting, and the first few pages
were not bad, and David that it looked really good. It’s been sitting on
the shelf ever since, and I decided I’d read it through myself first,
rather than starting on it with the kids and getting myself in another
Lemony Snicket situation.

Molly Moon is your basic
unattractive-and-poorly-behaved-in-spite-of-her-best-intentions young
ragamuffin girl; she lives at your basic
orphanage-run-by-sadists-who-don’t-like-little-kids. Most of the other
kids call her names and are mean to her, and the woman who runs the
school makes her clean out the toilet with her toothbrush for misbehaving,
and her only friend is adopted to a family in New York.
Molly finds a book on hypnotism, learns how to hypnotize pretty much
anybody, and proceeds to start making a few changes around the orphanage
and in her life in general. Along the way she travels to New York and
has to outwit the evil Professor Nock, who wants her hypnotism book for
his own nefarious purposes.

I found the book less annoying than Snicket’s
The Bad Beginning–not a difficult trick–but although it
had some good bits it was a bit tedious, with a fair amount
of heavy-handed moralizing and some thoroughly unbelievable changes
of heart toward the end. The dust jacket describes the author as
“Another challenger for the crowns of J.K. Rowling and
Philip Pullman,”
which is laughable. On the one hand she’s not nearly as skilled as
either, and on the other nobody does heavy-handed moralizing with such
self-defeating panache as Philip Pullman.

If things run according to form, I’ll probably get two or three comments
from kids who think Molly Moon is simply the best. And that’s fine; my
point is simply that unlike Rowling’s books, or
C.S. Lewis’s, or Lloyd Alexander’s, you’re not
going to see many adults reading about young Molly for their own pleasure.

In the meantime, I think I’m going to save the book for a few years, and
let the kids read it to themselves if they like. I’ve been through it
once, and I feel no need to read it again.

If I was less pleased with
Scales of Justice
on second reading, I was more pleased with Death of a Fool.
On first reading I found it dreadfully strange and confusing, mostly
because it involves the weird and wonderful world of Morris dancing. I
know very little about Morris dancing even now, but I knew nothing of it
then, and wondered what kind of rabbit hole I’d tumbled into.

Here’s the little I’ve gathered; but don’t quote me. At certain times of
the year in English country villages, a group of men would put on
costumes adorned with ribbons and bells and dance an odd sort of group
dance. Sometimes there would be a sequence of dances and something like
a play, with ritual actions and words. The usual explanation is that
the dance, the play, and especially the words were a hold-over from
pre-Christian fertility rites.

Death of a Fool was first published in 1956; at that time, I
gather, what you might call authentic traditional morris dancing was
greatly in decline. The book takes place in a small village, where the
the “Mardian Morris”, or “Dance of the Five Sons”, is still performed
every winter on “Sword Wednesday”, just as it had been for centuries.
But Mardian is described as perhaps the last village where the authentic
thing still persists as an authentic tradition, performed by the villagers
solely for the villagers, and as yet unnoticed by outsiders.

If you want to know more about morris dancing, just do a Google search; I
found buckets of websites all about various morris dancing associations,
and I confess I did not particularly scrutinize any of them.

The tale itself is an interesting variant on the locked room mystery.
The play calls for one of the dancers to hide in a hollow behind a low
stone for a time, and then eventually rise up; and when the time comes
for the dancer to rise up it’s discovered that he’s been beheaded. And
yet the stone was in plain sight throughout, and no one was seen to go
near it. So how was the deed done?

Inspector Alleyn is in his usual good form, and there are a number of
memorable characters among the villagers; it made for a nice, comfortable
read.

Update: Deb replies, in the comments!

Update: Both Lars and
Phil have responded as well. And Lars is right; I said I’d be a book by Wodehouse, and The Most of P.G. Wodehouse is indeed the right one. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Ian didn’t actually officially pass this along to me, but what the heck–my ears were burning anyway.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I doubt my memory’s up to it, but I think it would have to be something by P.G. Wodehouse–perfect silliness needs to be remembered just as much as Tolstoy and company. As to which…oh, I’d probably pick whichever book contains “Uncle Fred Flits By”.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

If by “crush” you mean, well, a crush, then I guess I have to say no. Though I do like seeing the hero get the girl.

On the other hand, the last time I got a crush on anyone was so long ago that it’s possible my memory isn’t to be trusted.

The last book you bought is:

Three: American Caesar, How Great Generals Win, and A History of Warfare. Don’t ask me why. I’ve read the middle of the three so far, and it was quite good.

The last book you read:

It depends on the meaning of the word “read”. I finished listening to John Cleese’s outstanding recording of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters on my walk this afternoon; and last night I finished reading Ngaio Marsh’s mystery Death of a Fool, which invokes the truly weird world of Morris dancing. I should have reviews of both up in a couple of days.

What are you currently reading?

I usually have several books in various stages of completion; but in fact the only book that’s really in play at the moment is called Echoes of Armageddon, 1914-1918, by a gentleman named B. Cory Kilvert, Jr. It’s about eight British soldiers who died in the trenches and fields during WW I. Kilvert started with eight medals (he doesn’t say where he got them) and spent twenty years tracing the men who were originally awarded them. More on that when I finish it.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

I hate this question; I have trouble limiting myself to five books for a week-long business trip, even though I know I’ll probably go book-shopping while I’m away. But let’s see.

1. The Bible. A deserted island sounds better than a monastery for getting back to basics.
2. The Lord of the Rings. If I’m getting back to basics, I might as well get back to basics.
3. The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant. It’s too damn long, and once he gets to the Renaissance Durant drops so many names per paragraph you’d think he was a social climber, but I confess I never finished the series. As Ian notes, this is cheating; oh well.
4. Ian suggests a Mark Twain collection; I’d agree, so long as it includes Life along the Mississippi and Roughing It.
5. The Oxford Book of English Verse. Perhaps with lots of time to read and nothing else to do, I’d actually take the time to learn to enjoy poetry.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why:

Deb English. Because she hasn’t sent me any reviews, or even a letter, in far too long, and it’s time she started pulling her weight again. Besides, I’m curious what her answers would be.

Lars Walker. Becausing I’m enjoying his blog posts.

And finally, Phil Wade, because after all Lars is posting to Phil’s blog.

The April issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line, with reviews by Craig Clarke and me. Enjoy!

This is latest of King’s Mary Russell mysteries to come out in paperback,
and it’s a worthy addition to the series. More a thriller than a
mystery, it takes Russell and Holmes to India to look for a missing
British agent named Kimball O’Hara. Kipling fans will recognize O’Hara
as the young hero of Kipling’s novel Kim, though by the time
of this story he’s a full-grown man.

The title of the book is a reference to the “Great Game”–a cold war of
espionage, bribery, and dirty tricks between Russia and England that
spanned much of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. The
nature of this war is simply put: England had India, with its wealth and
warm water ports, and Russia wanted it.

In two ways, the book’s title is a bit of wishful thinking on King’s
part. First, the Great Game was really pretty much over by the time
Russell and Holmes are supposed to have arrived in India, a few years
after WWI; but I suppose we can’t blame her for that. More seriously,
most of the action of the Great Game took place not in India but in the
shadowy regions to the North–in Tibet, in Afghanistan, and in that broad
stretch of Centra Asia known variously as High Tartary, Chinese
Turkestan, and Sinkiang or Xinjiang (take your pick).

Poetic license to the side, I must say that King did her homework. She does an
excellent job of capturing the feel and atmosphere of the latter days of
the Raj, especially as regards the odd sport of pig-sticking (she draws
on a treatise written by Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, of
all unlikely people); she also draws extensively from
Peter Hopkirk’s excellent history The Great Game,
which I highly recommend. Follow the link for our list of Hopkirk’s
books–interestingly, it’s the #1 Google hit for Peter Hopkirk. Just goes
to show, Hopkirk’s not nearly as well known as he should be.

Bottom-line: I liked it.

I hadn’t intended to post anything until after Easter; however, I stumbled on something pretty cool this evening. My old friend Rick Saenz and his son have spent that last several years learning to play and sing bluegrass music. They’ve gone to bluegrass camps and open-mikes and workshops, they’ve taken lessons, they’ve played gigs with other bands and by themselves, and they’ve practiced an awful lot; Rick’s written extensively about the whole process, and it’s been fascinating to watch. From a distance, mind you; I’m in California and they are in Tennessee and so I’ve never actually heard them perform.

So yesterday the two of them recorded fourteen tracks, and today Rick put the MP3’s up on the web. Bluegrass isn’t my usual cup of tea, not that I know anything about it; and anyway I gather that Rick and Chris’s flavor of bluegrass is anything but mainstream, looking back to the 30’s and 40’s. But I have to say, they sound really good. You can find the tracks here. Of the ones I’ve listened to, I recommend “This Weary Heart You Stole Away” and “Don’t Cheat in Our Home Town”.

Last December, scientists from the Hawaii Underwater Research Lab discovered the sunken hulk of a seaplane called the Marshall Mars, one of six giant seaplanes built for the U.S. Navy by the Martin Corporation during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser responded to fears of Japanese submarines preying on American shipping by suggesting that his shipyards turn out a fleet of flying boats. He eventually teamed up with Howard Hughes to build the Spruce Goose. The Martin Corporation ran with the same idea, eventually producing one of the largest planes ever built, a giant transport plane called the Martin Mars. The U.S. Navy bought six of them, named them after island chains, and used them throughout the war.

Two of the six planes–the Marshall Mars and the original Hawaii Mars–were destroyed during test flights; the former caught fire, and the latter crashed on landing. The remaining four planes– the Philippine Mars, the Marianas Mars, the Caroline Mars, and the Hawaii Mars 2 served valiantly through the end of the war and after, until they were retired by the Navy in 1956. At some during his Navy service my father flew on either the Hawaii Mars 2 or the Philippine Mars, possibly more than once (my memory is hazy).

On retirement, the four planes were purchased by a Canadian firm, Forest Industries, and converted for use as flying tankers, for fighting forest fires. By 1962 the Caroline Mars and the Marianas Mars had been lost, one in a crash and the other in a typhoon, but the other two continued in service.

And so it was that many years later, on a family vacation to Canada in the early 1970’s, we visited a place called Sprout Lake (which rhymes with “sprote”, not with “sprout”). And there, anchored in the middle of the lake, my father was bemused to see the Hawaii Mars 2 and Philippine Mars of familiar memory. We stayed at the lake for about a week, if memory serves, and more than once we took a row boat with an outboard motor around and about the giant planes. And each afternoon one of the planes would take off with a full load of water, circle the lake, and then dump the load right in the middle. It was an amazing sight.

The truly amazing thing, though, is that these two planes are still flying, and still getting the job done. Click on the link to see more–and when you look at the pictures and videos, remind yourself that these beasts have a wing span of 200 feet.

Whilst I was at the bookstore some weeks ago I decided, for some
unaccountable reason, that I wanted to learn more about military
strategy. I cast about to see if I could find something like
Military Strategy for Dummies or
Warfare for the Compleat Idiot, but those titles were
conspicuously lacking. This book doesn’t quite meet that need, but it
goes part of the way and it was an interesting read besides.

Alexander begins by observing that “The rules of war are simple but
seldom followed,” and that attacking a prepared position usually results
in slaughter for the attackers. Instead, “great generals strike
where they are least expected against opposition that is weak and
disorganized.” The remainder of the book is a series of
case studies of great generals and how they won their greatest battles:
How Hannibal Barca won at Cannae and how his nemesis Scipio Africanus
finally defeated him. How Genghis Khan and his generals conquered the
geographically largest empire the world has ever seen. How Napoleon
Bonaparte won his early battles. How Stonewall Jackson used his small
force to neutralize far larger Union forces. How William T. Sherman won
the Civil War by doing in the South what Stonewall Jackson wanted to
do in the North, had he not been killed in battle. How Sir Edmund Allenby
stopped the Germans in the Middle East, with a little help from T.E.
Lawrence and his Arabs. How Mao Zedong led the Red Army during the
Long March. How Heinz Guderian, Erich von Manstein, and Erwin
Rommel realized what tanks were really good for, and the use they made
of them. How Douglas MacArthur won at Inchon and why he failed
spectacularly afterwards.

The book ends with a summary of the principles discussed throughout the
book:

• Operate on the line of least expectation and least resistance. Figure
  out where the enemy doesn’t expect you to go–and go that way. France
  fell so quickly at the beginning of WWII because no one thought the
  Germans could bring tanks through the forest of Ardennes.

• Maneuver to the rear of the enemy. Your enemy’s morale will suffer
  when he realizes that you’re sitting across his supply lines; and if
  he’s too far from home his army might just disintegrate. That’s what
  happened to the North Korean army in South Korea after MacArthur’s
  invasion of Inchon.

• Occupy the central position. That is, if your enemy has two forces,
  maneuver to a point directly between them. This ensures that you can
  deal with either one before the other joins with it, thus “defeating
  the enemy in detail”. Napoleon was a master at this in his early
  days; once he became emperor, though, he lost his subtlety and tried
  to win all his battles with brute force.

• Follow a “plan with branches”. Uncertainty and misdirection are your
  allies. Therefore, maneuver in two or more columns, keeping the columns
  far enough apart that the enemy can’t guess what your true objective is, but
  close enough together that they can support each other at need. The
  enemy won’t know what to defend, and will likely end up dividing his
  forces to defend a number of spots. No less than three times during Sherman’s
  march north from Atlanta the Confederates split their forces between
  the two cities his columns appeared to be approaching; and in each case
  Sherman marched his troops right through the middle and captured a
  third, undefended city.

• Don’t attack prepared and well-defended positions. Instead, make the
  enemy leave their positions and come to you. Scipio Africanus conquered
  Carthage not by a frontal assault on the city, but by marching into and
  burning the city’s agricultural hinterland. The Carthaginian army was
  forced to follow after, or else the city would starve.

• Don’t get pinned down in fortifications. If you’re holed up in a fort,
  you’re effectively out of the battle.

• Where the enemy’s army isn’t is often more important than
  where it is.

All in all it’s a fascinating book, and for my purposes useful as well.
I recommend it.