Jefferson

Entertaining, but Probably Forgettable

Revisado: 04-26-25

Meet thirty-two year old Charlie Fitzer, divorced by his wife and fired from his newspaper business reporting job and currently a substitute English teacher. Charlie is wanting to hang onto his his recently deceased father’s house for sentimental reasons and to use it as collateral to get a sizeable bank loan with which to buy the local pub/restaurant where he and his father used to spend time together. Unfortunately, his three older half-siblings are banded together and wanting him to vacate the house so they can sell it and divide up the proceeds. Luckily he has a loyal friend and companion in his cat Hera.

After getting bad news from the bank, Charlie learns that his estranged billionaire parking structure magnate uncle Jake Baldwin has just passed away and that if he will preside over the memorial service, Uncle Jake will posthumously see that he ends up with the pub/restaurant while retaining his father’s house.

The memorial service is surreal, as the condolence flowers say things like, “See you in hell” and “It’s about time,” and the attendees are all thirty-to-forty year-old military-posture, long coat-wearing men, some of whom try to confirm Uncle Jake’s death by doing things like injecting oxygen into his neck. Charlie intervenes when one tries to stab his uncle in the chest!

Such things require explanation, and soon Uncle Jake’s business representative and right hand woman Mathilda Morrison is bringing Charlie up to speed, and the bewildered guy is dealing with assassination attempts, an international super-villain society, billions of dollars in black (unspendable) money, a lot of uncomfortable truths about Uncle Jake (whose only business, needless to say, was not parking structures), and some interesting truths about Hera.

John Scalzi’s Starter Villain (2022) is an enjoyable sf thriller romp. If you like cats, it will scratch you behind the ears and under the chin. If you like dogs (who “will sell you out for a treat and a pat on the head”), you’re outta luck. If you think dolphins would make good foul-mouthed immature teenagers, you’re in the right place. But I’m coming perliously close to spoiling some of the nice surprises in the book.

Scalzi has a good sense of humor (though it can get a little too snarky-clever-adolescent). There are some nice lines, like “We’re animals, not monsters.” The short novel doesn’t overstay its welcome. It has some political themes on the rights of animals and the need for unions. Its insight that powerful and influential billionaires are actually assholes who are much less intelligent than their money and power make them think they are is neat and necessary right now: “I expected the members of Earth’s leading society of villains to be smarter.”

If you stop to think too much, some parts of the novel are pretty unbelievable (though I guess that may be part of the fun). And I think there’s a loose end (or false lead) in the berry spoons Uncle Jake sent Charlie as a wedding present. Early on Matilda asks Charlie if he ever opened the box they came in, and he says of course not, so she says something like, “You really should have opened the box,” so we readers expect the box to turn out to contain something important for the plot, but the whole thing is basically forgotten (unless I missed something).

Will Wheaton whole-heartedly reads the audiobook, and blessedly doesn’t alter his voice for female characters. He does serviceable Slavic and Italian accents. However, the rhythms and intonations and emphases of his reading remind me of the English spoken in American sit coms and Disney movies, which works too well with Scalzi writing a very American idiom for the conversation of his international villain “geniuses.” That is, despite Wheaton assuming a few accents, the characters all talk just like Americans, like when a South Korean villain says, “You owe me a satellite you asshole!”

And for that matter, probably too many of the characters are too good at snappy repartee and American popular culture style sarcasm, and it is a pretty talky book.

By the way, the cover presents a wonderful image, but it’s inaccurate in terms of the story itself.

Finally, I really did enjoy the novel, but I suspect it will be pretty forgettable.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

“The older the violin, the sweeter the music”

Revisado: 04-20-25

Comparing Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (1985) in relation to other superb modern westerns like John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing (1960) and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian (1985), I find that all three novels vividly reveal the charismatic “reality” of the old west, the unpredictability of fate, the violence of men, the bleakness of life, and the fascination with craft and work, but Williams’ book is more refined in scope like a play, McCarthy’s more descriptive and apocalyptic, and McMurtry’s more conversational and expansive.

At the start of McMurtry’s novel, renowned and retired Texas Rangers Captain Woodrow F. Call and Captain Augustus McCrae are aging quietly, running their Hat Creek Cattle Company and Livery Emporium by the dinky sun-seared South Texas town of Lonesome Dove (ten buildings, with the adjoining saloon and church sharing a piano), when one of their former Ranger colleagues, the flighty gambler lothario Jake Spoon (“not long on back bone”), shows up and inspires Call to become the first man to drive a herd of cattle to Montana, a supposed pristine cattleman’s paradise there for the taking.

Soon (barely twenty of the 102 chapters take place in Lonesome Dove), Cal, Gus, and a small crew are driving a big herd of cattle north, facing dangers like storms (lightning, sand, and hail), rivers, deserts, grizzly bears, starving Indians, horse-stealing outlaws, and requisitioning soldiers.

Epicurian, garralous, laid back Gus and stoic, laconic, duty-driven Call make great odd couple “companeros,” trusting, respecting, and loving each other while constantly arguing about life. Gus often takes Call to task for not feeling human emotions, disliking women, denying his illegitimate son, and viewing the liaison with a prostitute that produced the boy as a shameful mistake.

There are plenty of other compelling plot strands and point of view characters, including Jake Spoon taking up with the beautiful, young, detached Lonesome Dove prostitute Lorena Wood and then with some awful outlaws; young Arkansas Sheriff July Johnson going after Jake Spoon (wanted for “accidentally” killing July’s dentist-mayor older brother); July’s deputy Roscoe going after July’s absconded wife Elmira; Gus’ relationships with Lorena and his former flame Clara, now raising horses and two daughters in Nebraska; top cow hand Dish Bogette’s unrequited love for Lorena; and the relationship between Call and Newt, a boy whom Call and Gus have raised and who is going on his first cattle drive while idolizing Call and yearning for his approval.

McMurtry excells at getting into the heads of a variety of male and female characters, from kids and adolescents to seasoned adults, so the above characters are human and appealing, as are various other supporting characters, from the moon-contemplating black scout (Josh) Deets and the prophetic and resourceful Mexican cook Po Campo, to the lazy and simple deputy Roscoe and July’s stir crazy wife Elmira and her sweet twelve-year old son Joe.

Despite Gus’ refrain “The older the violin, the sweeter the music,” McMurtry conveys a nostalgia for the lost wild frontiers and for the past days of youthful vigor and promise: “Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity. They had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks. Loves would pass too or else grow sour.”

I was surprised by how sympathetically and respectfully McMurtry depicts women and girls. He does more than write prostitutes with hearts of gold. Lorena is a complex, abused, and needy young woman. Clara is an independent, keen, insightful middle-aged woman, gelding horses with capable hands and saying things like, “Men are about as worthless a race of people as I have ever encountered.” Her little daughters are cute, funny, and independent-minded. Even Elmira is admirable in her single-minded attempts to escape from the husband who so irritates her with his polite patience.

Remarkably, McMurtry never writes from the point of view of any of the Native Americans in the novel. I can’t blame him from steering clear of the consciousness of the monstrous renegade Blue Duck, Call and Gus’ kidnapping and murdering nemesis, but he does briefly get into the heads of some villainous white outlaws, so I think he may be exercising a respectful restraint in not narrating from the Native American point of view. Gus is aware that Call and the herd are invaders into Indian land, and although he will kill anyone who attacks him, he prefers diplomacy to guns. And Indians surely are not depicted as “savage” demons (except for Blue Duck!).

About the audiobook reader, Lee Horsley, he knows what he’s reading and doesn’t strain too much for young or female or idiosyncratic voices, and speaks clearly while keeping to a lively pace and enhances the reading experience. His only downside may be that although the text references Gus’ loud voice several times, Horsley shout-speaks almost everything Gus says, which takes some getting used to. Gus’ utterances are so colorful, witty, and apt that I came to enjoy hearing him “shouting” them, but some listeners have been put off by that.

Along with the vivid and convincing details of life in the 1870s “Old West,” especially of the work of cowboys, gamblers, outlaws, and prostitutes etc., McMurtry works into his novel philosophical explorations of luck and fate (how a series of mistakes may make life “rich in hardships”); the relationship between leaders and followers; the nature of love; and the need to do whatever needs doing next (“to do the work”), despite or because of the calamaties of life.

“What’ll we do?”
“Live through it.”

McMurtry writes unpredictable and suspenseful or moving or comical scenes, setting up moments rich with dramatic irony, as when Roscoe intends to find July to tell him the news about Elmira, while we know July has just heard all about it from Peach.

He writes savory dialogue, like, “Roscoe, if you was my deputy I’d arrest you,” and

“Where do you think Jake will end up?”
“In a hole in the ground like you and me.”

He writes beautifully bleak lines, like:

“Looking at her was like looking at the hills… he could go to them if he had the means, but they extended no greeting.”
“Don’t be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.”
“She had not expected to encounter such misery in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Well, life’s a twisting string.”
“Look there at Montana… It’s fine and fresh and now we’ve come and soon it’ll be ruint, like my legs.”

It's a BIG book (a 36-hour audiobook). It could be tighter and shorter. But spending time with Gus and the other characters is so entertaining and moving that it’s hard to begrudge McMurtry a little repetition now and then, and I didn’t want the story to end.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

In Pursuit of Perfection, Liberty, or a McGuffin

Revisado: 03-29-25

Pity the Palleseen! Three years ago, the Pals brought their “Perfection” (Correct Speech, Conduct, Exchange, Erudition, and Appreciation) to Ilmar, deposing the former corrupt (and cursed!) Duke and putting the city under their “Sway” by occupying it. An equilibrium had been established: the local Gownhall Maestros (university professors), Armigers (aristos), Siblingries (unions), Lodges (crime families), Resistance (rivalrous factions), and Refugees (foreigners from other cultures) all reached a livable accommodation with the occupiers, putting up with constraints on liberty and changes to their history and culture in exchange for business pretty much as usual (e.g., Armiger industrialists exploiting workers as under the old Duke).

But as the novel begins, that three-year stability is threatened by the death of a high-ranking Pal trying to blaze a trail through the Anchorwood, a portal to other realms and perhaps worlds (its use by desperate people to escape Ilmar is why the city’s nicknamed City of Last Chances) so as to further his career by providing new places for the Pals to Perfect. Before he entered the Anchorwood, his puissant magical ward meant to protect him from its dangers had been stolen, and now various shady types, criminal elements, and occupation officials are searching for the thief and or the McGuffin, and the Pals’ heavy-handed tactics have outraged some students into singing songs and talking Revolution. And isn’t Ilmar’s haunted district, the Reproach, getting more active lately?

Tchaikovsky tells his story from multiple points of view (some of which recur, others of which come and go), among them:

*Yasnic the last priest (and last follower) of “God,” a dirty, ever shrinking, and presumed long-dead divinity with the power to heal, but only when the subjects are true believers, swearing an oath to never again to do harm or to let harm be done through them;

*Ruslav the thug bravo of the Vultures crime family, living violently while engaging in a series of romantic pursuits;

*Lemya the naïve, idealistic student, dreaming of sparking a revolution and idolizing her teacher;

*Maestro Ivarn Ostravar, inspiring his students with heroic poems while conniving with the occupation police to acquire valuable artifacts for his collection;

*Blackmane the massive, daunting Allorwen refugee sorcerer pawnbroker who gets his hands on fake or real stolen magical artifacts;

Fleance, the young riverman who finds himself in a world of trouble;

*Langrice the resourceful, unflappable keeper of the Anchorage (the neutral bar at the Anchorwoods);

*Jem the overlooked Divinati refugee bartender at the Anchorage who’s been exiled from her truly perfect if stagnant utopia;

*Hellgram the alien soldier from a world of war that makes Ilmar’s world look like a peace park, searching for his lost wife while working at the Anchorage as bouncer/janitor;

*Father Orvechin the seasoned leader of a factory Siblingry who wants the demons powering the machines and the humans working them to stay in line but is ready to “wield the hammer” to improve working conditions;

*Fellow-Inquirer Hegelsy, a Pallesen official who wants to maintain (and increase) perfection in Ilmar by any means necessary;

*Sage-Invigilator Culvern, Perfector of Ilmar, who discovers that wielding power in Ilmar is not without unforeseen costs;

*And many more.

As in others of his novels, Tchaikovsky relishes variety, creating different kinds of people from different kinds of classes and cultures and existential categories. One common theme here with his other works of sf and fantasy is the difficult but vital need to be open to difference, to try to understand the other (rather than to try to subjugate or kill it). Tchaikovsky likes to put his flawed characters in challenging situations, moments of crisis where they rise or fall to the occasion, testing their moral fortitude, faith, and so on, setting the diverse people on collision courses with each other in unpredictable dramatic action set piece scenes.

This is a fantasy novel, so there are demons, ghosts, gods, curses, magical artifacts, portals to Elsewhere (or Nowhere), and more. Probably he’s just getting started world building in this first book in his trilogy, and I can imagine him interestingly developing the next two books, like, for instance, demonstrating on site what the Infernal Realms are and how they work, or visiting Hellgram’s hellish world of war, or doing more with the game “Chaq, that ancient clash of tiles and symbols of obscure origin.” He takes tired fantasy (or sf) tropes and treats them unexpectedly or freshly, as in his use of demons to power factory machines or work as prostitutes. Magic here is a kind of energy that may be decanted from artifacts and people of power and then put into charges for batons (firearms), lamps, and engines. And the haunted Reproach and its ruin-divers remind me of the Zone and its stalkers in the Strugatskis’ Roadside Picnic, albeit supernaturally rather than science fictionally uncanny.

Throughout, Tchaikovsky’s tone is drily ironic, a winking, twinkling eye, as he propels his characters to the climax, picking up speed as he goes. And he works in some great surprises/reveals at climax points amidst all the graphic action scenes. It’s entertaining in a bleak and political way. I like his humor.

He writes plenty of funny, cool lines, like “…the Palleseen valued moderation in all things except ideology,” “They felt like cats tasked to watch a painted mouse hole,” and “Ilmar was where religions went to decompose.”

And vivid, cool descriptions, like “Face hollow, hair greying before it should, thinning, creeping back from his temples like an army that, seeing its opposition is time, no longer has the will to fight,” and “… a single room defined by the slope of the roof, so that only a homunculus could have stood upright at the edges.”

Audiobook reader David Thorpe nails Tchaikovsky’s wry tone and reads all the different characters with panache (especially the suppurating Perfector and the pedantic Inquirer).

I suppose Tchaikovsky’s use of magic (e.g., the appearing and disappearing of the Indwellers or the opening and closing of the Anchorwood) may too often let him do Whatever He Wants for the Plot, and I’m not quite sure the McGuffin ward is so convincing in its supposedly awesome power, but I’m looking forward to the next books in the trilogy!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Fascinating, Harrowing, Moving, and Inspiring

Revisado: 03-19-25

To my shame, before reading Leta Hong Fincher’s Betraying Big Brother (2018), I had not heard of or had forgotten the Chinese Feminist Five (Zheng Churan, Li Maizi AKA Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Wang Man, Wei Tingting), so anything about their names, personalities, lives, arrests and detentions (for planning to hand out anti-sexual harassment on public transportation stickers to honor International Woman’s Day in 2015), and so on was fascinating, harrowing, moving, and inspiring. Though the authorities didn’t actually beat or physically torture the five, they did pretty much everything short of that, including refusing them vital medication and medical treatment for conditions like Hepatitis, denying them their eye glasses, confiscating their warm boots and isolating them in cold cells, waking them up at all hours for multiple interrogations each day, intimidating them by shouts and curses and threats, pressuring them by intimidating and threatening their families, repeatedly trying to get them to confess to being tools of hostile western foreign powers, and more. Even after they were released after thirty-seven days (largely due to international attention and condemnation of their detentions), the authorities continued harassing them and their families, summoning them for repeated interrogations, getting their landlords to evict them, their bosses to fire them, their families to condemn them, and so on.

Despite all such traumatic treatment, the five women survived their PTSD and remained (as of 2018 when the book was published) undefeated and undaunted. Their endurance and perseverance and courage and humor often moved me to tears.

Hong Fincher’s compact book, then, introduces the Feminist Five; covers the relationship between social networking sites and feminism in China; relates the (appalling) details the five women’s detentions, eventual releases, and subsequent harassments; explains the need for feminist movements in countries like China where a woman’s “body is a battleground”; covers the history of feminism in China from the early twentieth century, explicates the relationships and lack of relationships between feminists, lawyers, and workers; anatomizes China’s “patriarchal authoritarianism”; and concludes with “A Song for All Women,” an assessment of where feminism in China stands as of the 2018 publication of the book and a plea to fight patriarchy, support women’s rights in China and worldwide, and stay positive.

Hong Fincher doesn’t limit herself to the Five but relates anecdotes and backgrounds and situations of a variety of other Chinese women related to them and or to their feminist endeavors. She also doesn’t limit herself to China—she doesn’t say that China is THE most anti-woman country in the world etc.—but rather places China in the context of the current trend in the world towards ever greater “crony capitalism and patriarchal authoritarianism,” as in countries like Russia and Hungary and the USA (one wonders what Hong Fincher thinks of the USA now that it’s elected Trump for the second time). Some of the most inspiring parts of the book come when Fincher quotes Chinese feminists quoting Virginia Woolf (“As a woman, my country is the whole world”) or meeting feminists who’ve experienced detention and physical/emotional harm in other countries.

But it is true, of course, that she mainly focuses on China and its patriarchal authoritarian government (and “digital dictatorship”), which began cracking down on women’s rights and feminism when its economic boom started in the late twentieth century, censoring and eliminating feminist social networking site posts and groups, exhorting single women to marry and have kids, making laws that favor husbands as property owners over wives, and so on. One of her central (and convincing) arguments is that “the longevity of China's Communist Party” is intertwined with “the patriarchal underpinnings of its authoritarianism.” Hong Fincher argues that to maintain its hold on power, the government wants to prevent university educated Chinese feminists from linking up with Chinese working class women and NGOs and human rights lawyers, all while seemingly encouraging “commercial feminism” in commercials and the entertainment industry.

One wonders how things are NOW for the Feminist Five and their Chinese sisters seven years after the initial publication of this book.

The audiobook reader Emily Woo Zeller kinda has a monotonous staccato delivery, but maybe it’s more effective to be less dramatically emotional when reading such potent material as Hong Fincher’s, and Woo Zeller does speak clearly and pronounces the Chinese names and phrases accurately (as far as my limited knowledge of Chinese enables me to tell).

I highly recommended this book to anyone interested in feminism or Chinese culture.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A Massive (if uneven) Classic of Story

Revisado: 03-18-25

To escape the Black Death, ten young Florentine aristocrats (seven women and three men) spend a fortnight at a country estate with lovely gardens, a bevy of servants, and high-quality food and drink, passing the time by singing, dancing, and especially storytelling. Each afternoon, except for Fridays and Saturdays (to get ready for Sunday church), each of the ten friends will tell a story following the theme of the day, apart from the wag among them, who always gets to tell whatever kind of story he wants.

The resulting one-hundred stories are mostly interesting, often amusing, sometimes moving, sometimes harrowing. Some of the stories are too short to recall. Some last too long to enjoy. Most are in between, just right. Most feature love: amicable, filial, spousal, adulterous, romantic, bawdy, platonic, generous, jealous, incontinent, restrained, comic, tragic, and more. Most feature different characters, though an intensely stupid and greedy Florentine and the penniless painter “friends” who prank him appear in several tales.

Boccaccio inserts 14th-century Italian daily life details (like using sulfur to bleach veils, cumin seeds to make aromatics, and sage leaves to clean teeth), but most of the stories could take place anywhere, and plenty do take place in other places and or times. The book reveals that 14th-century Italians (or … Boccaccio) did not have a sanguine view of clerical figures, finding them corrupt, hypocritical, and sensual; that women were to be subject to men while actually having nearly as many opportunities for adultery as men; that the plague was terrifying; that Florentines looked askance at people from other cities like Napoli, Genoa, and Venice; that people were superstitious, believing in saints, magic, and dreams; and that we are Fortune’s playthings.

The Naxos audiobook uses a different actor for each of the ten storytellers and Simon Russell Beale as Boccaccio. All the readers are fine. They also sing the love song that closes each day after its tenth story, the lyrics set to beautiful medievalesque music composed by Steven Edis.

I’ll briefly summarize two of the better tales from each of the ten days:

DAY 1: OPEN SUBJECT
1-1: What happens when a sinful man gives a false deathbed confession to a gullible friar? (Adapted by Pasolini for his splendid 1971 movie of the book.)
1-4: What's a young monk to do when his abbot catches him at a bit of “slap and tickle” with a young lady in his cell?

DAY 2: UNEXPECTED HAPPY ENDINGS TO ADVENTURES
2-5: Napoli is a dangerous place for innocents, but sometimes you get undeservedly lucky. (In Pasolini’s film.)
2-7: How a woman can sleep 10,000 times with eight different men and still marry as a virgin.

DAY 3: USING WITS TO (RE)GAIN SOMETHING DESIRED
3-1: A young man feigns being a deaf mute to get a job in a convent full of lonely women (In Pasolini’s film.)
3-10: How to consign the devil to hell through sex.

DAY 4: UNHAPPILY ENDING LOVE
4-2: The Archangel Gabriel is NOT going to be your lover!
4-5: A lover's head makes good fertilizer. (In Pasolini’s film.)

DAY 5: HAPPILY ENDING LOVE AFTER MISFORTUNE
5-5: “The power of love is prodigious” (and a little luck can’t hurt).
5-8: Persistence in love may pay off. (A neat story a bit like O’Henry’s “Gift of the Magi.”)

DAY 6: QUICK RETORTS OR WITS SAVE THE DAY
6-4: An uxorious Venetian cook uses his wits to calm his master’s anger.
6-10: A con-man friar uses his fertile imagination to please a crowd of gullible believers.

DAY 7: WIFELY TRICKS ON HUSBANDS
7-2: A barrel may prove handy for adulterous lovers. (In Pasolini’s film.)
7-5: Jealous husbands get what they deserve.

DAY 8: TRICKS PLAYED BY ANYONE ON ANYONE
8-7: Widows shouldn’t jilt scholars, OR one may be too clever for one's own good.
8-8: “Enough is as good as a feast” when it comes to revenge, OR shall we pool wives?

DAY 9: OPEN SUBJECT
9-2: A little luck, an observant eye, and a quick tongue aid a nun in a pinch. (In Pasolini’s film.)
9-6: A sexy game of musical beds (like Chaucer’s later “Reeve’s Tale”).

DAY 10: GENEROSITY OR LIBERALITY
10-3: My favorite story: one of two ultra-generous rich men envies the other for being more generous.
10-4: A premature burial and a near act of necrophilia transform adulterous love.

I love Boccaccio’s defense of the tales in his Afterword: the stories were told by young people in a garden, not in a church; nothing is too unseemly to say in gracious language; simple words like “mortar and pestle” and “Bologna sausage” are dirty only if you have a dirty mind; no one’s forcing you to read my stories; and I didn’t write them anyway—I only edited them!

Throughout the tales, Boccaccio writes fine lines, like:

“He was as attractive to women as sticks are to dogs”
“She could grind your corn into flour with the best of them.”
“I would rather have a man who needs money than money which needs a man.”
“The plausible villain can get away with murder”
“Go on, try living in the real world, you scrawny, stunted little thing.”
“Among all natural things, love least of all will endure contrary advice or action, for its nature is such that it can more quickly consume itself than be removed by foresight.”

Apart from the frame of ten young Florentine nobles telling the tales to each other, The Decameron features no nested stories in stories, unlike the vertiginous Tales of the Thousand Nights and One Night. Boccaccio also writes fewer supernatural elements: but one ghost, two damned souls, and two sorcerers. Also, while in the Nights storytellers often tell stories to save their lives, Boccaccio’s tell them to entertain and instruct. None of the ten rich kids will be killed if they tell a dud!

Chaucer adapted two stories from Boccaccio for The Canterbury Tales, but his pilgrim storytellers are of different ages and careers, and their tales are tied more closely to their different personalities and backgrounds. In The Decameron, most tales could be told by any of the young aristocrats, with the exception that wag may tell the most ribald ones. Sometimes Chaucer’s pilgrims make fun of each other via the stories they tell! Boccaccio tries to inject a little extra-story drama with some of the songs hinting at love between some of the storytellers, and the women muttering after one or two stories negatively depicting women, but nothing much comes of such moments.

Finally, although many of the stories in The Decameron are great, I found myself counting the days till I’d finish all hundred as often as I found myself enjoying them. Too many are too similar to each other, perhaps because the storytellers limit themselves to a single theme on eight of the ten days. (My least favorite stories are those featuring unpleasant tricks from the seventh and eighth days, perhaps because I’m gullible.) In short, I think The Decameron is a massive classic of Story, but I’ll rewatch Pasolini’s film before rereading the book.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Jealousy, Responsibility, Slavery, and the Sea

Revisado: 02-05-25

After having circumnavigated the globe and been away for over two years in previous books in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin splendid series, in the seventeenth, The Commodore (1995), Jack and Stephen finally sail home to England. There Jack is to be made a commodore in command of a squadron of ships whose mission will consist of making a sensational attack on the slave trade off the coast of Africa and then scooting over to intercept a French squadron escorting transports with which Napoleon is planning to invade and “liberate” (i.e. rule) Ireland.

Much of this novel, then, is concerned with preparations ashore for the new mission as well as with touching base with family. All is not well on the home front: Jack’s wife Sophie is jealous of Clarissa Oaks, whom Stephen has sent to his wife Diana to help her raise their little girl Brigid, while Jack is jealous of the handsome local parson who’s been advising Sophie way too much in Jack’s absence and has even taken to sitting in HIS chair in their home. With great anticipation and trepidation, meanwhile, Stephen, arrives at his home only to find Diana absconded, having fled their supposedly unresponsive “idiot” daughter and assuming that Stephen would loathe her for it.

Luckily, Clarissa (the former prostitute murderess transported to Australia who ought to receive a pardon for having given vital intelligence to Stephen with some highly placed traitors could finally be nailed) is an utterly cool, intelligent, and caring woman, and through her efforts plus those of Stephen’s monoglot Irish assistant Padeen (also rescued from Australia), Brigid begins improving “day after day like a flower opening,” communicating with Padeen in fluent Irish and starting to act like a natural sensitive alive little girl (the scenes featuring Brigid are poignant).

Unluckily, Stephen and his colleague/boss in intelligence work Sir Joseph Blaine have an outstanding bitter and resourceful foe in a Dutch Duke related to the British royal family, and he’s out for revenge and won’t hesitate to destroy people close to Sir Joseph (like Stephen, Clarissa, and Padeen).

Once the story shifts back to the sea (where O’Brian belongs), Jack discovers that being a captain in charge of a single ship is a far different matter than being in charge of a multiple-ship squadron. The responsibility and stress and costs of failure are much greater, and he’ll have to rely to a great degree on the captains of his various ships, and two of them are Trouble: Captain Duff is a rumored pederast, favoring certain men above others, such that his officers are scheming to accuse him of the capital crime of sodomy, while Captain Thomas, aka the Purple Emperor, is a tyrannical incompetent whose crew is in a constant state of near mutiny.

Up through the first nine chapters and well into the tenth and final one there is no real time violent naval action. There are some false alarms (as when inveterate landlubber Stephen thinks some canon practice is a battle) and some small actions against slave ships reported second hand, but otherwise the book mostly consists of Stephen’s naturalizing among the flora and fauna of Africa, some discussions of pederasty in the navy, some horrific depictions of slave ships, some speculations on the relative benefits and harms of opium and cocoa leaves, some pleasurable interactions between Stephen and Jack (yay!), and detail on naval gunnery and Sunday sermons and dinners and prize money and discipline and winds and tides and currents and sails and so on and so forth.

But it is all so pleasurable! I didn’t miss the violent action, which is, after all, usually a minor part of an O’Brian novel relative to the other stuff (though readers who require exciting, graphic violent naval battles might be bored).

For me, the characters O’Brian created and set interacting with each other are so appealing that it’s just a pure pleasure to listen to the wonderful Ric Jerrom read their lines and interactions in the audiobook. That’s especially the case for Commodore Jack Aubrey (17 stone, blue eyed, blond haired, open, Anglican, uniquely suited for life and action at sea) and surgeon/naturalist/spy Stephen Maturin (9 stone, dark eyed, dark haired, secretive, Catholic, woefully incapable at sea). By this novel, they have been friends for many years and been through many adventures at sea and ashore together and understand and appreciate and love each other like a platonic old married couple. As they continue aging (“Sometimes I feel that I am no longer twenty”), they complement each other ever more perfectly:

“I am very deeply obliged to you, Jack, my dear.”
“There is no such thing as obligation between you and me, brother.”

And the novel is full of O’Brian’s splendid writing:

--The breeze freshened in the afternoon: they took a reef in the foresail and the main, and the Ringle was filled with that happy sense of making a good passage: ten knots, ten and two fathoms, eleven knots, sir, if you please, watch after watch; and Brigid spent all her time in the bows, watching the schooner rise on the now much longer swell, race down and split the next crest at great speed, flinging the spray to leeward in the most exhilarating fashion, always the same, always new. Once a line of porpoises crossed their hawse, rising and plunging like a single long black serpent. And once Stephen showed her a petrel, a little fluttering black bird that pittered on the white traces of broken waves; but otherwise the day was made up of strong diffused light, racing clouds with blue between, a vast grey sea, the continuous rush of wind and water, and a freshness that pervaded everything.

--“You was born with sea-legs, my dear,” said Slade, as she came careering aft for supper.

--“I shall never go ashore,” she replied

The novel ends rather abruptly, if satisfyingly, and I’m starting to dread finishing all twenty novels in the series because I don’t want it to end.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

I wish they were monsters, but they’re only people

Revisado: 02-04-25

The Wisdom of Crowds (2021), the last book in Joe Abercrombie’s The Age of Madness Trilogy, is largely an epic grimdark fantasy play on the French Revolution. It begins with Orso starting to enjoy for the first time feeling like a King, as he leads his royal procession back to Adua (capital of the Empire) after his unexpected victory against the rebel Young Lion Leo Van Brock and his bigger army. “A prisoner and a traitor and a cripple,” Leo is full of regret, having lost his good leg and a couple good friends in the process of losing the battle, while his scheming, heavily pregnant wife Savine is wondering, “How could they have so totally destroyed themselves?” Maybe it was down to Leo’s recklessness and her ambition being too volatile a mixture.

However, they no sooner reach Adua than the “Great Change” descends on the seat of the Empire: the well-armed (thanks to Savine) Breakers and Burners (followed by a massive crowd of riffraff) show up bent on ending the “age of tyranny” and ushering in the “age of equality” by, for instance, slaughtering all the nobles and bureaucrats they can get their hands and seizing the seat of the empire and making a new government of “citizen” representatives. The ironic title of the book hints at what comes next: a reign of appalling terror complete with fancy new gallows (with steel ropes and heavy counterweights) and then, the novelty of seeing people’s heads torn off their shoulders when hung wearing off, a plunge off the tall Tower of Chains to splat on the cobblestones below and become food of the dogs. As anyone is liable to be denounced as an enemy of the people and traitor to the Great Change at any moment, no one is sleeping soundly, except maybe the psychopathic woman in charge, Judge.

Will Leo be able to play Napoleon here? (Will he ever act on his lust/love for his friend Jurand?) Will Savine succeed in transforming herself from an exploitative and ambitious cutthroat businesswoman into the Darling of the Slums and the Mother of the Nation? Will the Commons ever stop putting Orso on display and just execute him? Will some of our other friends from previous volumes, like Vick dan Teufel, the Chief Inspector from the House of Truth (formerly the House of Questions) and Gunnar Broad, the hulking, bespectacled violent veteran, find fulfillment doing what they do best, double agenting and bone breaking respectively?

Meanwhile, in the part of the plot not having anything to do with any kind of a fantasy French Revolution, Rikke of the Long Eye finds herself in a precarious situation in the fractious north. She does have the Great Wolf (now hamstrung) Stour Nightfall in a cage in the hall she’s taken possession of, as well as the dread one-eyed Caul Shivers and the earthy chagga-chewing hill-woman Isern-i-Phail by her side, as well as an formidable new lover in the Nail, but Stour’s father Black Calder has an army of his own, augmented by bone fetish barbarians and Bayez, First of the Magi, and it’s just a matter of time before he attacks to rescue and avenge his son and crush Rikke and her supporters and take back the throne of the north. And her Long Eye may not actually show her the future as well as she lets on. And if she sends Jonas Clover, the man who’s changed sides and betrayed kings so many times because he always stays true to himself, on a mission of diplomacy to Black Calder, what does she expect to happen?

All of the above is depicted with vintage Abercrombie panache: vivid descriptions, funny conversations, graphic violence, surprising surprises, suspenseful scenes, and a bleak revelation of human nature.

I appreciate his relish in putting flawed (often unpleasantly self-centered and weak or vile) characters in untenable situations to see how they respond. I like his scathing views of heroes and heroic action, and his condemnation of manipulative puppet master types. I respect his revision of the Gandalf-like wise wizard helpfully guiding the good guys scenario, with Bayez being apparently an impatient, unforgiving, realpolitik, money-hungry master who can’t stop meddling.

And like all of his books, this one is full of great lines! Like my ten favorites:

“Every victory turns out to be another defeat.”
“You may not be the villain… But you’re sure not the hero.”
“Evil is not the opposite of good, it is another man’s notion when it differs from ours.”
“Make of your quim a stone.”
“Flags never add to a man, just stand in for something missing.”
“Ordinary people can be very terrifying.”
“Absolutes are never to be trusted.”
“The first rule of sword fighting is never draw your sword.”
“… with the puzzled frown of someone who sees blood squirting but hasn’t yet realized that it’s their own throat that’s slit.”
“The world was not quite what she thought it was”

Something gutting happens in the ending, which is marked by loose ends and ominous hints, so it’s pretty clear that the prolific Abercrombie will be back with another trilogy soon. I am mostly looking forward to it, though I find that I can only read one of his novels per year, needing the rest of the time to recover and cleanse myself.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Booze, Poetry, Women, Horses, LA, America, Life

Revisado: 01-17-25

Tales of Ordinary Madness collects thirty-four short stories (1967-1983) by Charles Bukowski. Many first-person narrators named Bukowski or his alter ego Hank Chinaski. Many Buk antiheroes: foul-mouthed, funny, and observant outsiders; poets cynical about poetry (academic poetry is meaningless and dead, and poetry readings are like ditch digging) and acerbic on life, especially in LA and America. Horrible jobs, outrageous situations, and grotesque people. Amid the gross realism, a sudden burst of surreal fantasy or two. No female protagonists or narrators.

Some scenarios recur, like the loner venting on the people who invade his privacy, at best bringing a six-pack and a poetry question with them, at worst pounding on his door when he’s sick or phoning when he’s asleep. Or the hero briefly and satirically visiting academia by giving readings on campus or staying in a university “poet’s cottage.” Or the loser at the racetrack, betting on horses with major losses or minor victories, dealing with various eccentrics there. Or the offensive man getting arrested for harrassing women.

The narrators yearn for authenticity, non-conformity, mundanity, and the individual soul: Johnny Cash performing in Folsom Prison is a PR stunt (“the only man who can sing in jail, really, is a man who is in jail, really”); joining a group is the first step towards death; applying for and receiving grants for writing is prostitution.

Here are ten stories I really liked:

“A .45 to Pay the Rent”
Duke loves his four-year-old daughter Lala. She plays Mama, he Baby, but then he has to grab his .45 and leave for his night of “work,” robbing liquor stores and the like. The story introduces a key Buk theme: there’s no justice in America, all jobs are death, everyone’s pretending to be happy because they’re afraid to admit they’re scared, and even Life in the Forest is vicious. But Bukowski can be cute! (“why does a coconut have hair?”), and Lala is brilliant, “sweeter than December suntan and six white horses running over a green hill.”

“Would You Suggest Writing as a Career?”
Henry Chinaski takes his first flight (fighting his seatbelt, drinking, and leering at flight attendants) to do a poetry reading in Seattle. Drinking his way through two readings, one on a university campus being filmed for TV (at noon of all ungodly times), he thinks, “this is the way this b*s* works,” conning the audience.

“The Great Zen Wedding”
Never ask Buk to be the best man at your wedding, especially not if it’s a Zen wedding! Booze and mayhem and an apt though unappreciated wedding gift: a miniature coffin. Never ask the police to help you to your door when they find you drunk thirty feet from home.

“Great Poets Die in Steaming Pots of S***”
Buying groceries, Buk is approached by a “hyena-chipmunk” who loves his poetry and follows him all around, speaking IN ALL CAPS and finally getting Buk to give him his address (but never his phone number!). Of course, the fan misunderstands Buk and his poetry, thinking he’s lonely when he’s wanting to be alone.

“A Dollar and Twenty Cents”
A 60-year-old bum reminisces: women and jobs and hospitals and dullness and meaninglessness. Although he still has a little soul left, two young couples at the beach view him with scorn and disgust: “What’s that? Is it human?” Will his landlady’s unappetizing chicken soup revive him?

“I Shot a Man in Reno”
Bukowski moves in with some Johnny Cash fans, drives his car, meets some old friends from old jobs, lists negative things people say about him (e.g., “Bukowski hates Santa Claus”), and lyrically lists problems: “o the mighty police, o the mighty weapons, o the mighty dictators, o the mighty damn fools everywhere… o the bums lying in alleys of misery in a golden world, o the children to become ugly, o the ugly to become uglier….”

“A Rain of Women”
On a rainy day, a used Bukowski gets his used car repaired, ogling women and musing on bills while gradually giving up on making the horse races in time.

“Night Streets of Madness”
Believing the Bukowski myth without knowing Buk is a coward, a young poet confronts a woman honking her horn, which leads to an outrageous chain of events, including the woman destructively parking her car, a kid in a white t-shirt aggressively intervening, an old man tossing a large bucket of green paint, Buk and Hemingway conversing, and the police showing up.

“Animal Crackers in My Soup”
Old drunk Gordon stops for a glass of water at a house and meets crazy Carol, a beautiful young woman who keeps a “liberated zoo.” Beautiful bestiality, mass murder, chimerical new life, and hydrogen bombs ensue.

“The Blanket”
Hank Chinaski is stalked by a blanket with murderous intent. Might it not be one of his former lovers out to reunite with or strangle him?

Here are some great lines:

“even the smog smiled.”

“I had the most delicate skin, like an alligator.”

“I passed two hundred people and failed to see a human being.”

“a bad trip? this whole country, this whole world is on a bad trip, friend.”

“Madness? Sure. What isn’t madness? Isn’t Life madness?”

“Dr. Blasingham. Bloodsucker of county funds. A trickster and a s***. Why he hadn’t been elected President of the United States I couldn’t figure out.”

“any explorative complexity--painting, writing, poetry, robbing banks, being a dictator and so forth, takes you to that place where danger and miracle are rather like Siamese twins.”

Will Patton does a fine job reading Bukowksi. His musing Buk, his outraged Buk, and his stream of consciousness Buk are all prime.

As usual with Bukowski, several short stories go a long way, and some are ugly and stupid (e.g., “Evil Town”). I read the collection in doses of several shorts per week. Fans of Buk should enjoy this collection, while people new to him should maybe start with one of his novels, like Ham on Rye.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Earthy, Magical, Funny, Poignant, Angry, Accepting

Revisado: 01-04-25

Antelope Woman (2016) by Louise Erdrich begins with the US Army massacring a peaceful Ojibwa village. After fatally stabbing an old woman with his bayonet, young Scranton Roy (son of a Quaker and a poetess) hears her say a word to him in her native tongue that sears itself into his brain and sends him fleeing the massacre and deserting the army and following a dog running into the west with a cradle-boarded baby strapped to its back. The baby’s indigo blue beaded necklace pulls Scranton, until he finally overtakes the dog. When the hungry baby cries, Scranton looks around to be sure no one is watching (they’re in the middle of a vast emptiness) and then sets the baby to suckling at his breast, until—a miracle—her faith and trust makes him produce milk that saves her life.

Thus is set in motion a plot weaving together the multi-generational lives of white people and Ojibwa and dogs and antelope people in a story that ranges from the 19th century to the 21st, from the city to the reservation, and from funny earthy matter like “Past a certain age, the Roy women believe that they have earned the right to talk about sex, birth, blood, the size and shape of men’s equipment, the state of their own, even at the holiday dinner table,” to mystical sublime matter like “Why is it given to us to see the colors and the power and the imperishable message? We are so limited, so small.”

By the way, in 1998 the original book called The Antelope Wife was published, after which Erdrich started noticing that it had another book inside it that came out as Antelope Woman. After all, the Antelope Woman never marries anyone and so is not really a wife. I haven’t read the original novel, but from talking with someone who has, I think the 2016 novel retains many of the key elements from the earlier book but softens and rearranges some of them.

Erdrich revels in different kinds of love. A contemporary Ojibwa man called Klaus Shawano kidnaps a mysterious beautiful woman called Sweetheart Calico (the Antelope Woman) without knowing what he’s doing or why, only that he has to take her away with him. In time, we start wondering who’s captured whom. Erdrich also writes of less obsessive romantic love, as between Scranton Roy and Peace McKnight and of familial love, as between their descendant Rozin and her twins Cally and Deanna and her mother Noodin and her aunt Giizis.

She writes interesting side plots, like the strange romance of Augustus Roy (son of Scranton and Peace) and Mary and Zosie (twin sisters of the blue necklace baby); the baker Frank’s quest for the perfect blitzkuchen; Richard Whiteheart Beads and Klaus Shawano’s misadventures with industrial waste, alcoholism, and homelessness; Sweetheart Calico’s effect on the people around her; Rozin’s acceptance of her mother and aunt’s belief that her daughters need to get new (old) Ojibwa names; Rozin’s relationship with Frank; the resolution of Sweetheart Calico’s kidnapping, and more.

The novel is rich with Louise Erdrich’s magical realism. It’s part urban fantasy, part family history, part Native American mythology and history, and part Ojibwa culture, with unexpected events and developments by turns comical or tragic (including a kind of O’Henry “Gift of the Magi” event near the end). She has a keen awareness of social injustice and historical (in)accuracy and an empathic hope for transcending the most heinous crimes. She writes appealing characters, whether human and relatable or supernatural and unknowable. She takes narrative risks (like changing her narration from third person omniscient to first-person canine and back).

And she has a wonderful voice, whether in the style of her written prose or in the sound of her spoken words. Her voice and manner as she reads the audiobook are wonderful: beautiful, sympathetic, calm, amazed, amused: it’s a pleasure listening to her read her novel.

Here are some examples of her compact, evocative descriptions:

“He is standing like a confused coyote who doesn't know how he got into this body.”
“His voice was pie sweet and calm as toast.”
“Pity scorched him.”

Here is an example of her wry humor:

“He was just doing his job.”
“So was Custer.”

She describes food vividly and lovingly, whether Ojibwa or white, as in her descriptions of cooking wild rice or baking a German cake:

“Into the pot she pours an inch or so of wild rice, a fine white dust arises off the rice like smoke smelling of the lake bottom, reedy and fresh. Next, she runs water into the pot, swirls her hands among the ticking grains, black green, brown green, dotted with pale speckles and very fine, uncultivated, not the fake stuff, knocked into the bottom of Noodin’s beat up aluminum canoe. A few small hulls, sharp and papery, ride the surface. Poured off, the water carries away green clay, powdery silt.”

“Then, just for a moment, the waiting men lost their bearings, as the scent of the toasted nuts, honey, vanilla, wild strawberries, sugar, and subtly united oils and flowers escaped the oven box. The scent trembled in the air, more than delicious, impossible. Perhaps an Anishinabeg vision word comes close. Perhaps there is no way to describe what they all experienced, as Klaus tenderly drew the pan along the rack, until it rested secure between his thick furry rag protected paws.”

Of the other books by Erdrich that I’ve read (Love Medicine, The Round House, the Night Watchman, and the five Birchbark House books), this one made me laugh and cry the most. It has a potent mixture of justified anger against the treatment of Native Americans, fascinating details of Ojibwe culture and myths and traditions, vivid and sensual details of anyone’s daily life, and mystical mythical elements. I loved the mysterious and poignant ending. (Learning the meaning of the word Scranton Roy’s victim says to him and that he later carves into the flesh of his arm still gives me a heart shiver two months after I first read it.)

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

Informative Colloquial Lectures on Ancient Egypt

Revisado: 12-29-24

The History of Ancient Egypt (1999) is a set of forty-eight half-hour lectures by Professor Bob Brier (Long Island University). In the Introduction, Professor Brier answers the question, “Why study ancient Egypt?” Because it’s exotic and charismatic and cool and contains many great achievements in architecture, religion, medicine, mummification, etc. He explains that there are many approaches to studying ancient Egypt, like philological (language), literature, and art history, and tells us that he’s into events, the historical approach, though he likes combining elements of all the others. His goals for the course are to give the listener an understanding of Egyptian history, to increase their understanding of Egyptian art, and to make them want to learn more after the course. Hey, he succeeds on all counts. He even tells us how to write our names in hieroglyphs by referring to the appendix in the accompanying pdf file.

The forty-eight lectures are full of interesting information about ancient Egypt and the history of Egyptology. They’re organized mostly chronologically, from prehistoric Egypt to the last Ptolemy (Cleopatra), with a few topical detours along the way, about magic, mummification (great stuff—Brier’s specialty), and animal mummies. I learned a lot of things, like the following:

--Egyptian rulers built tombs and temples from stone to last forever and palaces and houses from mud brick to last a generation.
--Egyptian armies frequently marched north to Syria etc. or south to Nubia etc. to plunder other cultures, but never stayed to found any colonies or occupy any cities, because they wanted to die and be buried in Egypt.
--In mummy making, the brain was stirred into liquid and then drained out of the nostrils.
--In the 20th century, the mummy of Ramses the Great had eighty-nine different fungi growing on it when it was sent to France to be gamma rayed.
--The Egyptian word for scarab is a pun meaning *dung beetle* and *existence* (hence the protective scarab amulets worn by myriad ancient Egyptians).
--The heiroglyph representing mourning is a lock of hair.
--Obelisk means meat skewer in Greek.
--Cartouche is French for bullet.
--The words chemistry and alchemy come from the Egyptians’ word for Egypt, Kmt.
--The inner walls of the tombs of kings were almost always covered with religious texts and paintings to get them resurrected, while those of wealthy commoners depicted scenes from everyday life to let them do after death what they liked doing in life.
--Egypt (temporarily) had the first monotheistic religion.
--Before he discovered Tutankamun’s tomb, Howard Carter was fired as Chief Inspector of Upper Egypt because he sided with a local Egyptian guide against some drunk French gate crashers.
--For ancient Egypt, silver was worth three times as much as gold.
-- Starting with their New Year (in July) when the Nile overflowed, the Egyptian calendar (from which we get ours) had three four-month seasons (inundation, emergence, and dry), twelve three-week months, thirty-six ten-day weeks, plus five extra holiday days to make 360 days into 365.
--For three hundred years, the Greek Ptolemies ran Egypt like a business without learning or using Egyptian language or leaving Alexandria.
--The Book of the Dead began as a text of religious magic spells carved into the Pharoh’s tomb walls (the pyramid texts), morphed via tomb robbers into text painted on commoners’ coffin walls (the coffin texts), then morphed into papyrus books placed in coffins.
--In the 19th century, the British overlords of Egypt shipped thousands of neck-wrung mummified sacrificial cats back to England to be used as fertilizer!

My favorite parts were about the pyramids, mummification, two intermediate periods, Book of the Dead, Howard Carter (discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb!), Hatshepsut (the female pharaoh!), Akhenaten (the heretic pharaoh!), Ramses the Great (the fecund pharaoh!), and Ptolemy I (the Greek pharaoh!).

My least favorite parts were the lectures devoted to Biblical stories like Joseph in Egypt and the Exodus from Egypt.

Also, note that this is NOT a book about ancient Egypt but a series of lectures. The producers want you to feel that you’re in an audience listening to Professor Brier, so the lectures begin with peppy baroque type music and end with vigorous clapping. And Professor Brier does have a few verbal tics: “um,” “now…” “right?” and occasional lip clicks. Occasional mistakes that he instantly self-corrects in real time. He uses plenty of contemporary diction (circa 1999), like “our man Herodotus,” “think tank,” “one could take Fido to the next world,” and “Ducks in Tutankhamen’s tomb were intended as food—call it an “order to go,” as well as popular culture references to Mummy movies, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, and Elizabeth Taylor. He says “huge” as “yuge.” He also tends to repeat key words for emphasis a LOT, like:

“The standing army becomes big business, big business.”
“Now, Tuthmosis had many wives, many wives.”
“The Xray can show us quite a bit, quite a bit.”
“It was looking very much like an ancient Egyptian mummy. Very much.”

Anyway, you could listen to the sample and see what you think. For me, his engaging enthusiasm, clear pronunciation, interesting information, and down to earth humor all made listening to and learning from his lectures a lot of fun. Anyone interested in but not very knowledgeable about ancient Egypt should learn a lot. BUT—keep in mind that they were recorded a quarter of a century ago, so some of his information may be outdated by now.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña