The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton

This is one of the best and most original books I've read in years! From the opening chapter where the protoganist wakes up without his memory and immediately fails to stop a murder I was hooked. A mystery set in a crumbling English country manor house, the lead player relives the same day over and over, but waking up in a new body each time. He is eventually told that if he solves the murder he will be released from the time loop. but if he doesn't do it within eight days he'll start over again without any memory of what he has seen or done. And it becomes clear that he has been doing this for decades without success...

The back cover calls this a blend of Agatha Christie, Quantum Leap, Groundhog Day, and Downton Abbey (I'd add a healthy dose of Terry Pratchett into the mix as well), and if anything that undersells the appeal. Clever and entertaining, this is sheer brilliance and I literally couldn't put it down and read it in a single day.

First Sentence:

I forget everything between footsteps.

The Other Boleyn Girl, by Philippa Gregory

This is the story of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn, and her sister, Mary. Gregory takes known dates and events and weaves a rather gripping story around what might have happened to cause these to occur. So even though the ending wasn't in question, the journey was quite fun.

While amusing, the portrayal of Anne seemed inconsistent. At the outset she is clever and witty, plotting with her family to advance their station in life. When she catches Henry's eye she becomes conniving and ruthless and helps to oust a sitting queen, and when she becomes queen herself she turns into an outright shrew, shrill and unpleasant. The well-known adage "power corrupts" could be an explanation, but the intelligence shown early seems to fade with Anne becoming a caricature of the megalomaniac queen.

The writing style is straightforward, with a minimum of flowery romance-speak—something I appreciated. A bit long, but the action moves quickly enough it doesn't feel like a 650+ book. More entertainment than biography, this makes me want to read a more factual account of the time. Certainly kept my interest, and well worth the time it took to read.

First Sentence:

I could hear a roll of muffled drums.

Tarzan of the Apes: The First Three Novels, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Any character that remains popular for over a century has something unique to offer. Tarzan could easily be called the first superhero: he possesses extraordinary strength, stamina, speed, agility, healing, and intelligence—basically Captain America without needing the Super Soldier Serum. Tarzan can speak with apes, kill gorillas, lions, and crocodiles with his bare hands, and his senses of hearing and smell rival those of bats and bears. His skill handling animals is also remarkable; at one point Tarzan trains a group of apes to man oars and sail through the Atlantic Ocean. There isn't much depth to these books (the volume I read collects the first three of twenty-four) but they are thoroughly entertaining pulp novels.

Both set and written in the early twentieth century, the style of writing suffers from what we expect today. Plots are melodramatic and driven by coincidence after coincidence, the characters are thin and one-dimensional, and the rampant negative stereotyping exposes the widespread sexism and racism common in the period. Despite all this, there is an undeniable charm to these stories and it is easy to see why they remain in favor today. Escapist and fun, the Tarzan books are a wonderful set of adventures.

First Sentence from Tarzan of the Apes:

I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.

First Sentence from The Return of Tarzan:

"Magnifique!" ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath her breath.

First Sentence from The Beasts of Tarzan:

"The entire affair is shrouded in mystery," said D'Arnot.

The Little French Bistro, by Nina George

This book starts darkly, with a desperately unhappy sixty year old German woman attempting suicide. On a trip to Paris Marianne slips away from her controlling, philandering, and dismissive husband and deliberately herself into the Seine. Unwillingly saved before drowning she is hospitalized; there she is captivated by a small painting of the French coast. She promptly escapes, making her way to the sea, alone, friendless, not knowing the language, and determined to try to kill herself again.

Despite the tragic beginning, The Little French Bistro tells the story of a woman learning to trust herself for the first time and discovering she has wants and needs of her own. "I never even noticed that I am alive, she thought." At the same time, the small group of people she falls into help themselves by helping her, binding them all together in camaraderie and companionship. While sharing Marianne's journey out of depression George brilliantly illustrates the unbounded healing power of friendship. I found her description of the simple gaze of friends as "a balm for all the tears a woman shed over her lifetime—tears of passion, longing, happiness, emotion, rage, love, or pain" especially moving. An uplifting story that was welcome in our isolating times.

First Sentence:

It was the first decision she had ever made on her own, the very first time she was able to determine the course of her life.

Leonardo da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson

Before reading this biography I'll admit I didn't know a lot about Leonardo da Vinci other than being the painter of the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper, and the Vitruvian Man. Now I know he was a true Renaissance man—arguably the first Renaissance man—and a man ahead of his time. Centuries before minds like Newton, Galileo, Bernoulli, and Valsalva were experimenting, da Vinci was discovering concepts in a huge number of fields: relativity, motion, metallurgy, fluid dynamics, cartography, anatomy, optics, geology, ichnology, and even stagecraft just to name a few. The reason we don't associate Leonardo with all these topics is that he largely kept his discoveries in his personal notebooks rather than publishing. When he died these notebooks were scattered amongst collectors, not being catalogued and available for general study until well after other luminaries had rediscovered what he already knew.

Isaacson does an amazing job examining much of da Vinci's art in detail, discussing the approach to light and shade, perspective, and color and pointing out how the pursuit of science (especially anatomy and geology) was accurately reflected in his work. While impressed at the detail, I admit that after the first few my eyes would glaze over a bit as it all seemed a bit repetitive; I apparently don't have the right genes to truly appreciate art at this level. I much more enjoyed the history of the paintings, learning which pieces were actually finished (not many!) and which have been lost to time.

Many, many of Leonardo's notebook pages are reproduced here as well, and these are the true heart of the book. The detail in everything from horses in motion to deconstructed machines to muscular and skeletal body parts is both amazing and beautiful. His notes are on nearly every page as well, sometimes right over the drawings or in the margins. da Vinci wrote in mirror script (right to left) and in Italian, giving even a simple paragraph a look of beauty.

Isaacson's admiration for da Vinci's genius shines through nearly every page, causing a sense of wonder for the reader. Weighing in at over 500 pages this isn't a quick read, but well worth the time it takes. I could have done with less art criticism and more actual history (topics like his homosexuality and his intense rivalry with Michelangelo are only briefly covered, and the oft-changing politics of Europe at this time even less so) but this is still a wonderful book.

First Sentence:

Leonardo da Vinci had the good luck to be born out of wedlock.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll

The famous tale of Alice in Wonderland is told in two books, combined here into a single volume: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Thanks to Disney the story is roughly familiar to all: a young girl careens through non-sensical adventure after non-sensical adventure, meeting one impossible character after another. Children's books at heart, the recurring theme is having to reluctantly put away the fantasies of youth and grow up. "Shall I never get any older than I am now? That'll be a comfort, one way—never to be an old woman—but then—always to have lessons to learn! Oh, I shouldn't like that!" Many events seem random and disconnected, but this shows how kids can jump from topic to topic in a way that makes sense to them but not to adults; Alice's occasional frustration with the characters she meets demonstrates her inevitable progress toward maturity. Many of the modern interpretations of these characters veer quite dark (such as Lost Girls or Alice Through the Looking Glass), but none of that darkness really exists in the original text. Even the Queen of Hearts who constantly screams "Off with her head!" is shown to be toothless, with the King quietly pardoning everyone behind her back. Both books are very short so this is a quick, enjoyable read; this edition includes the wonderful John Tenniel illustrations as well (albeit in black in white) which add so much to the stories. If you haven't ever read these, do yourself a favor and pick them up and see just what is down the rabbit hole.

First Sentence (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland):

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do; once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?"

First Sentence (from Through the Looking-Glass):

One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it:—it was the black kitten's fault entirely.

Four Hours of Fury, by James Fenelon

Operation VARSITY was the largest single-day airborne drop in history, and Four Hours of Fury tells the story. I've read about Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and the war in the Pacific, but hadn't ever heard of this operation which was the first push into Nazi Germany, signalling the end of WWII. Fenelon does an amazing job; facts and maps abound, but the focus on the combatants (enlisted and officers on both sides of the battle) keeps the story humanized. He has an amazing knack to toss in a sentence that seems amusing or light-hearted at first, but after more thought is covering the horrors of war. "Instructors reminded them that on an actual jump, if they didn't feel the opening shock of their chute by 4,000, they had the rest of their lives to deploy their reserve." The last sentence is flat-out heart-wrenching, capturing what every wife must have felt when getting a death notice: "There would be no fifth wedding anniversary celebration." Well-written, informative, and hard to put down—not a combination of traits I often ascribe to a history book, but they apply to Four Hours of Fury in spades.

First Sentence:

Three months before they dropped into Germany, the troopers of the 17th Airborne entered combat for the first time in a manner entirely different from how they'd been trained.

The Little Paris Bookshop, by Nina George

The narrative of The Little Paris Bookshop follows Jean Perdu, a Frenchman that was jilted by his lover over twenty years earlier finally opening the Dear John letter she'd left him, only to discover it wasn't what he expected. A bit of a madcap adventure ensues with Perdu picking up a couple of eccentric companions along the way, each with a quest of their own. The plot and characterization are both pretty thin, but the book shines in two areas: capturing the flavor of the countryside and illustrating the emotional might of storytelling.

As much as I enjoy living in Austin, getting away from civilization from time to time has always been a guilty pleasure. George depicts the transition from city to pastoral beautifully. "Something very specific was missing, something Perdu had grown so accustomed to that its absence gave him a slight dizziness and caused a humming in his ears. Immense relieve swept through him when he realized what it was. There was no rush of cars, no roar of the metro, no buzz of air conditioners. None of the whirr and grumble of millions of machines and transmissions and elevators and escalators. There were no sounds of reversing trucks, trains braking or heels on gravel and stone. None of the bass-driven music from the yobs two houses down, the crackle of skateboards, the chatter of scooters." The country is far from silent, but the noises of nature are much more soothing and pleasant than those of dense development.

My favorite things in life are my family and friends, Longhorn sports, beer, and books—not necessarily in that order. Reading has been a treasured companion of mine for as long as I can remember, and George is clearly a kindred spirit. She describes reading as having an "accompanying sense of wonder and the feeling of having a film running inside your head" which I think is as good of a depiction as any of what happens when consuming a novel. The back cover of my edition calls The Little Paris Bookshop "a love letter to books, meant for anyone who believes in the power of stories to shape people's lives." I wholeheartedly agree with this; the main lesson of the story isn't that good things come to good people or to those who wait, but to those that believe in the power of words to heal and shape ones soul.

While a bit treacly and overemotional at times, I quite enjoyed reading this book. It doesn't have the depth of Cyrano de Bergerac or the humor of The Princess Bride, but it is a pleasant read that makes for a solid diversion on a lazy weekend.

First Sentence:

How on earth could I have let them talk me into it?

Hell and Good Company, by Richard Rhodes

Before reading Hell and Good Company pretty much all I could have told you about the Spanish Civil War was that it occurred between World Wars I and II and Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls based on his experiences there. Rhodes only lightly touches the military and political aspects of the war, instead concentrating on the innovations that were made real during this time. I was shocked to discover that frontline blood donations weren't commonplace before Spain, and the practice of sealing open wounds and compound fractures with plaster to keep them clean and immobile finally gained medical acceptance at this time, too. Hard to believe that before the late 1930's a broken leg was usually amputated on the battlefield in order to save the soldier. Military tactics also saw a lot of advancement during this time; air power truly came into its own, resulting sadly in prominent, purposeful civilian targets and the first war with a city bombed into literal rubble.

Rhodes has a sophisticated writing style; readable, but with an impressive (and occasionally off-putting) vocabulary: "In pursuing a latter-day, reverse reconquista he was less a fascist than an aggrandized martinet." One chapter in particular I found difficult to finish; the author discusses the creation of Picasso's Guernica, explaining in excruciating detail how the painting changed with each small step in the artistic process. Oddly, there isn't a rendering of the entire finished work included, so much of the included minutia was severely lacking in context. This literary wandering was an anomaly, though, and the book itself was both engrossing and appealing, and I recommend it to anyone interested in this time in history.

First Sentence:

Barcelona, 25 July 1936: In the glare of Spanish summer, the first witnesses to the igniting civil war are leaving to tell the world.

Paris: The Novel, by Edward Rutherfurd

This is the history of Paris told through they eyes of six fictional families between 1261 and 1968. The types of families are well chosen to give a cross section of society through history: the de Cygnes are aristocrats and royalists, the Le Sourds are socialists and revolutionaries, the Gascons are craftsmen and laborers, the Renards are Protestants, the Blanchards are Catholics, and the Jacobs are Jewish. These characters are injected into and around a huge number of important events, such as the Paris Commune and the Terror, the construction of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower, the Avignon Papacy, Vichy France, the Dreyfus Affair and the rocky history of Jews in France, and Catholicism versus Protestantism and the Edicts of Nantes and Fointainbleau. Each chapter is set in a different era but they don't appear in chronological order, instead bouncing from 1875 to 1462 to 1907 and so on. As the narrative follows the same families through successive generations this can be somewhat confusing at times, especially as some use the same given names over and over—for example, there are three separate Roland de Cygnes that take the stage in various eras. This drawback is minor though, and doesn't dramatically detract from what is overall a compelling and illuminating story.

First Sentence:

Paris.

One Lump or Two?, by Darren Couchman

Carcinomas are no laughing matter, but Couchman tells his story of battling testicular cancer with a lot of whimsy and warmth. Diagnosed at 27 years old and within a decade of losing both his parents to the disease, he had every right to succumb to despair but instead approaches his diagnosis head on using humor (much of it self-deprecating) as his main weapon. "[Doctors] are professionals and are more concerned about helping you, rather than laughing at your privates. Anyway, that's your partner's job." Couchman is not a professional writer and it often shows—the style is pedestrian leaves a lot to be desired—but his message comes through loud and clear: fighting a serious disease is an incredibly tough campaign, and a positive outlook and the support of friends and family are essential to a successful outcome. As far as patients go Couchman was lucky; one major operation and a limited chemo routine resulted in victory. I still wouldn't call his experience easy, though, and certainly don't want to go through any of that myself. If I am personally faced with such a situation, though, I hope I can approach it with the same forthright manner and joie de vivre.

First Sentence:

It's the year 2000.

The Path Between the Seas, by David McCullough

Before reading The Path Between the Seas I knew very little about the Panama Canal other than the location, that the French started the project and failed, and it is the source of one of my favorite jokes in Arsenic and Old Lace: crazy Uncle Teddy "digging the canal" in the basement. I've always wanted to take a trip through the canal and I like reading histories, so I've been looking forward to this book for a while. As usual, McCullough doesn't disappoint.

It took nearly 45 years to build the canal, starting in 1870. There were several competing routes, but the French decided on Panama as the best place to make the cut. They had just successfully completed the Suez Canal and were considered the natural choice for bridging the Americas. Unfortunately as it turns out, digging across a desert at sea level does not take the same skills or technology as bridging a mountainous jungle region in the tropics. The death rate was astonishing in the early days. "Of every one hundred new arrivals at least twenty died, and of those who survived, only about twenty were were physically strong enough to do any real work." In about a decade, the estimates are as many as twenty-two thousand died. Disease was the main killer, as the world had yet to discover that mosquitoes carried malaria and yellow fever; in fact, the cause was so misunderstood that the legs of hospital beds were all placed in shallow bowls of water to protect against ants. If patients didn't have a serious disease when they entered the hospital, the odds were enormous they would before they left. The death toll was only one of several problems the French faced, though; poor engineering plans and irresponsible financing combined to guarantee the failure of the French effort. The only realistic remaining nation that could accomplish the feat was the U.S.A.

America didn't simply come in, pick up where France left off, and finish the canal, though. The US wanted a route across Nicaragua, and instead of a canal had wild plans such as hoisting ships out of the water and hauling them across Mexico on railroad cars. Obviously this isn't what eventually happened, but the story of what did is utterly compelling. Panama declaring independence from Columbia is just one of the momentous events of the era, and even knowing how it all ends I had a hard time putting the book down. As with all of McCullough's books, this is thoroughly researched, well-written, and highly recommended.

First Sentence:

The letter, several pages in length and signed by Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson, was aggressed to Commander Thomas O. Selfridge.

The Secret Agent, by Joseph Conrad

For a book considered to be one of the first and greatest espionage thrillers, it was murder getting to the end. The writing is stilted and overblown, and I often had to reread passages to make sense of them. "Mrs. Neale was the charwoman of Brett Street. Victim of her marriage with a debaucher joiner, she was oppressed by the needs of many infant children. Red-armed, and aproned in coarse sacking up to the arm-pits, she exhaled the anguish of the poor in a breath of soap-suds and rum, in the uproar of scrubbing, in the clatter of tin pails." Not an easy read.

The plot follows a somewhat incompetent agent provocateur that is playing both sides—talking to the police and working for an anarchist cell. He is forced into an act of insurrection that goes awry and tragedy strikes. I suspect that there are some insightful conclusions that can be drawn with modern terrorism and national security, but frankly I had such a difficult time getting through the superficial story that I was uninterested in looking any deeper. Disappointing.

First Sentence:

Mr. Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law.

The Borgias and Their Enemies, by Christopher Hibbert

The Borgia family name today is largely synonymous with immorality and nepotism. The rise to power of Rodrigo Borgia culminating in his being elected Pope in 1492 is when this definition was earned and the topic of this book. Rodrigo was described as having "the most obscene manners, hypocrisy, immodesty, mendacity, infidelity, profanity, insatiable greed, unrestrained ambition, a predilection for viciousness that was worse than barbaric, and a fervent hunger to exalt his many children, among whom there were several no less repellent than the father." And this is all after he became Pope Alexander VI. All his children were obviously illegitimate (as apparently marriage is the one rule the Church can't ignore), but two in particular became powerful in their own right: his son Cesare was a general and a ruler and the subject of Machiavelli's The Prince, and his daughter Lucrezia became the Duchess of Ferrara.

I'm not a fan of organized religion, and Catholicism in particular I find morally bankrupt, but I was surprised to learn in the 15^th century the Church was even more venal than today. Men weren't made cardinals because of their devotion to God or their piety, but how much money they could pay. One of Lucrezia's sons was named the arch-bishop of Milan when he was nine-years-old. Celebrations at the Vatican were excessive, often including courtesans and even devolving into orgies. Interestingly, in some ways this immoral Church was more progressive than the holier-than-thou organization of today. When traveling, Alexander VI would put his daughter Lucrezia in charge of the Vatican, to the point where she actually moved into the papal apartments. I can't imagine the modern Church—against both contraception and abortion and not allowing women to be ordained—permitting a female to effectively control the Catholic hierarchy.

The writing is a bit dry making it difficult to stay engaged at times, but the topic is entertaining enough to keep going. Not the best book I've ever read, but it covers an interesting period in history.

First Sentence:

"You must have heard of this city from others," wrote a visitor to Rome in the middle of the fifteenth century.

World Without End, by Ken Follett

I quite liked The Pillars of the Earth but it still took me over four years to pick up the sequel, World Without End. Big mistake; I liked it even more than the first! This isn't a direct sequel—it is set two centuries later and shares a setting rather than the more typical characters. Other things the two tomes share are a plot (political intrigue contrasted with a revolution in building and a mix of noble and low-born people) and a rich historical backdrop where fiction and reality mix; here, the reign of Edward III and the bubonic plague is the stage against which the novel plays out.

In The Pillars of the Earth Follett poured his voluminous research into page after page of ancillary description, often resulting in extended passages only tangentially related to the plot. World Without End is equally in depth, but the author does a much better job of staying on point and keeping his knowledge flowing with the surrounding story. Besides an excellent description of 14^th century warfare, the role of women in society in this era is made horrifyingly clear. A mentally-ill woman is publicly stoned, another is traded into prostitution by her father for a cow, still another trades her body for political favors which are then reneged upon, and many other are raped or forced into unhappy marriages. While the masses—men and women—all view these acts as simply a part of life and that a woman's place is to be subservient to man, the antagonists all look on this with a modern disdain. Compare this with the many monks, bishops, and friars that play integral parts of the play—with only a very few exceptions all these men are of low moral and ethical character and yet are looked upon with high regard by the community. An interesting juxtaposition to say the least.

As depressing as that is, I did enjoy the novel. Solid storytelling and interesting plot twists keep the pages (all 1200+ in my copy!) turning quickly. The sex is much more graphic than I remember in the original and the violence is often excessive, but the look into life in the late medieval ages is fascinating. World Without End is a great book for airline trips, waiting rooms, or rainy Saturday afternoons.

First Sentence:

Gwenda was eight years old, but she was not afraid of the dark.

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson

I read Kidnapped when in grade school and didn’t really care for it; I somehow decided that all of Stevenson’s works would be similar and so didn’t pick up Treasure Island until just now. What a mistake! Interesting and suspenseful, Stevenson’s story starts out with the arrival of a mysterious seaman and and doesn’t slow down until it’s finished. The adventure is the prototypical quest: a mysterious treasure map is discovered, and the ensuing hunt leads to mutiny and piracy on the high seas. The narrator is (save for two odd chapters right in the middle of the book) young Jim Hawkins and while his telling of the tale is fairly straightforward, the underlying coming-of-age tale is interesting in its own right. Jim’s father dies in the early chapters, and he has several different potential role models, including Long John Silver. At first the pirate presents himself as an honorable man, but as the story unfolds Jim begins to see Silver for who is really is and lets his morals guide him to the truth.

This is clearly aimed at younger boys—Jim’s mother is the only female character and she is out of the picture after just a few chapters. The writing is straightforward and uncomplicated, but at the same time quite effective and descriptive. Take this description of Billy Bones, the pirate who initially possesses the map: “A tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a dirty livid white.” The imagery is powerful and makes the character easy to visualize, but the simple words are comfortable for readers of nearly any age. The plot isn’t complicated either, but amazingly compelling—I had a difficult time putting it down! A true classic, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.

First Sentence:

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17— and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

Cyrano de Bergerac, by Edmond Rostand

Not long ago I had a brief discussion with friends that reminded me how much I enjoyed this story. I don’t think I’ve read it since high school, but upon picking it up again found it an immediate treasure. Cyrano de Bergerac is unmatched in intellect and panache, but his hideous nose causes him to be overlooked in society. His colleague Christian has the chiseled good looks everyone admires, but is rather dense. Both men love the beautiful Roxanne, although she is only aware of Christian’s attraction. Cyrano agrees to help his friend woo Roxanne, setting up a battle of inner and outer beauty that remains compelling through the decades. “Eloquence I will lend you! . . . And you, to me, shall lend all-conquering physical charm . . . and between us we will compose a hero of romance!”

I had forgotten just how close to a one-man-play this is; Cyrano is the focus of nearly every scene and conversation, and gives every speech of any length. Even when Christian is talking, it is often Cyrano supplying the voice! Other than his appearance, Cyrano is the ideal man: brave, witty, and loyal to a fault. He doesn’t back down from a fight, either verbally or physically, and he keeps the secret of Christian’s courtship of Roxanne long after Christian’s death, sacrificing his own happiness in the process. While Cyrano ends up a broken and unpopular man, he remains true to his beliefs and is portrayed as a better person than his more successful peers that compromised their ideals. In today’s world where politicians, athletes, and performers are the idols of choice, political parties, free agency, and recurring rehab seemingly prevent any honest admiration. Where is Cyrano when you need him?

First Sentence:

A Play at the Hôtel de Bourgogne

The Case of the Late Pig, by Margery Allingham

My boys have decided that my mother collects pigs, much to her chagrin. Anytime we are out and see something with a pig motif (slippers, figurines, screen wipes, you name it!) the kids inevitably say, “Grandma Elaine needs that!” As a result a good-natured swine-themed gift exchange occurs every Christmas, with mom even getting into the action and trying to turn the tables on us: this past year, I received a copy of The Case of the Late Pig.

I was unfamiliar with the detective Albert Campion before this, but apparently he was fairly popular during the early twentieth century, and as recently as 1990 has been filmed. The story was interesting, including mysterious letters and disappearing corpses, but not really compelling enough to make me want to read other volumes in the series. I love mysteries, but this style where it is virtually impossible to solve the problem along with the sleuth isn’t my favorite. Not improving matters is that Campion’s sidekick, Lugg, spoke with a thick accent and heavy slang that really slowed down my reading: “The bloke ’oo wrote this knew you was always anxious to snuff round a bit of blood, doin’ the rozzers out of their rightful, and ’e kindly give you the tip to come along ’ere as fast as you could so’s you wouldn’t miss nothink.” All in all, The Case of the Late Pig was a pleasant diversion for a short afternoon, but not really my cup of tea.

First Sentence:

The main thing to remember in an autobiography, I have always thought, is not to let any damned modesty creep in to spoil the story.

Don Quixote, by Miguel De Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes is said to be the father of the modern novel, and after reading Don Quixote it is easy to see why. Set in the 17^th century with an insane man as the hero and a buffoon for a sidekick, this easily could have been a dated and predictable (from our modern point-of-view anyway) book, but instead I found it engaging and exciting from cover to cover. Don Quixote thinks he is the last knight errant and roams the countryside looking for adventure and injustice; unfortunately for him he is met with ridicule and scorn virtually everywhere. While there are a few actual “quests” (attacking windmills being the most famous) most of the novel describes the elaborate practical jokes of which Quixote and Sancho Panza are the butt.

I was surprised at not only how funny this was, but how the humor holds up over the years. Monty Python would be proud of the physical humor here: “Sancho came so close that his eyes were almost in his master’s mouth; by this time the balm had taken effect in Don Quixote’s stomach, and just as Sancho looked into his mouth, he threw up, more vigorously than if he were firing a musket, everything he had inside, and all of it hit the compassionate squire in the face.” Apparently, vomit is a timeless comedic prop! One of the best stories related is about a man who convinces his best friend to attempt to seduce his wife in order to prove her love; his unintentionally humorous justification for this is, “Why be grateful when a woman is good if no one urges her to be bad?”

The odd pacing is a large indication this was written 400 years ago—at times there is a chapter break in the middle of a sentence!—but Edith Grossman’s translation is fantastic and allows the reader to immerse oneself in the story without getting lost in the physical structure of the novel. I quite enjoy the musical Man of La Mancha which is based on this book, but the novel is far superior.

First Sentence:

Somewhere in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

The decadence of the French aristocracy is legendary, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses is an excellent illustration of this. The two main characters take delight in destroying people and reputations using the timeless tool of seduction. There is no remorse or hesitation expressed by the villains; in fact, their behavior is justified in their minds, as in this defense of adultery: “Either you have a rival or you have not. If you have one, you must please, in order to be preferred to him; if you have not, you must still please, in order to avoid having one. In both cases the same conduct is to be observed: why, therefore, torment yourself?”

French is said to be the language of love, though, and that reputation is well-deserved if this book is a typical example. “It was when I saw you that I saw light; soon I understood that the charm of love sprang from the qualities of the soul; that they alone could cause its excess, and justify it. I felt, in short, that it was equally impossible for me not to love you, or to love any other than you.” Finding such a poetic depiction of love being issued by a debauched aristocrat brought home how duplicitous these characters truly are. The ending is a bit abrupt but the lesson is clear: immoral behavior is punished in this world and not the afterlife; or in a more colloquial way, what goes around comes around.

First Sentence:

You see, my dear friend, that I keep my word to you, and that bonnets and frills do not take up all my time; there will always be some left for you.