Recent Reads

Ramsey Milholland by Booth Tarkington (free for Kindle).  This is an interesting little book.  It starts with Ramsey as a boy observing a parade with his Civil War veteran grandfather.  The book seems to be the story of a slightly dumb yet average boy growing up in the early 1900's.  Just when you think it's going to be a love story, it turns out to be a nice bit of propaganda on why the US should get involved in WWI.  Not my favorite Tarkington story but good to read, especially when people tend to forget how isolationist the US was at the time.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.  A rather long tale of a family of academicians who hunt Dracula over the years.  Dracula being the real Vlad Tepes.  Despite it's length, the story kept moving.  The ending was somewhat abrupt and disappointing, though.

The Purrfect Murder by Rita Mae Brown.  I'm always torn when I read Brown's Mrs. Murphy stories.  Set amongst the old families of Virginia, Brown trys to make her characters seem like decent people who take people at face value, but there's always this undercurrent that the old families and their way of life are inherently better than everyone else. (SPOILER) This ends with our heroine breaking into a suspects house and getting herself almost killed before she is rescued by her husband.  She is hailed as a hero and not charged with breaking and entering.  The police also use her rescue as a means to gain evidence of the suspects guilt.  I am not an expert, but it seems to me evidence obtained by a non-police officer who is committing a crime should not be admissible in court.

The Incredible Marquis by Herbert Gorman.  Alexandre Dumas was a larger than life figure.  Son of a Napoleonic general, he lived large and enjoyed life.  I should like a biography of him.  This is one of those early 20thcentury bios that is written more as a novel than as a scholarly work.  The author also assumes everyone understands French (I don't, but understand a lot of writers from that time assumed everyone could).  I gave up about half way through.  Dumas hadn't written any novels yet and was playing at being a revolutionary.  The story was surprisingly dull for how much action was going on.

Flyboys by James Bradley.  This is a true story of American pilots shot down over the Pacific in WWII.  The first chapter made it seem like it would be a fascinating story of captured pilots.  Then I got to Chapter 2 which was about how the United States was established by ethnic cleansing.  Yes, the US ran roughshod over everyone else in the spirit of Manifest Destiny, but basically every major civilization in the history of the world did the same thing.  It's only in the past century or so when this became a bad thing.  You can disagree with what people did in the past, but you must judge them by the standards of their day, not ours.  Bradley wants to put out a revisionist history of the US he can do so, but he should not have done it in a story that was supposed to be about men who died defending this awful United States.  Needless to say, I only made it a few pages into Chapter 2 before adding this to the donation sack for the library.