|
|
Post by timothylane on Jan 26, 2020 16:06:09 GMT -8
As to adventure/thriller novels involving snipers, I can recommend Michael Z. Williamson's The Scope of Justice, Targets of Opportunity, and Confirmed Kill. They're set respectively in Pakistan, Romania, and Indonesia and involve a two-man sniper team hunting terrorists.
The second (which involves an op in the castle of Vlad Tepes aka Dracula) has some amusing moments. One comes when they learn that the Romanians use wooden bullets for target practice to avoid the lead vapor. The thought of wooden bullets in Romania leads to thoughts of other possible reasons to use them there.
It was in reading the third book that I thought of the idea that most of us are sheep, and there are tigers out there to prey on us. Fortunately, there are also tiger hunters to protect the rest of us. Occasionally these tiger hunters go rogue and have to be treated like the tigers, but when that isn't happening we need them badly. And we have people who seem hostile to the tiger hunters even when they don't go rogue.
Williamson probably would agree, given his anti-liberal views, though he's more libertarian than conservative. In fact, his main book series involves a libertarian planet (Freehold) and its problems. (I've read several, but the series has extended way beyond what I've seen, not having gotten to a book store in a few years.)
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 26, 2020 19:05:06 GMT -8
Maybe I'll check this out, Mr. Kung. I'm in between books right now and am looking for something.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 26, 2020 20:03:58 GMT -8
I did find that book at the online lending library, so we'll see.
|
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Jan 26, 2020 20:31:42 GMT -8
I read it in three nights, so it will not take you long. I don't want to give away the game, but it will help if you have a fair amount of esoteric historical knowledge about cold-war America and the USSR. When I was between 50% and 60% into the book, I knew what the "something" had to be.
While Reacher does exercise his martial prowess in the novel, he does not do so nearly as much as in the other Reacher books I have read. Here, he uses his brain a lot more. I like that part of the book.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 27, 2020 8:59:43 GMT -8
I’m also reading off-and-on Two Years Before the Mast by R. H. Dana Jr. You can get if for 99 cents at Amazon or you can find it for free at Gutenberg.org. One Amazon reviewer writes: I will not call Mr. Dana a great writer. But he does seem a sincere and straightforward one. His narrative lies somewhere between Moby Dick and reading a captain’s log book….certainly closer to the latter than the former. For instance, I just finished the part where he talks about having to tar the ship. What I learned is that this is done every six months. What I didn’t learn is about everything else: How much tar is used for one coating? Are only the masts coated? How much is put on? How does this not create a mess for the rigging, ropes, and sails? How much tar is kept on board for such purposes? A different reviewer writes: Yes, informative in the sense that we’re getting an account of a “normal” commercial voyage with a run-of-the-mill captain — but certainly not vibrant. This is not a military vessel nor is the vessel composed of an assortment of over-the-top villains. It’s just sort of normal life (as normal as being on a sailing vessel of the time can be). And that is its charm and interest Oddly, he’s a fish out of water in terms of the parts of the ship and such, and then not too far along in the voyage he’s familiar with it all. As a reader, I don’t get taken on board with the familiarity. Without photos, his descriptions are near worthless regarding many things. I understand that he understands it now but I don’t understand it. Another review (who titled his review “Life’s too short” and gave the book only two stars) writes: I find it hard to disagree with that. This is probably why I haven’t sat down and read it cover-to-cover. But there’s enough here and there (at times) to keep it marginally interesting. |
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Jan 27, 2020 9:29:44 GMT -8
The main thing I took from the book was the size of the trade in cattle hides in early-19th-century California.
I wonder how much of the book's original popularity had to do with the fact that it dealt with someone from the upper class taking his "junior-year abroad" with a bunch of peons?
I always associate Dana's book with Kipling's "Captains Courageous" and it takes me a second or two to recall which is which. I prefer "Captain's Courageous" but perhaps because it is fiction and Kipling was a wonderful writer.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Jan 27, 2020 9:40:45 GMT -8
They have rounded the tip of South America, spent some time on the island of Juan Hernandez and are now heading toward California, having just crossed the equator again.
I think it’s a wonderful notion for a novel since it’s unlikely your average peon is going to have the skill or the notion to write of his adventures. This one just needed a bit more Kipling or Melville inserted into the prose. But he has his moments.
His one grand point so far (and it’s a good and fair one) is to dispel the idea that once the ship is made prepared for a journey, there isn’t all that much to do but stand around the decks and look at the vast ocean. They were kept constantly busy.
And I get that. What doesn’t always come through is the “why” of some of the tasks. But I do understand the task of repairing and maintaining the rigging. That’s self-evidently necessary and clearly laborious.
|
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Jan 27, 2020 9:49:51 GMT -8
|
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Jan 27, 2020 10:06:00 GMT -8
My father had a copy of Two Years Before the Mast and got me to read it when I was young. The work with hides is one of the things I remember after nearly half a century.
As I recall, Dana went to sea for much the same reason Teddy Roosevelt went to the West. Presumably it worked for him, much as following Horace Greeley's advice did for TR.
|
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Feb 1, 2020 15:18:46 GMT -8
"A Death in Vienna" by Dr. Frank Tallis As promised, I have delved into another book of the so-called "Liebermann" series, in order to determine whether or not our worshipful audience should use their valuable time on perusing this series. A Death in Vienna takes place in Vienna (duh) of 1902 when detective Oskar Reinhardt is called to a distinctly odd crime scene. A woman's maid has advised the police that her mistress has locked herself in her room and has not responded to her requests to open the door. Reinhardt and his assistant, Hausmann, break open the door and find themselves in a darkish room with a body lying on a devan as if posing for a picture. They immediately know she is dead from the slight smell of decay which is already beginning to take fill the chamber. As they approach the body, they note she is an extremely beautiful young woman with flowing blond hair. Unfortunately, there is a large blood stain on the woman's dress which has been caused by a deadly gunshot wound. After a quick look over of the room, they note that the windows are locked and that there are no secret panels through which someone could have gained entrance. They are also sure that nobody, other than the deceased, was in the room when they opened the door. It is a mystery. Heightening the mystery is the fact that the deceased, a Miss Lowenstein, was a medium who held regular seances for a number of different "customers." At first glance, the scene is made to look something like a suicide, but given the fact that no gun is found in the room, a suicide would have been impossible. Even stranger is the fact that when an autopsy is performed on the body, there is no bullet to be found. Reinhardt is unable to make any rapid headway and comes under pressure from the police commissioner to make an arrest and get the case closed. He calls in his young friend Dr. Max Liebermann to advise on the investigation. The rest of the novel deals with the ends and outs of exactly how and why Miss Lowe was murdered and who the perpetrator was. "A Death in Vienna" is the first in the Liebermann detective series, Liebermann being a young Jewish medical doctor who is interested in psychology and is a junior colleague of Sigmund Freud. Both he and detective Reinhardt are music lovers and spend many an evening making music together; Reinhardt has a fine baritone and Liebermann is an accomplished pianist. But they also share a great interest in crime and criminals. Liebermann is something of a criminal profiler long before it became popular. However, since psychology had not yet attained the reputation it later gained, the authorities, and even his medical colleagues are often skeptical of his ideas. "A Death in Vienna" is the basis for the recent PBS aired series of the same name. While the basic theme and characters are similar, the TV series uses both in ways which the book did not. Unlike the previous Liebermann book I read, "Vienna Blood," this one does not deal with salacious sex and the psycho-babble is kept within bounds. I enjoyed it more than "Vienna Blood" which is a positive. That said, I am not sure I find them that good, much less excellent. It seems to me that Tallis writes to a formula, which is common, but he doesn't even try to hide this fact. He drops little bits here and there in the attempt to give the atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Vienna, but I found most of these simply kitsch. That said, the writing is good and the story was believable. I must leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide whether or not you might wish to dive into this 420 page (about) book., |
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Feb 1, 2020 15:58:03 GMT -8
This might indeed be of interest. Caleb Carr wrote at least two books about an alienist (the term in use in that era for a psychiatrist) dealing with serial killers in the late 1890s and early 1900s. I've read the first, The Alienist, and rather enjoyed it. The alienist finds himself dealing with NYC Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt as they try to solve a grisly series of murders.
The wikipedia article on the book notes that Carr lived in the neighborhood in which he set, though of course much later. He also studied the limited psychiatric literature available so that he wouldn't give any of the characters knowledge they would be unlikely to have. And he worked to give a feel for life in that era.
A friend read the sequel and didn't think it was worth reading. I think it used recovered memory as an aspect, which certainly is inauspicious.
William L. DeAndrea also wrote a mystery featuring TR in 1896, The Lunatic Fringe. This one involves him with an Irish cop and has no psychiatric connections. It was also an enjoyable read.
Unfortunately, I read these many years ago and no longer have them, so I can't give as much detail as I might like.
Carr, it should be noted, was a historian, and I also read a book of his in that genre, The Devil Soldier, about Frederick Townsend Ward, the American Mandarin who founded the Ever-Victorious Army to fight the Taiping Rebellion. The army gained its greatest fame after Ward's early death under Charles Gordon, which is why the latter is commonly known as Chinese Gordon.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Feb 2, 2020 8:15:43 GMT -8
Thank you. That may be the entry point for the Tallis series. I hadn't started "Vienna Blood" yet.
|
|
|
|
Post by kungfuzu on Feb 3, 2020 10:29:18 GMT -8
In a previous post dealing with "The Wright Brothers" it was asked how far a plane could fly without power. I just happened to be looking at a newspaper article today about an Air Canada plane which had to return to the airport due to an engine failure. This got me to looking into which engines were used on the plane and this led me to the following:
That is impressive.
|
|
|
|
Post by artraveler on Feb 3, 2020 12:26:56 GMT -8
That plane, if I remember correctly was at over 35,000 ft and the 43 miles of glide would have taken, ar 200 knots, about 5 minutes. Had it been at 12,000 feet there would have been no way to land. I give full credit to the pilot and crew for a crash they could walk away from. However, why did they run out of fuel ?
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Feb 3, 2020 16:59:00 GMT -8
Yes. Not bad for a 767. I would not have thought that was possible. I don't think Joe Biden's campaign will glide that long unpowered.
|
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Feb 13, 2020 20:45:38 GMT -8
Joseph Major, who very occasionally showed up on ST, has written a number of books, mostly available as e-books. One recent one which I just finished reading is The Motherland Knows, about the changes in the history of space (especially lunar) exploration that result from Yuri Gagarin not getting killed in a crash.
Gagarin has become very concerned. The death of the main Russian space rocket designer (Korolev) due to poor hospital care has upset him. And he's been getting lots of letters from ordinary people asking him (as in essence a leading Soviet celebrity) to do something about all their problems (from the systemic failures of Communism). It also has occurred to him that dead heroes can't embarrass the authorities.
So he begins to think about defecting. Unlike most Soviet citizens, he actually gets to travel abroad to speak on space subjects (or check out possible foreign cosmonauts). Of course, he has guards to protect him (and prevent him from defecting). Nevertheless, on one such trip (to India), he manages to slip a message asking for help to Arthur C. Clarke, who also is there. This gets Clarke involved in intrigues that he'd really rather not deal with -- but it's for space, and in the end he can't say no.
Actually getting out is still a problem, but one day Gagarin -- checking out East German pilots for possible inclusion in the program -- pulls a sudden escape (with his wife and children) in a primitive plane that proves enough to get to West Berlin. This leads to the usual debriefing, though it doesn't help that he doesn't know English (or German) and no one on hand in the CIA knows Russian. But one of their German Luftwaffe consultants is Erich Hartmann, who learned Russian the hard way, so they bring him in as an interpreter.
Gagarin and his family are eventually sent to Houston for debriefing, with access to American astronauts (who appreciate meeting the first man in space) and others. Clarke and Hartmann are also there, with Robert Conquest (who also knows Russian fluently, has just written his book on the Yezhovshchina, and is also a sometime SF writer and editor) showing up as well. There is also security -- although the Soviets are claiming he just went crazy, they've also already tried once (in Berlin as they were about to leave) to recover their property.
Gagarin has many concerns -- learning English and fitting in with the local community, being debriefed about all he knows about the Soviet space program, and various other things. The people he deals with also are affected. Clarke and most of the astronauts knew little about the purges, and learning about this from Conquest has some affect on their views. Of course, not everyone keeps an open mind. Some of the SF writers are close-minded on some subjects -- Robert Heinlein is reluctant to accept that the stories of dead cosmonauts are false and that his observations from his 1960 trip to Russia are often wrong. Later still the leftist Isaac Asimov (who voted for Henry Wallace in 1948) will find it equally hard to accept that Communism is a really bad system.
One result of all this is that the Soviets decide to keep up their efforts to reach the Moon, even after the US gets their first (at least up to a point, there seems to be no significant change in the Apollo program), which leads to NASA being able to continue its lunar explorations longer. There are perhaps other effects as well, such as G. Gordon Liddy becoming a top CIA official (Nixon didn't like those Ivy League types) before he can get too involved in political spying.
The book continues through the end of 1972, as a large crowd of SF writers and such take an ocean liner to watch a Moon launch from that end. One suspects that there might be a sequel planned, perhaps set later but carrying the story forward. (If there was no Watergate, Nixon would presumably remain President, which would significantly impact political history from about mid-1973 on.)
An interesting encounter at the end also provides an example of the sort of humor Joseph (he's a very long-time friend, I'm going to refer to him by his first name) likes to include in his books. There are lots of in-jokes that can provide a lagniappe of sorts to those who get them -- but are harmless for those who don't. (For example, in another -- and much grimmer -- book of his I recently read, The Year of Jubilo involving a fascistic US after William Quantrill comes east and links up with Booth, making the assassination of Lincoln a true decapitation of the US government, includes an attempt to launch a coup in France during World War I. The effort owes a lot to Seven Days in May, which is a nice touch for someone like me who catches the references but simply not noticed by others. ECOMCON had to be called something, after all.)
In this case, Carl Sagan on board the ship at the end meets Robert Bloch, who mentions his mentor H. P. Lovecraft -- a horror writer who kept up with modern science. Sagan thinks he might like to meet him, but Bloch points out that Lovecraft died in 1937 so they'd need to recover his "essential saltes" (a reference to HPL's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which during the 1960s was made into the Vincent Price horror movie The Haunted Palace and linked to the much better known Poe). Many readers would be unaware of Leeman Kessler, who has made a living of sorts pretending to be a reanimated Lovecraft and sending out his "Ask Lovecraft" blogs (which I've followed for years). Joseph informed me of this, so of course he knows about it -- and also no doubt that a reanimated Carl Sagan has been added.
This is a fun book, though of course it can be said to deal with nothing of earth-shaking importance.
|
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Mar 6, 2020 19:36:16 GMT -8
Operation Postmaster was an actual operation in which British operatives, with assistance from various other British officials, captured an Italian merchant ship (Duchessa d'Aosta) and a pair of seagoing tugs from the neutral (Spanish) harbor of Santa Isabel on Fernando Po. The effort was led by Gustavus March-Phillipps and Geoffrey Appleyard under the distant authority of Colin Gubbins. The book covers their training and earlier actions (especially Operation Savannah), the voyage to West Africa in the fishing yacht Maid Honor, their wait (and minor operations) while the political in-fighting went on until the operation was finally allowed to go ahead, the operation itself, and its aftermath.
He also does a lot of linking to Ian Fleming, who was involved in some of the paperwork in his intelligence work for the Navy under Rear Admiral John Godfrey (commonly thought to be M). Lett notes that Gubbins's codename actually was M, and suggests James Bond himself was based heavily on several of the agents involved.
The operation itself was a difficult one. There were many vicissitudes merely getting to Santa Isabel harbor, and a lot of careful work making the ships vulnerable at the right moment. They even had a bit of a time zone problem (Fernando Po was on Madrid time, which they didn't realize until they got there, and which necessitated a delay in going in). The seizure itself went well, but then they had to get the boats out of the harbor for a rendezvous with the British corvette Violet. Naturally, the ship had run aground and was several days late in reaching their rendezvous, which created a lot of additional problems. But they eventually made it.
Covering up was itself an adventure, but they had some convenient scapegoats arranged.
How accurate is this? The actual operation and personnel are genuine. The Fleming connection? Well, that is no doubt somewhat speculative. But who knows? It could be true. And in any case, a lot of people will find the story of Operation Postmaster itself very interesting.
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 9, 2020 13:01:48 GMT -8
I found it surprising that The Fleming Connection extends to a movie I watched just the other day. Ian Fleming wrote the novel, Albert R. Broccoli was the producer of this 1968 movie. |
|
|
|
Post by timothylane on Mar 9, 2020 13:06:33 GMT -8
I knew Fleming wrote the novel, but I didn't know Broccoli produced the movie. I guess it makes sense, though. Hmm, I wonder how well Dick Van Dyke would have done as a James Bond villain. (He was a murderer in a Columbo episode -- a photographer who murdered his wife.)
|
|
Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,275
Member is Online
|
Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 9, 2020 16:40:33 GMT -8
Yes, and Goldfinger plays the Baron Bomburst. 'Q' is in it as well. And there's one other actor who was in a Bond film but I forget which.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was an ambitious project. It is truly great (perhaps Truly Scrumptious) in parts, but the whole is a bit cobbled together in places.
|
|
