The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly, 2008
422 pages. Little, Brown and Company; First printing.
ISBN 978-0-316-16629-4

Wow. I've read a few Connelly books before (The Last Coyote, Desert Star, Nine Dragons), and always found them enjoyable. This one brings his Mickey Haller (a.k.a. The Lincoln Lawyer) and Detective Harry Bosch characters together in one story, and it's a doozy. I recently read or heard somewhere that former journalists tend to make good thriller authors, and I certainly agree in this case. I can see why as well: the straightforward, concise narrative required for journalistic work translates directly to the genre. The amount of research one (ideally) needs to do also maps well, plus you have a lot more time to get things right in a novel. I only caught one error (preemptory is used in place of peremptory), and I had to look it up because I doubted my own memory once I saw it used consistently in a best-selling novel. I was delighted to find events I thought unlikely - that might have happened just because the author made them so - turn out to have good explanations later in the narrative. To me, it's a sign of an author who takes his story (and reader) seriously. Once again, I enjoyed the easy, laminar flow of Connolly's narrative. The words almost disappear in the stream of pure story coming off the page. I blew through this volume in just a few sittings, and kept wanting to come back for more. This may be the best Connelly I've read. If you're a fan of the genre, check it out. Highly recommended.

Confessions by Augustine, ~397; tr. Thomas Williams, 2019
305 pages. Hackett Publishing Company; Third trade printing.
ISBN 978-1-62466-782-4

Considering the philosophical importance and theological impact of Augustine's works, I anticipated this would be a long and difficult read, along the lines of St. John of the Cross or perhaps Plato. Parts of it are in fact challenging, but only in the final three books. The first ten I found instead to consist of comparatively straightforward, unguarded, and plainspoken narrative, due in part to Williams' very accessible translation. Augustine pours his heart out to God (and the reader) without an eye to hammering home some unique point or making a name for himself. Indeed, he recants several such prior attempts, even saying at one point he doesn't know what happened to some of his previous books, and doesn't care to look for them. He recounts many of his follies and how God saw him through them all to finally come humbly to embrace Christ and His Church, then ends with three chapters of exegetical commentary on the first chapter of Genesis. It is only here that we get a sample of the philosophical rigor of Augustine's mind. But despite building a specific interpretation of the creation account, he is quick to note that his ideas do not necessarily invalidate others', distinguishing between disagreements on truth versus disagreements on authorial intent. Further, he maintains that to different people the same Scripture may illuminate different truths, all of which remain true, and that people of good will may disagree on what signifies what. His key point is that all should seek Truth, for Truth is not the possession of one person, but for the same for everyone.

"For someone who speaks a lie speaks what belongs only to himself." (12.25.34)

The cover art, depicting the return of the prodigal son, is an apt choice, as Augustine consistently reiterates his own inadequacy and God's relentless mercy toward him. Highly recommended.

My Granny got me this book because she knew I liked old books. Not being much of a military history guy, I browsed through it, admired the two-color typesetting, then put it on the shelf as a cool old book. I was also a little concerned about damaging it, as it was already over a hundred years old. But after retiring, I catalogued my old books and recognized I'd never actually read the whole thing. So at 119 years old, I carefully read through it (dear Granny passed at 97). It starts with Hugo himself exploring the modern (1861) site of Hougomont, which he takes care to inform the reader is Hugo-mons, built by Hugo, Sire de Sommeril, presumably his own forebear. After a description of the site, he flashes back to June 18, 1815 and gives a detailed description of the formations and officers on both sides, then an account of the battle, and finally a sort of explanation of why Napoleon lost, despite being the superior general.

Through most of the book, there are references to places and people with which the reader is assumed to be familiar. It's clear Hugo expects you to be familiar with the region and the battle itself already, as probably most cultured Frenchmen were in the middle of the 19th century. But I'm not, so I just had to take his word for it. Which became a problem because, as I read, it became increasingly clear that his account is more than a bit biased. There's a good deal of oblique trash-talking of the Allied officers, attributing victory instead to the bravery and fortitude of the common soldier. But in the end, Fate, not Wellington, is Napoleon's true enemy. Misfortune for France and good luck for the Allies are what turn the tide: the weather, unseen terrain, and a fortunate choice of roads are what thwart Bonaparte's genius. He must fail in order that the Revolution can continue via politics instead of war. Europe is made ready for liberty by Napoleon's empire crushing the monarchs, and when the monarchs return they find they must accept the rights of the people. It's a patriotic spin on the entire era, but I can't take it as anything approaching objective history.

You won't learn anything important about the battle from this scattered and biased account, but you will get Hugo's take on the destiny of Europe and his very 19th-century view of the inevitability of Progress. If this sounds interesting, the Library of Congress has scanned its own copy here.

NB: On looking into details for this review, I learned that some events Hugo relates (particularly the hollow road of Ohain, and Cambronne's stand) are generally rejected as ahistorical. It also appears to constitute the better part of Book I of Part Two of Les Misérables.

This is the March selection for the Beaverton C. S. Lewis Society, and the first Charles Williams novel I've read. I am impressed. It's a challenging read, not because of the vocabulary or literary references, which are on a popular, rather than erudite, level. The difficulty instead is in absorbing the supernatural, almost magical quality of the narrative. The dead, the dying, and many of the living have dreamlike visions that can be as perplexing to the reader as they are to the characters. But Williams vividly captures their mystical and often profound quality, turning them into absorbing reading. People aren't always what they seem, and spirits of all kinds inhabit the streets of Battle Hill. The reader must forgo deciding too quickly who is who and what they're up to - even whether they are a force for good or ill. For much of the novel there are characters that are not easy to classify. Many struggle with fear, envy, lust, and other weaknesses. Some give in while others resist, and it's not at all certain who will persevere to the end. Highly recommended.

P. S. I was told that I'd need to read Thomas Howard's The Novels of Charles Williams in order to understand this book, but I'm glad I went at it "cold" instead. I'm sure I'll get an idea of Howard's interpretation at the March meeting, and I can see how it compares with my own.

Being a preternatural saver, I've always liked Dave Ramsey's take on debt, saving and investing. My wife listens to his podcasts all the time, and turned me on to another Ramsey contributor, Dr. John Delony, whose training and background is in psychology. He has a call-in show where people ask mostly for relationship, family, and mental health advice. He gives, in my opinion, pretty good answers and has a lot of real-world experience with what works. While tuning in, I kept hearing about this new book he'd written about anxiety and how to get on top of it, so to speak. I went ahead and ordered it from Amazon, and it arrived, like, the next day.

Like many self-help books, it's an easy read. Even being a slow reader (I hear the words in my head), I knocked it out in a couple of days. It has a lot of good advice on how to get your finances, relationships, fitness, and faith on track. But I couldn't help but feel that it was a bit of a bait-and-switch. Here's what I mean: I was expecting insights into the nature of anxiety and how to combat it directly, but the book essentially zeroed in on reasons for anxiety, and how to correct those. It tacitly stipulates that anxiety is appropriate in a given situation, and can most effectively be addressed by fixing the anxiety-producing circumstance. It is essentially silent on what to do with anxiety about things that aren't particularly worthy of it. These can be anything from neurotic worries to ruminating over potential threats to panicking over minor incidents. I've seen (and experienced) some of these myself, and was hoping for practical advice on handling them.

I can recommend the book for someone who is anxious about real problems, who wants to fix their circumstances in order to give themselves space to relax and have resources available for the inevitable troubles in life. But for someone with free-standing anxiety, it may not be of much help. Recommended with this caveat.

Written by someone who was there, and knew a lot of the players in the reality of the Apollo, Soyuz, and Skylab era of the early 1970s, this alternate history is plausible enough to accept, and taut enough to engage. It reads a bit like a faster-paced Tom Clancy - a generic thriller that balances several interacting storylines in Houston, China, and low earth orbit. I recognized a lot of the history, having been interested in space travel as a child at the time, and also some places where it had departed. The female lead, a Soviet cosmonaut, had clearly been involved in other fictional events in a prior book, and walked on the moon with Apollo astronauts. But once I figured that out, I settled back in to enjoy the (now firmly alternative) storyline. While technically solid, the story does get a little loose in places, with certain events not explained well enough to be clearly comprehensible. It's unclear why the Chinese try to detain (but not interrogate or kill) the primary capsule commander for the Apollo-Soyuz mission, or how a spoofed Soviet launch of an anti-satellite missile is meant to facilitate the theft of American particle beam technology from orbit. I'd have to re-read it with hindsight, I think, to follow some of these threads, but I find I don't really care to. Walking the balance between making the plot pleasantly surprising and sandbagging the reader with seemingly random events is tough, and Hadfield unfortunately doesn't do the best job, seeming to err on the side of surprise over clarity. The best instances I've seen of managing this seem to involve distraction and misdirection, rather than obscurity: in the end you see what makes perfect sense, but you never considered because you were so intent on a different train of thought. While I can't say I can do any better than Hadfield, I found myself wanting more from a multiple best-selling author. Not recommended except for immersion in the 1970s space program vibe.

Finished The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare tonight, including the (postponed) publisher's preface which contained spoilers. I'm glad Penguin put the warning at the top and I got to come at it "clean". I anticipated some of the revelations, but the final form they took was, as is fitting a nightmare, completely unexpected - a bolt from the blue, so to speak. I confess I kept trying to figure out whether and what the allegory was, and trying on different alternatives went from enjoyable to somewhat tiresome. I suggest the reader just take it as it is, again like a dream, and wait to the end to attempt interpretations. It's a short, quite enjoyable read. The prose is colorful and witty, the dialog often a bit silly, and the tension very real. You get the sense that anything can happen, and share the protagonist's anxiety at this realization. Definitely a book worthy of multiple readings. Recommended.

A fun, compelling tale of Joseph Ryan, a USAAF colonel, sent to an Italian POW camp. As the ranking officer, he takes charge of a slovenly, disorganized, undisciplined combined unit of American and British officers (and a few Other Rank enlisted men), becoming instantly unpopular for his insistence on discipline and order. In direct contradiction of the British lieutenant colonel formerly in charge, he mandates the men show respect to officers on both sides of the fence, and parlays this into concessions from the camp commandant, also a colonel. These include full Red Cross rations, uniforms, and reciprocal respect for Allied officers by camp staff. But his nearly 1000 men are used to slacking off and haranguing their captors, and resent having to shave, clean, and form up in ranks for inspection. Just about this time, the Italians surrender, and things get messy. No one has any orders regarding what this means for the camp. They can't release Allied combatants into what is still a war zone - German troops still operate in the Italian theater. The Allies, and most of the Italians, don't want to let Germany know there are a thousand Allied POWs in a lightly-guarded camp, so they lay low. But eventually, the Germans capture the camp and load the prisoners in boxcars for transport to Germany. Ryan comes up with a daring plan to take the train and escape.

The characterizations are strong and you get a good feel for the social dynamics in the POW camp. Ryan is an unimpeachably dedicated hard-ass, with immense personal dignity, who gives his best and expects the same from everyone else. This is apparent from the opening pages, when he, a captured enemy airman, berates the guard of his soon-to-be prison for his slovenly dress and general lack of discipline. He takes charge of the camp immediately, without regard to how things have settled prior to his arrival. He knows his duty, and the duty of his captors, and pursues these doggedly, despite near-universal dislike. The story is compelling, and only a bit far-fetched. You are really rooting for Ryan to succeed in rescuing his charges, even when they are resisting him. It was made into a movie with Frank Sinatra in the title role - great casting, if you ask me. I have not seen the film, but it's on my watch list if it ever comes up on Amazon Prime. Recommended.

This was the February selection for the Beaverton C. S. Lewis Society. I had never read it before, and didn't know until someone told me at the meeting that there is no Malcolm. Lewis once again has made verisimilitude an art, and rendered one side of a months-long conversation with a completely fictional correspondent. I assumed he might have added a bit of context here and there to make sure the reader could grasp the gist of what Malcolm had said, but instead it was all invention. Anyway, regardless of its structural qualities, the book is also an excellent investigation into the nature and practice of prayer, from liturgical corporate prayer to closed-door adoration and petition. Lewis is his usual unguarded self, raising and attempting to answer the most troubling and perplexing questions regarding how we address God and whether, when and how He responds. And indeed, how much of our prayer life is just God talking to God with us as the instrument, as the Spirit intercedes for us. But none of it is high-minded theologizing - it is instead a real man talking to his (admittedly imaginary) friend about his real experiences, impressions, and feelings. At just 124 pages, I thought I'd breeze through it, especially when I saw that a lot of them contained only "orphaned" paragraphs at the beginning or end of chapters. But there's so much depth here, I had to read it over twice before attempting to engage with the questions presented for group discussion. Highly recommended if you're up to it.

I had never read this as a child, so when it came up in the library-on-a-stick, I grabbed it. It's an easy read (intended, as it is, for youth), but neither as clever nor as offensive as I had been lead to believe. Tom is at times winsomely shrewd, but is more often just lazy and inconsiderate. Societal flaws are on display, but Tom stands firmly within society, rather than judging it from above, so the reader is left to make his own judgements. There are a few instances of "the n-word", but the book does not appear to be the racist holdover I had been lead to expect. It seems instead only to obliquely reference the accepted hierarchies of the time, including those based on race - and these are ancillary to the story. Tom doesn't hate black slaves, but he acknowledges their low estate, just as he recognizes the status of people society favors, like judges and senators. And in a certain sense, he does so innocently - Tom didn't build the institutions and hierarchies, and his complicity is largely (though not entirely) unexamined. If anything, Twain's matter-of-fact presentation encourages the reader to consider how future generations might view unsavory aspects of our own society which we to some degree tolerate. In Tom, we may get a glimpse of Twain's own boyhood, with his nascent tendency to kick against the goads, but also his naïve acceptance of the world he was born into, which he only later came to question. All in all, it is a well-written and engaging book that conveys the outlook and attitudes of boyhood well, only in exaggerated relief for humorous effect. Recommended.

Unsurprisingly, this is not a great book. But, while pulpy and lurid, it is at least adventuresome; a lesser example of the kind of books Haggard or Stevenson produced. Leif Langdon, an atavistic Swede, born to small, dark-haired parents but possessed of a massive frame, fair hair and blue eyes, is captured by Mongolian Uighurs who believe he is their long-awaited savior. He discovers they preside over the ruins of a lost civilization, which they hope he will renew by mysterious rites involving a black, tentacled monster he recognizes as the Kraken, but they call Khalk'ru. Leif escapes, but unsure whether his experiences in the Gobi are real or hallucinations, he returns to the West, eventually winding up in a remote region of Alaska with his Cherokee friend Jim. They discover a hidden land underneath a mirage of rocky plain - a tropical paradise beneath the frozen landscape. Both Leif's and Jim's folklore inform their discoveries therein. They contend with miniature natives, fearsome Amazons, and mysterious priests of Khalk'ru. Leif must battle his own genetic memories that threaten to drown his identity in that of Dwayanu, the ancient high priest of Khalk'ru. While the book has interesting elements, it's narrative thrust wanders, and it lacks moral clarity. It ends up being little more than a fantastical B-movie plot. Not recommended.

The Zimiamvian Trilogy: #1

Like The Worm Ouroboros, this book is written in Jacobean English, with frequent ancillary clauses, long and descriptive, interspersed within the narrative. I found it difficult to read under good conditions, and nigh impossible when distracted, even by my own internal dialogue. It also demands a good deal of attention to follow the story, which can shift between reality and realms of dream or magic. Also, the characters are many and variously referenced: by title, name, or relation. There are many references to Greek and other poetry (Sappho being the most frequent), but most of the foreign-language content comes with a translation (except French for some reason). But even with all these caveats, the book holds one's attention: why is Lessingham in league with such a rogue as the Vicar? What is his connection with Duke Barganax and Fiorinda, or Queen Antiope? What is the nature of Doctor Vandermast's seemingly extra-planar cottage, and why are nymphs and fey creatures his frequent companions? Alas, the answers to these questions are only hinted at in this first volume, though the author states explicitly (on the back cover) that this is a world created by Aphrodite for her Lover. It may well be that she inhabits both Fiorinda and Antiope, and her Lover both Barganax and Lessingham. Perhaps the rest of the trilogy will tell. Recommended, but with serious caveats.

Book 4 of the Chronicles of Narnia

I re-read this classic for the C. S. Lewis Society of Beaverton January 2026 meeting. I was struck by how plainspoken and accessible it is (being a children's book) while simultaneously conveying such profound concepts. For example, when the children hear they are to be welcomed to a feast by the Gentle Giants, they not only forget their duty, but become even more discontented with their surroundings and each other. Anticipating comfort distracts from both duty and present enjoyment. When the witch tries to enchant them all into disbelieving in Narnia, or anyplace other than the Underworld, their own concept of something better is what convinces them she's wrong. This is a potent illustration of the notion that our own material experience is merely a shadow or copy of the Reality we all long for, and indeed were made for. Throughout the book, death is portrayed as a journey from these shadow-lands into Aslan's Country, where everything (including us) is perfected. The children "muff" most of the signs given to them by Aslan, typically by being lazy or distracted, yet they still succeed in their quest (though perhaps with additional troubles) once they resolve to follow them. It's also notable that to follow the final sign and keep their word to Aslan, they must break their word to one another and release the Knight: there are levels of loyalty, which can come into conflict. Definitely recommended for both children and adults.