Blind Descent

Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Place on Earth, by James M. Tabor

Random House (2010), Hardcover, 286 pages

As I’ve said on a number of occasions, I’m a mountaineering and climbing junkie, albeit an armchair one. Well, that goes for the other extreme of, well, extremes – caving. Unlike mountaineering, I can actually claim some modest experience in spelunking, nothing too dramatic, but I have penetrated some non-tourist caves and squeezed through some narrow spaces, my claustrophobia, while present, being much less visceral and paralyzing than my fear of heights. And so a book like this is to be savoured. because I can actually relate to what’s happening. This is the story of two men, the driven, tough-talking American Bill Stone, and the quiet meditative Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk, and their seperate quests to locate the deepest cave on Earth. For Stone the candidate was Cheve in Mexico, for Klimchouk Krubera in Georgia. The book deals first with Stone, then Klimchouk, it perhaps would have been more interesting to run their stories in parallel, nevertheless this is a gripping account of the effort, the difficulties, the dangers, the discomforts, and yes, the tragedies of extreme caving. Several deaths are featured, each one explained carefully in terms of why it happened. There are also touching moments, meditations on the beauty of the caves at depths most humans will never see, and even humour, such as Stone and his girlfriend, having travelled alone hundreds of metres beneath the surface, reversing the mile-high club by becoming possibly the deepest humans ever to have sex. I won’t give away the revelation of which caver wins the race to find the deepest cave, that’s something I think the reader should have to earn by navigating metre by painful metre through the caves along with the explorers, but it is an enthralling story. Highly recommended for all lovers of adventure, of scary feats, of exploration, or for anyone who just a loves a good exciting read.

8.5/10

Game

Game, by Trevor Shearston

Allen & Unwin (2013), Paperback, 336 pages

This book does take me back to younger days, where I gloried in reading books about Australia’s own highwaymen and outlaws. It’s very reminiscent of Frank Clune’s semi-novelized accounsts of the bushrangers who roamed the goldfields in central NSW during the 1860’s. Ben Hall, Frank Gardiner, Johnny O’Meally, Johnny Gilbert, Johnny Dunn. I loved reading about them all. This is a more serious novelization of the life of probably the most tragic bushranger, Ben Hall. For those not familiar with Hall’s exploits, he was a young farmer whose wife ran off with another man taking his young son, leaving an embittered Hall to take up the offer from the flamboyant bandit Frank gardiner, to take part in the robbery of the Gold Escort Coach at Eugowra, a feat which has gone down in Australian legend. One thing led to another, and Hall, with a gang of similarly young and carefree ne’er-do-wells, went on the run from police, robbing coaches, riders, stores, and even whole towns. The book takes up the last year of hall’s life, when the strain of being pursued, of having no place to rest, is starting to take its toll on Hall and his confederate Gilbert and Dunn. Things don’t get any better when Gilbert kills a policeman in the course of a robbery and the trio begin to realise their journey can only end in two ways – death by bullet, or by the noose. Hall is also tormented by the presence of his young son, who is now living nearby. With the help of his brother, Hall makes tentative contact with his son, who gradually warms to him. Hall’s plan is to get his son to escape with him overseas, to New Zealand or the US where they can begin a new life. Howver, the hunt for Hall  and his associates is stepping up, endangering his plans for his son. It will be no surprise to anyone who knows the real story that the ending is not a happy one. Its a sad and melancholy story, but superbly written, authentic as to details including the language, customs and lifestyle of the time. For myself, there is an added touch, as I have visited most of the places associated with Hall’s life, making the book more poignant as well as easy to visualize. But even for anyone who knows little about the story, it is well worth reading as well. It is a really engrossing story, for anyone who loves Australian history, or just loves a good read.

8.5/10

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park

The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The History of the Wartime Codebreaking Centre and the Men and Women who were there, by Sinclair McKay

Aurum Press (2011), Paperback, 368 pages

There have been many books about the ultra-secret project to crack Germany’s Enigma coding during the Second World War, however, this book takes a new approach to focus on the lives of the people who worked on breaking the codes rather than what they actually achieved. It is a social history of Bletchley Park between 1938 and 1945, looking at how the thousands of staff who laboured there were recruited, what their working conditions were like (in a word, onerous), how they were housed, fed and entertained, how they related to one another, including romantically, and how Bletchley affected their lives after the war. One of the main impression left by this fascinating book is how people for vastly different backgrounds were able to gel to undertake this vital work. Oxbridge dons, working-class girls, titled debutantes, poets, writers, clerks, all managed to find common ground and work together in trying, high pressure conditions. The key individuals, the brilliant but tragic Alan Turing foremost, are all documented in their eccentricities and in the ways working at Bletchley affected them. McKay does not neglect the actual story of the cracking of the Enigma codes nor the geopolitical background, but in this book it takes a back seat to the people, many of whom remain unrecognised despite their heroic efforts because of the veil of secrecy that surrounded the project for many years after the war. McKay makes it clear this is their story, and a wonderful story it is. Excellent piece of social history dealing with a unique time and place.

8.5/10

India: A Portrait

India: A Portrait, by Patrick French

Penguin (2012), Paperback, 448 pages

An endlessly engaging portrait of a country and culture, or rather, cultures, so little understood in the West. French writes with genuine love for India and its people, the book is packed with personal experiences and anecdotes, that really enliven French’s detailed political, social, and economic history of the subcontinent since 1947. Among another things, French delves into India’s complex political history and the rise of Congress and the myriad of splinter parties that now yammer for attention, the vexed question of caste and the struggle for the Dalits (untouchables) and other despised segments of society to gain equality and power, Hindus versus Muslims and relations with Pakistan, and India’s truly remarkable economic rise and free-form capitalism, that nevertheless co-exists with the most appalling poverty. I enjoyed this book immensely, as I realised that the little I thought I knew about India was both, paradoxically,  completely right and completely wrong – India is just that complex a society, and a story. I would not have thought it possible to capture so vast a country in a mere 440 pages, but French has done it admirably, and made it entertaining to boot. Highly recommended.

9/10

The Ace of Skulls

The Ace of Skulls, by Chris Wooding

Gollancz (2014), Paperback, 496 pages

There was a brief moment, at the start of the book, that I feared Wooding was going to drop the ball with the final siren imminent. It seemed just possible that he could not maintain the stunning upward progression of this magnificent series for just one more book. After being so fluent and immersive for three successive editions, the first few pages just didn’t ring true for some reason, feeling a bit stilted, and my heart dropped. Fortunately, it was but a temporary flutter, and this book soon picked up to be every bit the equal of its predecessors if not the best in the series. He ties up the story of the Ketty Jay in superb, breakneck fashion, as the tension between the Archduke and the cult of the Awakeners descends into civil war, and Frey and his crew are neck-deep in it. Wooding brings the story to a close with pitched battles, magical duels, treachery, unearthly horror, but plenty of humour. All of the threads are tied up neatly and organically, nothing feels forced or artificial, each character attains the summation of their efforts and desires satisfactorily, and there’s a genuine sadness for the reader in bidding goodbye to a cast who have been so well-developed into fully-rounded, more or less likeable people. Some truly poignant moments, Silo’s eulogy for the battle-scarred warrior cat Slag brought tears to my eyes, and Jez’ apotheosis as a a fully-fledged Mane is both endearing and heartbreaking. I really hope that Wooding finds it within himself to one day revisit this world, the last few pages show potential for a one-off, more light-hearted reunion off the crew of the Ketty Jay sometime in the future. In the meantime, we are left with a truly epic series of books that I will probably end up reading many times over. There’s not much more I can say about this series – 4 books of five star quality or above, that says it all. I will miss the crew of the Ketty Jay more than I can enunciate.

10/10

 

Brainiac

Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, by Ken Jennings

Villard Books (2006), Hardcover, 269 pages

I think I’ve hinted before that I’m a trivia obsessive. I think I fulfill all the criteria: haven’t lost at Trivial Pursuit in more than 20 years, attend trivia contests at least once a week, count Mastermind and Jeopardy as among my favourite TV shows ever, read encyclopaedias for fun – oh, the list goes on. And that is why I’m always prepared to pay fawning tribute to a trivia compulsive whose obsession puts mine in the shade. Ken Jennings, a software designer from Utah who in 2004/2005, established a record run on Jeopardy of 74 straight games and $2.5 million in winnings. It propelled him to a stardom usually only experienced by rock stars and top-level athletes, being mobbed in the street, feted by every talk show host and lionised by columnists. After he finally went down in defeat, 2 years after his run began, the experience had left such an impression on him that he decided to write a book, not only about his time of glory, but also about the arcane phenomenon of trivia in the U.S.A. Between detailing the quite exhaustive, and exhausting, process of being selected to appear on Jeopardy, the ins and outs and quirks of the shows, and all the behind the scenes secrets the viewer doesn’t see, he explores the fiercely competitive world of college quiz bowl, the small town in Wisconsin which, for one weekend a year, becomes the trivia capital of the world, and the languishing world of pub trivia and why it has never attained the popularity it holds in Britain and elsewhere. Best of all, for a trivia buff, he has included as part of the narrative a selection of tantalizing questions which the reader may attempt to solve before resorting to the answers at the end of the chapter. This is a delightful book, humorous, quirky, honest, sometimes bizarre that combines laughter with serious attempts to answer the basic question where does our love of trivia come from, and what will we do when we eventually run out of trivia questions to ask (we won’t ever apparently, because new facts and factoids are created very day). Just heaven for trivia buffs.

9.5/10

The Iron Jackal

The Iron Jackal, by Chris Wooding

Gollancz (2011), Paperback, 480 pages.

 

Damn, but this series just gets better and better. I’m devastated that there is only one book remaining in the series after this, but at least the series seems certain to go out on an all-time high. Every book in this series has been a magnitude of brilliance better than its predecessor, so I’m expecting the final entry to be mind-blowing. This one is quite simply the best book I’ve ever read in this genre, although that could be a bit misleading, because this series crosses genres with consummate ease. Steampunk, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure, it defies classification. In the Iron Jackal I detected influence from Star Wars, William Gibson, Firefly, Tolkien and Jules Verne, it is a masterful pastiche of ideas woven into a single blisteringly fast-moving ride. The crew of the Ketty Jay are inveigled into stealing a mysterious ancient object, then are forced to attempt to return it to its place of origin after Captain Darian Frey finds it has placed him under a curse of death. The action moves from a hair-raising full speed train robbery to a daring heist from a heavily gaurded museum to a prison camp deep in the hostile land of Samarla to a stunning conclusion in a lost city. Despite the unrelenting pace, Wooding still manages to keep developing his characters with flair, and they are now fully-rounded, flawed but functioning human beings whose loyalty to each other and their captain is unbreakably strong, and continually strengthened by the adversity through which each must go in the course of the story. There’s no doubt that one of the many strengths of this book is the depth of the characterization, the characters are genuine and real and feel like it to the reader. Its one of the many reasons why I will be personally distraught when the series ends. However, I have some hope, that while the end of the Ketty Jay series is imminent, there’s evidence presented in this book that indicates the possibility of future books based on the past history of the planet and civilizations on which the story is set. For the first time, Wooding takes us to the hostile land of Samarla, which has been mentioned in earlier books in the context of the devastating Aerium Wars, but now enmerges as a civilization in its own right. The ancient civilization of Azyrx, which was referenced in the previous book, is also encountered here for the first time. Hints about the history of the planet and civilzations gives me hope that Wooding is leaving the way clear for future adventures in the earlier history of the planet, and I for one can’t wait. This is reading goodness of the highest order, simply wonderful.

10/10

The Black Lung Captain

The Black Lung Captain, by Chris Wooding

Gollancz (2012), Paperback, 512 pages

I thought the first book in this series, Retribution Falls, was a great read, but the author takes this one to a whole new level. Having introduced the motley crew of the Ketty Jay in the first book, Wooding now takes them in new directions, and it all feels completely organic and natural. At the beginning of the story, Captain Darian Frey and the Ketty Jay’s crew have fallen on hard times, reduced to robbing a rural orphanage to make ends meet. The subsequent chase by yokels intent on reclaiming the loot is both breathtaking and hilarious. While recovering from this debacle, Frey is approached by a shady looking captain and a foppish aristocrat with a proposition – to travel to a remote island populated by wild beasts and savage tribes in order to recover a treasure from a crashed ship. With few options left, Frey and co. take up the quest, but not surprisingly nothing turns out to be what it seems, and the “treasure” turns out to be something that could bring death and destruction to thousands, and as a result many will not stop at nothing to get their hands on it. The first third of the book moves at literally breakneck speed, leaving little time for character development, but even so we learn that Kez is slipping more and more into the world of the dreaded Manes, that daemonist Crake is even more consumed with guilt over the death of his niece, that Pinn is pining for his lost love, and Harkins is being tormented by the formidable ship’s cat, Slag. The rest of the book is slower but just as assured. Frey’s lover cum dire enemy Trinica Dracken makes a re-appearance, and treachery and double-dealing haunt Frey’s desperate quest to retrieve the lethal device before it is unleashed, and the others in the Ketty Jay crew seek to vanquish their particular daemons.  A wonderful, rip-roaring read, pure entertainment with enough character meat to deeply satisfy. There are two books left in the series, personally I can’t wait to get my hands on them. Fabulous!

9.5/10

Bridge of Spies

Bridge of Spies: A True Story of the Cold War, by Giles Whittell

Broadway Books (2010), Hardcover, 274 pages

It’s such a familiar trope from any spy book or movie – the darkened, mist-shrouded bridge between East and West, the tense parties on either side, trigger-fingers twitchy, as two men start to walk towards each other from opposite sides, cross and keep walking to the other side, to be received by their respective sides as heroes. It sounds like fiction, but in this case, it actually happened. On 10 February, 1962, at the height of the Cold War, just such an exchange occurred at the Glienecke Bridge in Berlin. Rudolf Abel, real name William Fisher, an alleged Soviet superspy who was in fact anything but, and Francis Gary Powers, a boy from the backwoods of West Virginia who was unlucky enough to be flying a U-2 spyplane over Russia when the Soviets shot it down, took that storied walk across the bridge. Just a short time before, as one of the conditions of the exchange, a young American student named Frederic Pryor, arrested by the paranoid Stasi after asking too many questions about the East German economy, was returned to the West at Checkpoint Charlie. While the book covers the exchange and the negotations leading up to it, most of it deals with the lead-up to the capture of Abel and Powers, setting the stage by detailing the state of relations between East and West, the paranoia of the Americans over the so-called “missile gap” and the Soviet frustration and anxiety about the U-2 overflights. Powers’ background and the history of the U-2 flights is covered in detail, as is Abel’s failed attempts to set up Soviet spy networks in the US, foiled by the incompetence of his contacts, including the inept Finnish spy who eventually turned him in. All in all, this is a great piece of writing, thoughtful coverage of a time when humanity hovered on the brink of nuclear annihilation. The people involved are fleshed out and detailed with sensitivity and humanity, and the real feeling of the time is captured. It is as enjoyable as any spy thriller,and even more satisfying to read because it is real. Great stuff, highly recommended.

9/10

Retribution Falls

Retribution Falls, by Chris Wooding.

Gollancz (2012), Paperback, 448 pages

A rollicking good read. Shades of Firefly, a touch of Dune, a bit of magic, and some shiver-me-timbers pirates – what’s not to love? Set on an unnamed world divided into many different environments, with pockets of civilizations and freebooting crime, where most travel is by airship, the story concerns the Ketty Jay, her distinctly shady captain and his motley crew. Sound familiar? Well, there is absolutely nothing startlingly original here, but what the book does have is a deftly handled story, interesting characters, including a daemonist, a woman who is actually dead, a couple of neurotic pilots, and an unstoppable bad-guy smashing golem who is actually the spirit of a dead child animating a suit of armour. Frey, the skipper, is lured into making a once in a career heist on a rich trader, only to have the ship blow up as he begins the attack. Realizing they have been framed, the crew of the Ketty Jay are in a race to locate the real murderers before they end up swinging from nooses themselves for the crime. The story moves at breakneck speed, but the plot twists and gradual revelations are handled expertly, and it really is an exciting page-turner. Like I said, you are not going to find a great deal of surprises in this book, but what you will get is an entertaining, occasionally moving, and sometimes screamingly funny read. Highly recommended.

8.5/10

To Your Scattered Bodies Go.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go, by Philip Hose Farmer

Gateway, (2013), Kindle edition, 207 pages

An SF classic I have revisited after about 30 years, and I am surprised how different it was to how I remembered it. For those who have lived on Mars for four decades and have therefore never read it, Farmer’s brilliant concept is of a an immense river taking up the whole of a distant planet. Along its banks, all of the 37 billion humans who have ever lived have been simultaneously reborn, naked, hairless and confused. The hero is the intrepid Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, his love interest the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland, Alice Pleasance Liddell. Burton and a  band of followers set out to explore the river and discover the mysterious aliens they believe are responsible for their rebirth, but along the way discover that humanity has learnt little through being reincarnated and war, cruelty and misery prevail. Words cannot capture the ingenuity of Farmer’s idea, although a little dated (2008) must have seemed a long way in the future when he wrote), it remains one of the best-imagined worlds in sf. I had not understood all those years ago why he chose a minor historical figure like Burton as his protagonist, but now I appreciate what a master-stroke it was. Burton is superbly realized, a he-man adventurer suitable for facing the dangers he faces but also intelligent and perceptive. If I have a criticism, it is that his female counterpart Alice Liddell is nowhere near as well developed. She remains basically a Victorian cipher who priggishly resists Burton’s charms, before eventually swooning into his arms and then promptly disappearing from the story.  The relationship between Burton and his continually respawning enemy Hermann Goering is much better realized. The two, locked together in a continual cycle of death and rebirth, spin around a mutual axis of alternate loathing and co-operation, which is fascinating to read. This is simply a great book. As I have never read any of the sequels that will complete the story, I will now venture into unknown territory when I continue the journey. I hope it is interesting as what I have read here.

9/10

The Gold Rush

The Gold Rush: The Fever That Forever Changed Australia, by David Hill

William Heinemann (2011), Paperback, 498 pages

Delightful book that brought back many classroom memories. All of the stuff that  was drilled into us at school about the Gold Rush (which I found unbelievably boring back then, by the way), came back to me in a rush, and this time I enjoyed it. Edmund Hargreaves’ discovery of Gold at Ophir in NSW in 1851, the rushes at Ballarat and Bendigo, ships by the score standing idle in harbour because the crew deserted to join the gold stampede, the Eureka Stockade (Australia’s 15 minute civil war), brutal attacks on and riots against the Chinese, the cannibal Aborigines of the Palmer River in Queensland, who allegedly looked on the diggers not as a problem, but as an addition to the menu, all the stuff I had completely forgotten (well, not Eureka, I had a Eureka flag hanging in my home for many years). But the best part of this book is the stuff Hill covers that I had never heard of. I had no idea for example, that there were gold rushes not only in NSW and Victoria, but also Tasmania, South Australia and Northern Territory. In fact every state and territory in Australia (bar the Australian Capital Territory, which didn’t exist until the 1920s), had some version of a gold rush of varying degree. This is far from boring history, as Hill moves with excellent pace through a half century when Australia’s love affair with things pulled out of the ground began, and still hasn’t abated. He doesn’t ignore the personal side of the gold lust either, with plentiful first hand accounts of this craziest of times, including testimony from a future British Prime Minister and a future US President, both of whom as young men got caught up in the excitement. I highly recommend this book to anyone with even a passing interest in Australian history, or who just loves a good, sprawling drawn out adventure story. Excellent.

9/10

Into the Black

Into the Black (Odyssey One), by Evan Currie

47North (2012), Kindle edition, 587 pages

Absolutely nothing in the least original about this story, and in parts it’s cheesy to the point of embarrassment, but this old-fashioned hard-core space opera works. Generous dollops of Star Trek, Starship Troopers and Battlestar Galactica, familar tropes from old military movies like Top Gun and Run Silent, Run Deep, ideas who first saw the light of day in the heyday of the old pulp magazines, this sprawling epic chews them all up and spits them out as a fast-moving, deftly handled piece of hard-core sci-fi. The story can be summed up in one sentence – Human spaceship commanded by an old fighter jock makes first trip to another system, encounters alien humans (one of them a gorgeous but capable woman), being beaten up by horrible bugs, uses good old-fashioned Earth ingenuity to beat the superior technology of the bugs, returns to Earth with ambassador from the grateful aliens aboard. But what that brief summary does not convey is just how deftly the author handles this cliche-fest. After a slow start with plenty of exposition, the story rockets into full light-speed when the Odyssey first encounters the nasty bug aliens. The space battles are masterpieces of swift movement, high-speed action, all conveyed in terse, superbly chosen words. The action culminates in a double act, with the Odyssey fighting off no less than six alien ships, while on one of the human planets, her ground forces endeavour to exterminate the deadly bugs. Currie openly evokes the old submarine vs destroyer trope and handles it wonderfully well. The ending is never in doubt of course, as there are three more sequels to follow. In the wrap-up, the author shows his confidence by self-referentially poking fun at science-fiction writers as his characters muse how this story will play out on earth. I loved this book, it’s right up my alley as a space opera nut of long-standing. Cheesy as hell, yes, but terrific fun. I’m looking forward to the sequels.

8.5/10

The Churchills

The Churchills: A Family at the Heart of History – From the Duke of Marlborough to Winston Churchill, by Mary S. Lovell

Abacus (2012), Paperback, 640 pages

Despite the statement in the subtitle, this is really a biography of Winston Churchill and his immediate family. The 1st Duke of Marlborough takes up about 50 pages at the start of the book, then the author skips a century and gets right into the story of WSC’s parents, then its Winston and co. from then on. It is impossible to blame her, whatever her honest intentions, it would simply be impossible to write any sort of history of the Churchills, an otherwise middling aristocratic family of no particular note, without concentrating upon the man an awful lot of people regard as the greatest Briton who ever lived (personally I plump for Shakespeare, but that’s neither here nor there.) That said, this is an entertaining, gossipy, salacious and occasionally sad story, not quite biography or social history, although it comes up with some extraordinary jaw-dropping historical tidbits, such as the fact that WSC and Hitler almost met at a hotel in Germany, they were separated by no more than the width of the lobby, but it never happened because Hitler demurred on the grounds he hadn’t shaved. What this book really proves is that the Churchill family were really no different from most other prominent families in history, basically they were a randy lot, and could on occasion be quite nasty to one another. From this muck, WSC and Clementine emerge as lily-white angels. Their love for each other is touchingly re-iterated throughout the book, and they are almost certainly the only couple in the book who did not engage in any extra-marital shenanigans. It was by no means a an untroubled relationship, they quarrelled frequently and Lovell is at pains to record the retiring Clementine’s difficulties with WSC’s boisterous personality, but their constancy to each other dominates the story. I really loved reading this book, it filled in a few gaps in my knowledge of WSC, and it was entertaining to a fault. Too gossipy to be regarded as a serious biography, it nevertheless fills an important niche in the Churchill oeuvre, and is well worth your time.

8.5/10

Newton and the Counterfeiter

Newton and the Counterfeiter, by Thomas Levenson

Faber & Faber (2010), Paperback, 336 pages

Newton was of course one of the greatest minds in human history. His discoveries about gravity and thermodynamics still influence our lives greatly today. But most would not know that in his later years, Newton took on a much more prosaic job, reforming England’s shambolic currency and tracking down the coiners and counterfeiters who were threatening to bankrupt the country. The first half of the book deals with Newton’s academic life and his famous discoveries, and also covers what was almost certainly the only romantic attachment of his life, to a young mathematician. To be honest, this early part of the book drags a little. But everything changes when Newton is brought in from the cloistered remoteness of Cambridge as Warden of the Royal Mint, Newton brought his vast, cool intellect to the ruthless pursuit of counterfeiters, in particular, one William Chaloner, whose genius for creating fake currency and his cleverness in avoiding conviction bespoke a man with sufficient wit and intelligence to confound even one of the greatest intellects of all time. However, Newton ruthlessly and determinedly wore Chaloner down until eventually he had him in the dock facing a certain death sentence without a legal leg to stand on. This is a great story of sheer intellect versus criminal cunning, it rounds out the picture of Newton for those who can only visualize him as an absent-minded professor sitting under an apple tree. Far from being absent-minded and unworldly, Newton proves himself to be a particularly cold-blooded and focused detective, positively Holmesian in fact, as he tracks down and pinpoints the weaknesses of his criminal foes. This story is as unexpected as it is enthralling. Very good reading.

9/10

4000 Years Ago

4000 Years Ago, by Geoffrey Bibby

Penguin (1961), Paperback,

Penguin is often credited with having introduced many people to great literature by means of its cheap paperbacks, but to my mind equally important, although far less celebrated, is the way it has provided accessibility to academic research, knowledge and writing which would otherwise be simply inaccessible to the general public. This is a little gem, one of those books I simply love finding in secondhand bookshops and bookfairs, a marvellous feast of reading and learning available for little more than loose change. The fact that, more than 50 years after publication, it is massively out of date, is neither here nor there, because books like this fulfill a wonderful purpose. Someone who finds and reads this book, and is entertained and informed by it, will likely go the extra step and seek out more up to date books on the same topic. And the book’s entertainment value will never diminish due to age, because this is an extremely cleverly written work. Bibby covers the period of the Bronze Age, approximately 2000-1000 BC, dividing it up into periods of 70 years, the lifetime of each generation who experienced in turn the rapidly changing societies of Egypt, the Middle East and Europe. Bibby also looks in on other cultures around the world, in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia, but laments that the lack of written records and archaeological evidence doesn’t allow him to devote the same depth of attention he devotes to more advanced civilizations bordering the Mediterranean and North Sea. The pace of the book is excellent, Bibby doesn’t linger long in any one place or time, but gives a picture of changes as they happened, of the sweep of history and the movement of people, illustrated by wonderful vignettes of imaginary lives. It’s wonderful stuff, very entertaining writing. Long may great little books like this keep turning up on secondhand tables everywhere.

9/10

Welcome!

Welcome to the companion page of Braemar Book Bites.

For some time I have been debating whether or not to review older books on my blog. I am quite enthusiastic about second-hand, antiquarian or just plain oldies-but-goodies, but always felt they jarred when located among reviews of books that were recently published. This is the solution, a blog devoted to reviewing books published before I started Braemar Book Bites, say pre-2013. The review format will be the same as BBB, short reviews (500 words or less). I hope to bring you reviews of some very tasty books that aren’t quite fresh off the presses, but very valuable nevertheless.

Happy Reading!

A Noise of War

A Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian and the Struggle for Rome, by A.J. Langguth

Simon & Schuster (1994), Hardcover, 384 pages

Entertaining account of the last decades of the Roman Republic, and the inevitable slide into civil war and eventual dictatorship. Obviously aimed at a non-academic audience, the book makes a creditable attempt to bring the story to life for those whose only knowledge of Roman history deals with the Empire. For this, the author can be forgiven for making a few errors that are instantly noticeable to the knowledgeable reader, but will happily escape the notice of the newcomer to the period. Most obvious is the simplistic division of the struggle for Rome as a contest between patrician and plebeian (it was not, Cato, Cicero and Pompey on the senatorial side were all plebeians, Caesar their enemy on the popularist side was a patrician). However this doesn’t detract from the book’s appeal, it is a fast-moving, dramatic read that doesn’t dwell in any one place for very long, quickly shifting the action to cover all angles. I would be disappointed if all history books were like this, some should be detailed, heavily footnoted, in-depth accounts, but the sheer entertainment value of a book like is enormously attractive. It’s always a happy day when you pick up a book like this at a secondhand bookstore, book fair or other purveyor of oldies but goodies. Excellent read.

9/10