Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

This book had been recommended by cousin Heather as she and I both like all things India.  I am glad I took her advice as this is a great book!  I think I have said before, I like author's first novels and this is Roberts first.  It is loosely based on his life experiences but it is fiction.  Like the main character Roberts was a fugitive from an Australian prison and fled to Bombay to "loose himself".  I have put off blogging about this book as I don't know to to capture it.  It is long, a bit complicated as the plot weaves in and out of so many characters lives.  As the novel begins, Lin (aka Shantaram) arrives in Bombay on a fake passport and is befriended by a tour guide who introduces him to his eventual circle of friends.  Being illegal and destitute, he resorts to the dark side and become involved with organized crime.  For a period of time, he lives in the slums and runs a make shift medical clinic where he learns to love Bombay and her people amid all the poverty and squalor.  Eventually with his connections to the mafia, he ends up helping his boss in a gun running war in Pakistan.  And weaving back and forth in the story is his lover, Karla.  How this all comes together and resolves itself is intriguing, captivating, irresistible, and makes you sad when the book ends - even after 933 pages.  Ah, you would be better off reading the Amazon review.  I am not doing it justice, but I would recommend it and I may even read it again - a rare, rare thing for me!

"A Rural Affair" by Catherine Alliott

Well, this was a dumb book.  It says it is a number one bestseller, but I wonder where?  I picked it up at a book exchange and thought it would be a mindless, light read and I guess I was right.  The main character, Poppy, is relieved when her husband dies - she had fantasized about it for some time.  But when he was hit on the head with a chunk of blue ice (frozen airplane waste) and dies as a result, she found that she mourned the loss of a father for her children, but not her husband.  As the story unravels, it turns out he had been having a long time affair and was as unhappy as Poppy was in their relationship.  However, he was finding love in the arms of the neighbor woman!  Of course Poppy is rescued by the dashing new man that moved to town to save the local and loved crumbling country estate.  And wouldn't you know, the dead husband hadn't got around to changing his will and Poppy inherited his vast fortune from the dot come boom.  Naturally this was contested by the "other woman" but all ends well.  I can't believe I read all 453 pages of this book!  I do not recommend it.  I am tempted not to return it to the book exchange to save anyone else from the wasting their time!

Killer Elite

On my business trip this week, I finished "Killer Elite" by Michael Smith. It's a history of a special ops unit in the US military that focuses on on-the-ground intelligence gathering and what is euphemistically referred to as "battle space preparation" - things like sabotage and prepping landing zones, etc. This book was written by a British reporter, so it has a slightly different perspective on the increased role of special operations units in the US military.

This book was mediocre at best. Started off pretty interesting, but as the story progressed, things got more and more vague. It sounds like he had a good source for the early days of the unit's history, but had to go on declassified and rumored stuff for the more current events. It also had a lot of 'we have an awesome plan, but Brass won't let us do it' stories. These were some cool plans, but it's not very interesting to know what was planned but never executed. It's also very one sided, as it's always the brave heroes of The Activity versus the stuffy and unimaginative upper echelons of military command. Never mind that some of what they planned probably could have been considered war crimes.

Anyway, there's a new edition of this book that was published in 2011 - maybe he developed better sources after the 2007 edition was published.

Children of Húrin

I recently finished "The Children of Húrin" by J.R.R. Tolkien. This is a posthumous work completed / edited by Christopher Tolkien, and it is an extended version of one of the stories from The Silmarillion (Tolkien's prehistory of Middle Earth). The story is nce and tragic, but it is written to sound like a high epic so it sometimes reads like the genealogies in 2 Chronicles or something.

That being said, I really enjoyed this book. It took a while to plow through, but it explains some great back story from The Lord of the Rings and has great action scenes. It's probably not for everyone, but I enjoyed it. It probably won't make any sense unless you've read the Silmarillion... just a warning!

Third Base For Life

"Third Base for Life" by Josh Berkowitz is an interesting book. It's the story of a youth baseball team that heads to Cooperstown to play in one of the most prestigious baseball tournaments in the country. The only problem? Most of the kids have never played baseball before, and they certainly are not all stars like the rest of the kids in the tournament. You feel like this should be a Bad News Bears kind of story, but it takes some interesting turns. As a dad, I thought it was a touching story, and as a baseball fan, I got caught up in the drama of the game.

Overall, a good read. It's a moving story about baseball, being a dad, and what success really means. It's also a quick one - even given the length.

Night by Elie Wiesel

This weekend I read the book Night by Elie Wiesel.  I have not read much about the holocaust so this book was something new for me.  I greatly enjoyed the book.  The holocaust was a disgusting occurrence that plagues the history of the world but Wiesel’s words created a beautiful and real painting of what it may have been like to exerpience it.  I really enjoyed his style of writing and the details and feelings in which he included in this book.  His inner struggle with God, caring for his father in a world where caring for anyone besides yourself could easily result in death and also his motivations for what kept him pushing on were particularly interesting to me.  This is a short and quick read but very good.  I read it rather quickly so I look forward to reading it again soon.

Thunderstruck

About a week and a half ago I finished 'Thunderstruck' by Erik Larson. It's the story of Marconi's invention of radio telegraphy and a story about the "murder of the century" right around 1900. The book is well written and it is an interesting look at how science was done at the end of the Victorian age - nobody knew enough about how electromagnetism worked to have any real theoretical basis for Marconi's work! He basically guessed how he thought it should work and then kept trying until he got the result he was looking for. The book implies that he didn't consider the idea of polarization until long after the episodes portrayed. This is like someone figuring out how to build a bridge without really understanding physics - sure you can do it, but it's also a bit of a surprise when it works.

There was also some frame story about a murder, designed to show off how telegraphy - particularly at sea - changed how criminals were pursued and caught. While this is true, I thought the parts about Marconi were much more interesting and better written. I found myself slogging through the murder mystery parts.

Interesting book about an interesting time. There are probably better biographies of Marconi, but if you are looking for something to evoke the end of the Victorian era, this is a good atmospheric look at two important events of the time.