Chengli and the Silk Road Caravan by Hildi Kang

Rating: WARTY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

The were multiple problems with this novel which is why I can't commend it as a worthy read. The basic story sounded quite engrossing: Chengli Chau is a 13-year-old orphan who lives in Changan, in seventh century China. He feels a call to join a caravan traveling the old silk road across the desert from one city to another where he might discover what happened to his father (which he never really does), and he begins learning the ropes - literally, since one of his duties is making sure packs are tied securely on camels.

During the course of the novel he encounters problems, hardship, thievery, a bandit raid, and a kidnapped Chinese princess. And that was one of the problems with this relatively short (~200 pages) story: there was far too much going on! Naturally, no one wants to read a tedious documentary about an uneventful caravan journey even though, undoubtedly, most of them had little out of the ordinary happen to them from one trip to the next. But on this journey, it was like everything, including the kitchen sink (if they had such a thing back then!) was thrown at this poor boy, and his life on this trip was one long torturous trial. It became tedious to read of these endless miseries with no leavening whatsoever in between.

Naturally an author wants to spice-up a story, but the trip itself would have been adventure enough without all the added drama. It felt like too much - like overkill and as such felt unnatural - not like an organic story. The boy was constantly abused and threatened with having his head cut-off maybe a half-dozen times. It felt unnatural.

The other side of this coin is that the book description promises us that we can "experience the sights, sounds, and smells of this fabled desert route," but we really don't get a whole heck of a lot of that. There was a lot that could have been learned here of history, but all we did learn was of hardship. There was a lot more to discover, but we were not allowed the opportunity: such as of the kinds of things that were transported, the kinds of people who made up the caravan, the joys some must have felt, traveling and pursuing their calling.

But we really got none of that, and really, no smells! Sights, yes, sounds, some, but that was about it. I got no real sense of what it was like to travel and live in the desert. There was little to nothing that conveyed the beauty of the dunes, the heat of the day, the cold of the night, the mirages. There wasn't a word about desert wildlife or the night sky, or of navigating the endless sand. It felt barren and empty, more like a sketch of a story than a real story.

The description told us that Chengli was called to the desert, but once he began the journey we got none of that. His desert bond disappeared and we heard virtually nothing of it after that. He exhibited no calling whatsoever; no joy of the desert or of the sand. We got no feelings that he might have had of the desert wind in his hair or the spices it carried assaulting his nostrils. It fell completely flat because of the endless trials and pains he endured. There really was no joy in this story.

On top of all this, the book was poorly put together, too. There is no chaptering. It's one, long, continuous, 200 page story! One chapter! No illustrations. And so we can jump several days or more from one paragraph to the next which makes the story extremely choppy, and it robs us of any real sense of a long passage of time. As well as all that, we get false promises! We get, for example, at one point, a promise of the giant waterwheels, at an upcoming city, and then those water wheels are never mentioned again. The book was seriously in need of a competent book editor.

This had the potential to be a fun and engaging story for young kids, but for all the reasons I mentioned it was not and I can't commend it as a worthy read. Young kids deserve better than this.

Basho's Haiku Journeys by Freeman Ng, Cassandra Rockwood-Ghanem

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This was a short, but gorgeously-illustrated book (by the talented Cassandra Rockwood-Ghanem who, I was pleased to see was decently credited on the cover). I loved the dramatic cover, with Basho sweeping back the curtain of night onto a brand new day.

The book briefly follows Japanese poet Basho's travels during his later life after his house burned down. You know what they say? If life hands you lemons, throw them at the son of a bitch who unloaded them on you, but Basho wasn't like that. Instead, he saw homelessness as an opportunity to go walkabout, and he took off on a series of five contemplative trips, some of which were perilous, all of which were inspiring.

Basho did not invent the haiku, but he is credited with being, if you like, the godfather of its enduring popularity. The author, Freeman Ng, tells this whole story in haiku, which in English has come to mean a simple three-line poem, typically associated with the season, which consists of five, seven, and five syllables. In Japanese, the count is seventeen 'on' which is a unit of Japanese speech similar to a syllable. Poems like a haiku, but that don't adhere to the strict haiku rules, are more properly called a 'senryu'.

This book was a delight: nicely-written and with some truly inspiring (and amusing at times) illustrations. I commend it as a worthy read.

The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman

Rating: WORTHY!

Subtitled "Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul" this audiobook goes into some detail - often quite nauseating and gruesome, be warned, but at other times highly amusing, and then at others downright depressing to think people were once so ill-educated and poorly informed. It's read admirably well, given the subject matter, by Susie Berneis.

The sad, but in hindsight and with historical distance, amusing thing about the nobility of yesteryear, is that even as they had people to taste their food to catch would-be poisoners, these idiots were in fact slowly poisoning themselves by employing dumb-ass makeup containing lead and arsenic, and adding things to their diet for medicinal purposes, which were also actually poisons.

Herman's well-written book travels through history from ancient times to modern, reporting on various historical personalities, dignitaries, and royalty who had encounters with one poison or another in one way or another, from belladonna to plutonium, some of which survived, others who succumbed slowly or rapidly. This author has done her research, and it shows without being tedious.

The book is fascinating and very educational, especially if you're thinking of writing your own historical novel involving someone's untimely demise! Which I am not, but you might be! I highly commend this book as a worthy read.

Treasures of Tutankhamun

Rating: WORTHY!

This picture book was put out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art which sadly doesn't seem to think the writer(s) deserve recognition, so there is no author. There is writing. Someone wrote it, but MMA says no. We'll credit the photographers, but screw the writers!

That said the book was well-written and beautfully-illustrated. It gives a quite detailed story of how the tomb was discovered (as much by luck as by judgment, and at the eleventh hour, too!), and goes into some detail about many of the treasures. There are color plates and black and white ones, mostly of the original discovery. The tomb had been broken into by thieves well prior to the November 4th, 1922 discovery by Carter's workers, but for some reason, most of its treasures were untouched.

There are literally scores of pictures, and half of this book is a catalogue of the major finds, with images and a nice descriptions accompanying each. See? writing! But despite that sleight to the actual author(s) I commend this as a worthy read.

The Classic Slave Narratives by Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs

Rating: WORTHY!

This book really is four books in one, beginning with Olaudah Equiano's story (told here as Gustavus Vassa and running to about 170 tightly-packed pages) and followed by Mary Prince (c60pps), Frederick Douglass (c90pps) and finally Harriet jacobs (c160pps) this book makes for a depressing and disturbing read - and should be required reading in schools so that those clueless assholes who've been chanting 'all lives matter' lately, will actually 'get it', and understand that yes, all lives do matter, but by blindly chanting that, you're missing the point, morons.

The list of inhuman actions in this book - in any one of these four books for that matter - is both predictable for anyone who knows human nature, and horrifying. Given that most people were 'good Christians' during the entire time these crimes against humanity were taking place serves only to starkly highlight how utterly useless religion is as a moral code.

It's also an eye opener for those who did not know that slavery was in place in Africa long before it was exported to the USA and other nations. Africans were helping in this evil trade. It wasn't just a white folks industry, although you can successfully argue that white folks were the ones who took it to new depths. In Africa, black lives did matter - even those of slaves.

I commend this as a worthy read.

The Grand Inquisitor's Manual by Jonathan Kirsch

Rating: WARTY!

This was a print book I picked up somewhere a long time ago, and just now got around to reading. Frankly, it was boring. Parts were interesting. Many parts were very saddening and even anger-inducing, but that said, it's history and there's nothing we can do about it now except to resolve to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again.

The truly sad thing is that even though we, as individuals, may resolve that and mean it, things are really no better now than they were. No, we typically do not have torture chambers and an organized pogrom against 'others' as we had back then, but people are still demonized, villified and harassed for their beliefs, or their skin color or their sexuality, or their weight, or something else, even in a country like the USA. We've seen this dehumanizing villainy stoked and encouraged by people in positions of power over the last four years in particular, and hatred, division, detestation, and denial have almost become the norm.

With regard to this book, the problem is that it seemed so repetitive. Even as it talked of different locales and different inqusisitors, the talk was largely the same - I mean there was not a lot of variation in how they did this grisly work from one year to the next, or from one country to another. It's the same thing over and over, and the kind of extended exposure to these stories in a book like this seems to serve only to inure and numb people to these horrors.

It saddens me to have to report that I grew bored of it by the time I was about halfway through, and DNF'd it. I can't commend it as a history book unless you're really into documentary detail about the horrific way humans have treated one another through the years, but the religious torture of people still continues in a less organized and less aggressive way.

As I post this, news has just come out of the now right-wing US Supreme Court siding with religious idiots in allowing them to gather en masse - for mass - meaning that Coronavirus, which is already out of control in the US, is now being encourgaged to attack and slaugther many tens of thousands more people than it has already. The fallout from this is going to be horrific. It could be prevented, but selfish, rank stupidity rules this year, it seems.

I don't recall what I was expecting from this book when I bought it, but perhaps my feeling for it has changed since then. Anyway for me, this one was not a worthy read for one reason or another.

Which President Killed a Man? by James Humes

Rating: WORTHY!

James Humes was a speechwriter for several Republican presidents, and this is a book of trivia regarding presidents, vice-presidents and first ladies as well as first, lasts, and pets, so if you're into that stuff, this is for you. It consists of a number of topic sections, each populated with a set of questions and a short answer for each, consisting of a few lines to a couple of paragraphs. I found parts of it interesting and parts boring, but then I've never had this fascination for historical trivia the way many seem to do. I'm not one who finds appeal in the endless books that seem to come on offer about the civil war, or presidents, or World War Two (why is it never World War One, I wonder?!), so maybe this held less appeal for me than perhaps it does for some.

That said, I commend it if you're into this sort of thing. It was interesting for the most part to read once, but it's a better read, I think, as a bathroom book which you can dip into from time to time than for a 'settle down and read it like a novel' sort of enterprise, so on that basis I commend it as a worthy read. Of course it's not up to date. It was published in 2002, so disappointingly, it has none of the soap opera antics of a recent president, but there's still plenty to amuse and intrigue.

The Ladies Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite

Rating: WORTHY!

This is a story I normally wouldn't read. The fact that the book description contains the tedious and worn-out phrase 'star-crossed lovers' is nauseating. Just as bad, the cover of a novel once again does not reflect the characters who actually appear in the story - it even has the hair color wrong. Did the photographer not care? Did the author not notice? Or was some random stock cover selected without a second thought because no one really cared? Fortunately the last thing I do is judge a book by its cover.

Anyway, this story is of two women. The first is a wannabe astronmer named Lucy Muchelney, a lesbian at a time (1816) when modern readers believe that such proclivities were, if not exactly banned, denied and frowned upon. I think that's nonsense. No one back then cared enough about women to worry over what they were doing when alone together! Too many people believe that Queen Victoria said lesbianism never happened. Victoria said nothing of the sort and she had nothing to do with the religiously-obsessed British law banning homsexuality (between men) in 1885 - the penalty for which was to be locked-up with a bunch of men. Go figure. The fact is that Victoria was far from Victorian. She loved getting it on with her hubby, and lesbianism probably never crossed her mind.

In the story, Lucy's father has died and she's looking for an occupation. Her overly-protective brother is a nuisance, and her dearest love Priscilla has opted for respectable marriage, in which there is no room for dalliances with her female interest. Distraught and looking for escape, Lucy wangles her way into the Countess of Moth's patronage to engage herself in translating a French author's respected and voluminous treatise on Astronomy. She has the experience from working regularly with her father, himself a well-regarded astronomer, and her skill at math - and she speaks French well. The countess takes a chance on her, and as Lucy works on this project, and has daily encounters with Lady Moth, an attraction grows between them.

The novel is set in a very fictional milieu. Superficially it's regency England, but none of the people or societies mentioned in the novel really existed - to my knowledge. Some people who did exist and who ought to have merited a mention, do not appear. Newton seems to be the only historical person of any note mentioned for example. A less well-known but also noted scientist who was a woman, Caroline Herschel, goes unheralded. Although her star burned brightest before Lucy was born, you would think someone as erudite and up on the sciences as Lucy is portrayed, would have heard of her.

I guess the author didn't want to deal with all that, or risk maligning someone for no good reason, and this was fine with me in general, but for a novel that's trying to represent women, this seemed like a curious omissiol. I know the novel is ficiton, and generally I do not care if it's somewhat historically-inaccurate unless there are glaring errors. I detected none of those, but the lack of a shout-out for someone as accomplished as Ms Herschel seemed cruel.

I loved this book: the writing, the story, the whole idea of a woman scientist back then, and I loved how science and art were integrated, so I breezed through it - that is until the last few chapters, where apparently the author decided she had to toss a wrench - or in this case a spanner, since this is Britain after all! Or if I might make a play on words and deliver a little spoiler, a wench - into the works. To me this part was poorly-written. The only feeling of problematic writing I'd had prior to this was that at times the novel seemed to drag a little when it ought to have been striding forward, but that was a minor thing for me. Life did flow at a slower pace back then anyway!

This artificial crisis though was very badly-done and for a couple of chapters I was going to turn my view around and not rate this as a worthy read, but the author picked-up her frayed edges and stitched them into a decent seam before the end, so I decided not to cuff her. Yes, I made a pun. So sew me.... I can't let this go though without making a mention of this nonsensical hiccup to their relationship. It felt compeltely fake and so artificial that it seemed like a joke.

I don't know if it was the author's idea to add a 'ruffled feathers' bit, or if the publisher had demanded she toss in a problem so their life together wouldn't be quite so smooth, but for me there was no need for it. If she or the publisher honestly thought there was such a need, it ought to have been much better done: something more organic and not fake like this was. It needed to be tied to their homosexuality, not to some poorly-conceived misunderstanding that for me made the book seem like a poor Harlequin romance.

For me, the way it was done here made the two women look like shallow idiots who had no history together, and it spoiled that part of the story since it blew up from nowhere. It suggested that neither woman had any invesment in the other and was ready to ignore everything that had passed between them prior to this point. It made, as I said, no sense.

But the writing improved after that, and for me it turned the story around quite handsomely, so overall I feel like I can commend this as a worthy read.

Great Hoaxers Artful Fakers and Cheating Charlatans by Nigel Blundell, Sue Blackhall

Rating: WORTHY!

This was an entertaining print book featuring an assortment of over thirty stories about people from the distant past and modern-day, who ran a variety of scams and for a while at least, got away with it. It begins with Tania Head, who misled people into believing she had been in one of the twin towers on 9/11. It covers people like poet Thomas Chatterton, who moight have had a better career had he let his own light shine instead of faking the lgihts of others, and who kileld himself at the age of only 17.

There's Anna Anderson who wa snot a Romanov. Not even close. There's a deck of cheaters at casinos; Tom Keating, the highly-talented art forger, Harry Houdini, who was really not a forger in the vein of all the others here, although he clearly used tricks to achieve the effects he did with his magic and escape stunts.

There's the fake cowboy, Frank Hopkins, the fake concert pianist, Joyce Hatto, the Count Saint-Germain and the Count Cagliostro neither of which could be counted on for honesty. There's the George Hull 'giant', and the fake Shakesspeares of William Ireland. There's Peter Pan - or rather James Hogue, who lied about his age and kept attending school long beyond normal graduation time. There's the Cottingley Fairies invented by children Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, so poorly made yet so ridiculously convincing to the adults of the time.

There's PT Barnum, scam artist and unsurprisingly nothing like the character in the 2017 Hugh Jackman movie musical. There's 'Princess' Caraboo - who also had a movie made of her life which was argulably more accurate tham the Barnum musical. There's faked ghost photographs, and the faked round-the-world voyage of Donald Crowhurst. There's faker Charles Dawson who was probably responsible for the nonsensical 'Piltdown Man' which has long been dismissed by scientists, but still obsesses creationists.

There's David Hampton - celebrated now for knowing no celebrities, Misha Defonesca, who didn't escape from the Nazis, George Psalmanazar, who never went near Formosa, Charles Ingram and Charles van Doren, the quiz show cheats, Horace de Vere Cole, who fooled the Royal Navy - into thinking they were being visted by the Emperor of Abyssinia no less. There's Heinrich Schliemann who did and didn't discover Troy, Janet Cooke, the reporter who didn't discover Jimmy the street child, and the faked diaries of Adolf Hitler. Alas no partridge in a pear tree nor the kitchen sink, but pretty much everything else you may or may not have heard of.

Obviously the lesson here is beware! Don't believe everything you see, nor everything you're told, especially if it's from a politician! I enjoyed this book and commend it as a worthy read.

Malice by Heather Walter

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Erratum: "Noses grew bumps when hair was supposed to brittle." I suspect the author meant 'bristle', but this was an advance review copy so hopefully that's already been caught, and I detected no more such hairy moments!

This was an engrossing take on the story of Sleeping Beauty, except the beauty isn't sleeping. It's also an engrossing take on Cinderella. Except that Cinders is the one with the power. And she's called Alyce. And she's evil. So she's been brought up to believe.

Working as a 'dark grace' - that is someone with blood power to effect change - Alyce has always understood herself to be evil in her rotten core. While her 'sisters' at the Lavender house effect looks and charm and other such cosmetic facets, Alyce is reduced to undoing those same charming affectations when one rival wishes to do down another, or to removing or minimizing a quality which a rival wishes to see diminished. Alyce has no plans in life, no dream, no hope, except that one day she might accumulate enough coin to leave the land of Briar behind forever and never look back. Then she meets Princess Aurora, and everything changes, but there's many a slip 'twixt Sapphic lips and the 'A' girls are going to experience a few of them before their happy ending can greet them. Assuming there's to be one.

This book seemed far less than some 500 pages. I flew through it, which is unusual for me, especially of late. There's always something to trip-up a good story, but this novel seemed to avoid most of the pitfalls. Maybe the name choices could have been more original for the leading ladies, but the world was totally believable and entirely fresh and alive. There was always something new and intriguing, and I found myself quickly drawn into its reality, and held to the last. In some ways the novel reminded me of my own Femarine, which is another story aimed at turning tired tropes on their head, but Malice was a very different kettle of wishes from my own invention. It's not an exaggeration to call it enchanting.

Were there faults with it? Yes; no one writes the perfect novel, but the faults were few, minor, and perhaps personal and persnickety. Alyce felt just a wee bit whiny, but not so much that it turned me off her. I grew to like her, but her mentioning of green veins, greasy hair, and scaly skin were slightly repetitious. Her picture was painted perfectly the first time! I felt it unnecessary for the extra brushwork. On the other hand (where those green veins and scales are!), someone who suffered these conditions might well dwell on them so perhaps it was in character. I liked Aurora, too; no spoiled brat she. It was a joy to see them get together, and it was done realistically and intelligently. Believe me, I adore authors who can show that kind of restraint in YA literature. Not that there's much YA 'literature' about, but this novel definitely qualities on that score.

One thing that did bother me about Alyce was how long it took her to finally give some consideration to whether her own powers might be employed to help Aurora's fatal condition. Yes, she's a femme fatal! In fact they both are in different ways, which I thought was choice! But that she never for a minute thinks about whether she could use her considerable - and especially her new-found - powers to cure Aurora until the latter virtually has to beg her to help worked to somewhat undermine their growing love. But like I said, these are very minor quibbles in the overwhelming power of the entire novel. No book is fautless, but this one comes close and I commend it. It left me green-veined with envy, and I wish the author all the success in the fantasy world with it.

Black Heroes of the Wild West by James Otis Smith

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

This is a nicely-drawn and -colored graphic novel which I read in ebook format. It tells briefly the stories of "Stagecoach" Mary Fields, Bass Reeves, and Bob Lemmons. Prior to this book I'd heard of only one of these three.

The first story is of Mary Fields, a slave who gains her freedom after the civil war, and works hard to make her own way in life - and it is very much her own way. When she was in her early fifties, she traveled from Toledo, Ohio to Montana Territory where she helped found a convent school for Native American girls, but she was ordered to leave the convent after getting into a gunfight - or a near gunfight at least.

She didn't go postal then. That happened in her sixties, when she was hired as the first African American woman to work for the US Postal Service as a mail carrier because she was faster at hitching a team of horses than any other applicant. Her story makes for an inspiring read - she makes John Henry look like an under-achiever.

Bass Reeves was equally trailblazing. He was the first African-American deputy US Marshal west of the Mississippi. He was recruited because he knew Indian Territory and spoke more than one Indian language. He worked three decades as a peace officer in Indian territory. Just like Fields, he was still working well into his sixties. There's no rest for the wicked good!

Last but not least was Bob Lemmons, who was apparently the first horse whisperer, so good was he at bringing wild horses into the ranch for domestication. He would effectively become part of the wild herd, showing almost infinite patience and taking his sweet time, he would bring himself and his own horse closer and closer to the herd until he became a part of it, and then he would start slowly maneuvering into a leadership position, until he could lead it right into a corral!

This made for a fascinating and entertaining set of stories - all too brief, but enough to satisfy - and I commend it as a worthy read.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Rating: WARTY!

My evidently ill-fated quest to read some of the classics continues! For the life of me I cannot see how this won a Pulitzer Prize. Set in the late nineteenth century, the novel was published in 1920, and was about an era during which the author grew up, so at least it has an authenticity which modern historical novels of this era cannot pretend to. That said, the main characters were two of the most stupid people I've read about, so for me, while the novel wasn't exactly awful, it ended-up being thoroughly unsatisfying.

The idiots are Newland Archer and Countess Elena Olenska, who used to be one of the locals - a Mingott, who married a Polish count and then realized it was a mistake. Evidently having learned nothing from that, she screws up any hope of a love with Newland because she's an idiot, I guess, aka a hopeless romantic. Had the novel been about her and she not rendered quite so idiotically, the story might have been worth reading.

Newland, meanwhile is a lawyer, so it's rather nice to see him get done over! He's engaged to May Welland, and it seems to be a perfect match, but obviously it isn't that way from his perspective because he wants out of it! Failing to find the courage to withdraw, he spends his life in smoldering resentment it when he could so easily have called it off. May even accepted the possibility that he might and encouraged him to do so if he could not bear to marry her, but he refused. Moron. The manipulative May then decides she will spend the rest of the novel denying him any opportunity to renege on his choice and she succeeds admirably, so despite how little she appears in the novel she's also an interesting character.

Character names are important to me and I choose the names of my own main characters with some thought. I have no idea how Wharton chose her character names, but 'new land' for a guy who is too chicken-shit or stupid to explore the terra nova of an unconventional woman is a joke, although it does pair with May's name, 'well land' quite comfortably, I suppose. May Safeland would have been a better name! Archer is certainly a major fail for someone who is so comprehensively unable to make himself the target of Cupid's aim. I don't know what Olenski means in Polish, but in Bulgarian it means reindeer! Maybe instead of 'Age of Innocence' the novel ought to have been titled "Reindeer Games?!

So Newland leads his boring life, has children with May and gets old, until May dies. Instead of pursuing the countess at that point, when he was free to do so, he deliberately walks away from her without even offering her a choice in the matter, thereby proving his love was hollow, or he's a complete imbecile. Either one made this book a severe disappointment. I can't commend this particular novel as a worthy read, but I would consider reading other material by this author.

The Story of Rap by Caterpillar Books, Lindsey Sagar

Rating: WORTHY!

This book made it under the wire despite being slightly inauthentic - presenting everything as beautiful in the world of rap when, for example, the rivalry between some rap performers is at best antagonistic, but given that we don't really want to get into that in a children's book, I let that slide! I have to say I'm not a fan of this musical genre, but this book told a worthy tale about it and deserves acknowledgement.

Rap's generally considered to be about fifty years old, but it has distant roots going way back to West African performance art, so it's got serious game. The book though focuses mostly on rappers of recent history and says a word or two about some of the best know while telling a little bit of history and a finely illustrated story, so I commend it as a worthy read.

When Women Ruled the World by Kara Cooney

Rating: WORTHY!

Dr Cooney is a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture at UCLA and she wrote this non-fiction book about six female kings of Egypt, who ruled in their own right or as the most powerful woman in the land, over various dynasties in Egypt, from the earliest to the last. Their names are: Merneith, Neferusobek, Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Tausret, and the most infamous: Kleopatra. I was disappointed that all six were not mentioned in the book description, only the ones who are already quite well-known: Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, and Kleopatra (the 7th). it woudl have been nice had they all am mention by name.

I really enjoyed the book, which has a lot of detail, but it should be noted that some of it is speculative and some of it is potentially misleading. While ostensibly promoting female leaders and trying to overturn gender stereotypes, the author indulges in a little bit of her own, which takes away from her message somewhat. That aside, I learned a lot about these six female leaders, even if some of the speculation was hardly mainstream. I was particularly interested in the ones I did not know, and also in Nefertiti, since I had an idea for a novel about her - and that idea has been filled-out rather by the information I gleaned from listening to this audiobook, so it was time well spent for me.

The book goes in chronological order, and while these women weren't the only ones who had power of some sort in ancient Egypt, arguably they were ones who made the most use of it or rose highest through it. I think this is perhaps why the author chose these above any others. The book follows them chronologically and compares and contrasts their rise to power and their achievements while holding it. It goes into a lot of the politics and into why this patriarchal and patrilineal society tolerated and even welcomed a female ruler at critical times, even as it seemingly resented their power in retrospect and tried to erase the name of she who made the contribution. As I said, some of this is speculative and sometimes even sounds rather contradictory, but overall I enjoyed this book and I happily commend it as a worthy read.

The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Rating: WARTY!

In which my sorry attempt to embrace the classics continues rather unsuccessfully.

This was published in 1851 and was based in small part on a real house of seven gables where lived Hawthorne's cousin Susanna Ingersoll. The story supposedly has some supernatural and witchery elements to it, but I never made it that far. The novel has its moments and offers some sweet turns of phrase here and there (or should I say hither and thither?), but for the most part it was tediously rambling and just when I thought it might get interesting, when a new broom in the form of the main character's younger cousin showed up, it almost immediately went back to rambling on and on, and it bored the pants off me. I never did find out what happened to those pants.

A somewhat old maid, Hepzibah Pyncheon lives in the house and decides to open a little store in one part of the building, but she really has no idea how to go about it. Her cousin Phoebe shows up unexpectedly from out of town, and starts turning things around in the store while falling for another cousin named Clifford. The rather sleazy Judge Pyncheon sticks his nose in where it's unwanted, and that's about it for the first portion of the book. It wasn't holding my attention at all, and so based on what I read I cannot commend it.

The Man Who Would be Jack by David Bullock

Rating: WARTY!

This is one of many books that push the author's personal favorite 'solution' to the identity of Jack the Ripper - which short of inventing a time machine will never now be solved. They all push their own pet theory and dismiss out of hand all the previous ones that other authors have pushed with equal fervor. The central problem with all of these books, including this one, is that each author is so besotted with their own theory that they never look at it critically even as they eviscerate the claims made by their rivals. Ultimately, this is what makes their own claim so putrid.

Bullock isn't the first to name this guy who sports the unfortunately à propos name of Tom Cutbush. His name was put forward by reporters within a couple of years of the last known Ripper murder. Bullock essentially just regurgitates their evidence. He also adds, as have other writers, one or two murders to the canonical list, just to puff-up his claim and 'prove' that the murders continued right up to the point where Cutbush could not have committed any more since he himself was committed. It doesn't matter that those other murders and assaults do not fit the MO.

We've had theories about there being no Ripper - just a series of murders that were lumped together by the media for sensationalistic purposes, which is nonsense. The police of that era not stupid and they were sure the so-called canonical murders were committed by the same guy. We've had theories that there was more than one Ripper - either working together or in tandem - because different knives were used, so they claim. This is really poor evidence. One psycho killer couldn't use more than one knife? We've had murders that were committed before and after the ones typically ascribed to the Ripper, and we've had so-called canonical ones subtracted just to fit a theory.

The problem with extending the Ripper's run after Mary Kelly's death, as this author does, is that they fail to explain how this psychotic killer managed to step down his carnage after Kelly, which was an horrific murder involving extensive mutilation. This was the Ripper's only indoor murder and he was undisturbed for an extended period, which accounts for how out of control his attack was, but the problem for Ripper solution addicts is that no serial killer can step down. They can delay their urges, but like the addict they are, they need a bigger thrill each time. This was why there was a double murder in September - the Ripper was interrupted during the first one and was unable to get the fix he needed, so he attacked another unfortunate woman to satisfy his violent urges.

So each time, they need more and after Kelly's horrible death, how is Cutbush going to step down and revert to stabbing people in the buttocks for his thrills? It doesn't work. It seems to me the Ripper committed suicide or died, or perhaps was committed to an asylum after his last murder because someone found him somewhere, incoherent after Mary Kelly's brutal death. The thing is, we'll never know.

This book does spend a bit more time on the victims than books of this nature typically do, but the real focus, as usual, is on the favored suspect, and it's really become quite tedious to read books like this, so I am done, and I can't commend a book so blinkered, biased, and ill-conceived as this one is.

People and the Sky by Anthony Aveni

Rating: WORTHY!

This book - about how different peoples have viewed the heavens over the years - was interesting to me although I imagine it's not for everyone. The author does tell a fine story about how people viewed the skies, both metaphorically and practically. They all had legends, and of course not all of the constellations were interpreted in the same way as we westerners typically view them. Not everyone would see it in the same way, this massive dome of stars, and sun and moon overhead, but most of them put it to practical purpose, usually in connection with farming and hunting. Naturally it was applied to religious ritual as well.

I read this graphic novel a while ago which was based on ancient legends. One part of the story was about a population of rabbits living on the Moon, and I never did know where that idea came from until I read this book which said that, rather than there being an old man in the Moon, there's a rabbit - in the view of some cultures, and the illustration in the book showed that there is indeed one in there, when viewed in a different way. You can see the rabbit, with its head and ears to the left, leading across to a body and back legs!

The author covers different creation legends, rituals, farming and navigational advice and a host of other interesting avenues of thought all revealing the ingenuity and creativity of ancient cultures when it comes to availing themselves of what the sky can still teach us even today, if we'd look and learn. I commend this book as a worthy read.

Tom Brown's Schooldays by Thomas Hughes

Rating: WARTY!

I was disappointed in this. It's like listening to an old relative drone on about an ancient past in which you as the listener have no interest whatsoever. Fortunately your;e not stuck with this until you can politely leave! This should not be thought of as a novel though. It's really much more a memoir of the author's time at a public school in Rugby in the 1830's, and while I am quite convinced he had fond memories of his time there, he imbues the reader with none of it - not if the reader is anything like me, anyway.

Note that public in Britain means private - it was technically open to the public, but in fact required a hefty fee. Rugby has the distinction, when it was originally founded in 1567, of actually being a free public school, but when the 'great' schools of Britain were set in stone in the late 1860's, they started to become renowned for being upper class and elitist. Rugby school is also where the actual game of rugby football was codified in the 1840's. In Tom Brown's era, running with the ball first became a thing. None of this history is told in Hughes's book because most of it wasn't in place in his time.

The first few chapters have nothing to do with school, but instead detail life before he went to Rugby. This part was tedious and I was ready to give up on the entire book, but the time finally came for him to go to school so I stayed with it, and I made it about halfway through the book before I truly tired of it and really began resenting spending so much time on it.

Tom becomes fast friends with Harry East and has run-ins with the resident school bully named Flashman. He plays "foot-ball" and the author inadvertently reveals to us the origin of the term willy-nilly, which was about the only thing I found interesting in the whole book! There are tales of fagging (not what you think!), and other trivia, and that's really about it. I'm not kidding.

I mean it's useful if you want to get the inside story on the minutiae of a school kid's life from that period, but I found no other value in it, and even the utility of that information is soiled by how much crap you have to read through to find anything you might be able to use in your own writing. For me the conclusion was that it wasn't worth it. It's set in roughly the same period as Oliver Twist, so there is some possible interest in the contrast between the lives of these two fictional boys, but even so it's not really worth reading either of them.

Fortunately, that's not why I read it. I read it out of genuine interest in what all the fuss was about in this book and now I can say it's a waste of time. Another 'classic' I've read that's fallen far short of its reputation. I cannot commend this as a worthy read. You'll have much more fun watching an episode of Michael Palin's Ripping Yarns called Tomkinson's Schooldays which is a loose parody of this book and was the pilot episode for the Ripping Yarns series.

Time Lord by Clark Blaise

Rating: WORTHY!

This book has nothing whatsoever to do with Doctor Who! Instead, it tells the true story of Sir Standford Fleming and the creation of a system of standard time throughout the world. This may seem strange to us today, used to an orderly 24 times zones spanning the globe, but prior to standard time being established in 1884, there were for example, almost 150 official time zones in North America alone! This book explains how those and others, elsewhere, were shrunk to an intelligent and manageable number, largely through the efforts of one man.

I enjoyed this book immensely and consider it entertaining and educational.

Bright Dreams The Brilliant Ideas of Nikola Tesla by Tracy Dockray

Rating: WORTHY!

From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

I'm definitely not one of these people who thinks Nikola Tesla was a god and worships him, nor do I buy into the inane conspiracy theories that have grown up around him, but I do admire his brilliance, and I have to say that this well-illustrated and sweetly-told story about his life is a great way to introduce children to an important inventor.

It begins with his interesting childhood (it starts at birth! Where else would a biography start?!), and covers his youth and his travels, and follows him to the USA where he really became a name to conjure with. It pulls no punches, either, not shying away from the sad parts of his life and the times where he was exploited by unscrupulous men. The thing was that he was so good at inventing things that he nearly always bounced back.

I enjoyed reading this and the only issue I had with it was the question of his digging ditches. Yes, it's true that for $2 a day he was forced to do this, which he accepted stoically until he could get back on his feet again, but whether those ditches were for Edison's cables or some other purpose is the issue I think it's folklore rather than authenticity which poetically has him do this for Edison's cables. Maybe it was, but I'm not convinced it was specifically for that. There were lots of other reasons for digging ditches back then.

But this is a minor thing that people can disagree about, and it takes nothing away from he overall power and charm of a story that I enjoyed and which I commend as a worthy read for young children.