One translation and one horror

 The Housekeeper and the Professor, by Yoko Ogawa, Stephen Snyder (tr.). Fantastic book. If you like baseball and math, you'll love this book. If you don't, you'll still love this book. I don't know didley-squat about baseball (my math isn't too shabby), but loved this. The housekeeper re-meets the professor every single day, due to his accident years earlier leaving him with only 80 minutes of present memory; everything else is 1976 or earlier. (Knowing that won't spoil the book.) The housekeeper manages to stay on, unlike her nine predecessors, and develops an interesting relationship with the professor, which includes her baseball-obsessed 10-year old son. Quick read (180-ish pages).

Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin. Recently read his The Boys from Brazil which was awesome. This one? Even better. Rosemary and Guy move into a new apartment, in a building highly sought after. For those who don't research these buildings to find out if they're evil! Well, the building isn't evil, but its occupants sure are. In moves the young, fertile couple. Target for satanists! Wife and I are watching the movie tonight. Can't wait! 

The Boys from Brazil, by Ira Levin

 What a great book!

Spoilers: 

Ezra Lieberman is a Nazi hunter. Barry Kohler thinks he is too, and follows suspected Nazis to a restaurant in Sao Paolo. Unfortunately for Barry, Dr. Mengele (yes, that Mengele) is a killer of Nazi hunters. Barry's life is cut short. But not before he's contacted Lieberman and got his interest. 

Lieberman dismisses Barry's concerns at first, but hears him being killed, then feels hatred on the other end of the line, and is sure it is Mengele. Thus begins his hunt.

Mengele's plan involves the death of 90+ men, all around 65 years old, all civil servants. It slowly is revealed that each of these men has a son, around 14 years old, and a mother around 40. These boys from Brazil, all clones of Hitler (yes, that Hitler), need to experience their father dying, just like the real Hitler did. If the Fourth Reich is to rise, that is. 

The Reich doesn't rise, as Lieberman figures out Mengele's plan. Mengele also figures out Lieberman's plan. They both end up in the same house, home to one of the civil servants scheduled to die, a breeder of Dobermans. Mengele gets there first, cleverly talks the man into locking his dogs into a separate room. He kills the target, then stays to act as the man. Lieberman shows up to warn the man of his pending death and quickly figures out who's sitting in the living room with him. He gets up to let the Dobermans out of the locked room, but gets shot several times. The dogs hold Mengele in his seat and soon the boy, Hitler mini, comes home. He's really into making movies. (In the movie he's a photographer.) The boy sees through Mengele's attempts to place the blame on Lieberman and sics the dogs on the Angel of Death. Then he films the scene. He makes a handshake deal with Lieberman to not mention he (the boy) was there for Mengele's death, or he wouldn't call the ambulance for Lieberman. 

And in a final scene, the author describes another boy from Brazil, this one an artist, drawing excitedly a scene right out of Hitler's Germany. 94 possible Hitlers, perhaps 2 probables? 

Ich bin fertig mit den Spoilern ^^^.

Wife's choice for family book club and what a great pick it was. She and I watched the movie the day after I finished. Very well done with Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier and Jeremy Black, the boy from Brazil, who played at least four of them IIRC, each with a different accent. This was his only film; I guess that was enough for him as he stuck to stage work after that. Wonderfully well done film.

Ill Met by Midnight, by W. Stanley Moss

 This is such a great book. I love War memoirs. Bought this in Boston years ago. Oh, how great Boston is for books. I'm looking at you, Commonwealth Books and Brattle Book Shop! I bought a lot while there, just because they looked good. No idea why I don't read these more often.

Ill Met by Midnight is the true story of a small team of Brits, Greeks and Cretan guerillas in WWII who kidnapped the German divisional commander on Crete. Spoilers coming, but you know you just looked this up: The original general (the Butcher of Crete) they wanted to kidnap was absolutely horrible to the Cretans: exterminations, 10 locals targeted for 1 dead German. Villages razed. Women and children killed. Terrible. Unfortunately for Billy (the author) and Paddy, a new general showed up a few weeks prior. 

The things this generation went through would make the equivalent gen nowadays cower in fear. I didn't realize till the very end, after reading about weeks and months of trying to parachute onto the island, then hiking hours and hours day after day, that the author was only 21 years old! Holy crap. And he was a Captain. Paddy was only 29 and a Major. 

Dear reader(s) know how much I love used books, especially when they come with extras! This one belonged to Mrs. Kathleen Wright, who bought it (or at least claimed it as her own) in March 1951. She also included an October 22, 1950, review of the book from the NYT. Finally, someone named Grace Berdew (Corlew? Burlow?) borrowed the book, and finally returned it to Mrs. Wright on or around April 18. (Which year? Who knows for sure, but Grace recommends another book to Mrs. Wright: Jubilee Trail. She admits it is "not especially good literature," but likes reading about a trail from Santa Fe to California, before they were part of the U.S. 

A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine

 Read the second of the Teixcalaanli books by Arkady Martine, nom d' plume of AnnaLinden Weller, a history professor. Her first was A Memory Called Empire, one of my favorite reads last year. I re-read it (chose it for the family book club, on purpose) before reading #2. 

Spoilers:

Three Seagrass and Mahit Dzmare are friends. Really good friends! Even though they only have known each other for one week. (First book.) But, that one week was quite eventful. They got blowed up. Mahit was poisoned. Almost stabbed. A lot happened, so of course it would end in a kiss. 

In the second book, their relationship went beyond. In just a few days. After a fight. Sure that happens. Could happen quick. It did happen quick, and frankly I didn't have any issue with it. Martine's sex scene would never be submitted to Bad Sex in Fiction, certainly. It was fine. It wasn't graphic like Fourth Wing. (Thank God.) The scene was done and was great. (I'm a hot-blooded American male; I have no issue with gay sex, lesbian or male. I read The Liar and had no issue, trust me.) But once it was over, it was over. I think it didn't need to be said (several times) how one character was recently inside the other character. A bit overmuch.

But that's really it. My wife wasn't as big a fan of A Memory Called Empire as I was, so she won't be reading this one. But I liked it. What I like about Martine is her world-building. Some could (and have) complain about all the female characters in her books. Most all the main players are. The fleet admiral-equivalent was female. The Minister of War, female. The emperor, female. Both main characters, female. Lots of females. Who cares. The characters were great. 

The story, also. I love Eight Antidote. He'll be a good emperor I think. (Shall we see in Teixcalaan book #3?) The Shard pilot, the Shard trick was intriguing. Especially its communicating faster than jumpgates. 

The fungi angle is interesting. My wife (award-winning author herself) is working a short story now where mushrooms are integral, so I had to tell her all about the fungus among...not us, till the end. 

I could hear the author a bit too much. Was she saying something about Hiroshima? Before I was even half through the first book I wondered: I bet she's married to a woman.* I didn't look into it. After the first book I looked her up enough to see she's a history prof (I really think Teixcalaan is based on Incan or Aztec empires). That's it. And I was right! This book, #2, I heard the author more. Her comment, when Three Seagrass said "...people of my gender and sex" I thought, Oh, here we go. But nothing again for a while. Until she had a they/them character. Le sigh... Thankfully, that character was in for a paragraph or three. And at about 90% on the Kindle. Unlike the fifth The Expanse book which had a they character for way too long. Listen to readers: That pronoun crap is going to become dated very soon. Stop doing it! (*I was right.)

Her writing is good, though. Well worth the read. And the world is believable and well-thought-out. I will read the third one. 

Spoilers done. 

I'm especially thankful to the author for providing this book (and her first) on Kindle Unlimited. 

April 2024

 Another month flew by. I'm kinda peopled-out.

Books read:

• The Doctor is Sick, by Anthony Burgess. One of his best. What a screwed up doctor.
• The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet, by Robert Zubrin. Preaching to the choir; I wanted to be on Mars a couple decades ago. I definitely want(ed) my kids to have the opportunity. Go go SpaceX and Blue Origin!
• A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine. A reread, my choice for family book club. I sped through it so I could get to the second, which I'm reading now. 
• Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. Great story. Going to read these in pub order. 
• The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England: 400-1066, by Marc Morris. Great history, listened to it. Complimentary to my Old English language study.

Books bought:

• Troy: The Greek Myths Reimagined, by Stephen Fry. I love him. Read a couple of his novels decade or so ago. Great writer. 
• War Isn't Wonderful, by Ursula Bloom. Had on my search list at Abebooks for quite some time, finally came in cheap(er). 

Language-wise, as discussed above, still doing Old English. Finishing chapter 4 of Complete Old English. Ready to move to chapter 5 but have and have had family all month, so will move on in a day or two.