Books of 2000

 

 

It is far past the time that I should be telling you about all of the books that I read in the year 2000 and passing my judgment on the skill of their authors. But shortly after the beginning of the year I was, as you know, quite busy. Until now I have not honestly had time and the proper frame of mind to take care of this vital task. So here goes:

1. In the Legions of Napoleon by van Brandt. A surprisingly good book. I have it rated number eight in my list of ten best books of 2000 (that I read, of course). The author was a lieutenant in a Polish regiment in the Peninsular War and was promoted to Captain during the advance on Moscow in 1812. I was particularly interested in the opinion of van Brandt of each of Napoleon's marshals and his opinion of Napoleon himself as both a politician and a military leader. The author was an extremely perceptive and detailed observer of all aspects of society. I have soaked myself in the narratives of the Peninsular War from the viewpoint of the British soldier and it was very interesting to get the view from the other side. Written in Polish and translated by Jonathon North. Very good book.

2. My Father's War by P. Richmond. I would not recommend it. It is a rather sentimental and pointless book about a modern early thirties baby boomer who goes to the South Pacific and visits the actual battlegrounds where his father fought in World War II--sort of on the order of Manchester's book Goodbye Darkness but not nearly as well written and not from a very mature viewpoint.

3. Strange Peaches by Edwin Shrake. Also not recommendable. This is a strange book intended, I think, to portray a lifestyle that supposedly existed in Texas in the fifties and sixties - cocaine, hash, weed and lots of sex and money. I guess that I was too busy trying to make a living then, but I not only didn't experience it but didn't even know it existed. I read it because it was written by a Texas author, but that is not a good enough reason.

4. Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser. This is number two on my list of best ten books I read in the year 2000. It is Fraser's own story of his days in Burma during World War II in the army of General Slim and at first as the platoon leader of a twelve-man squad composed of some of the funniest Englishmen you will ever read about. There is a lot of war action involved but the point of the book is the effect of the war upon Fraser's twelve man squad and upon Fraser himself. The book was written long after the war when Fraser was Editor in Chief of a Glasgow newspaper. Much of the dialogue in the book is written in Cumberland dialect, which Fraser translates.

5. Waterloo - A New Perspective by David Hamilton-Williams. A treacherous, villainous book, which almost surely proves that the historical perspective we have of the Battle of Waterloo with Wellington's superior tactical skill and known capability at use of terrain finally winning the battle is a lot of bunk and results from the craftsmanship of an English "spinmeister" named Captain William Siborne, who actively solicited funds from a number of English generals in turn for "making them look good" in the battle. Sibourne was the first to write and publish a history of the battle even though he did not attend much less participate in it. David Hamilton-Williams has unearthed a box of papers in the basement of the Army Museum in London which contain actual copies of letters written by Siborne to several high ranking British officers explaining to them "how" he had made them look good and what they owed and in some cases thanking them for their payment. It always saddens me to learn that history has been in error, especially when it was purposely and skillfully made so. Nevertheless this is number seven on my list of best ten. Oh yes, if Wellington didn't win Waterloo, who did? The Prussians under Blucher yelling, "Vorwaerts, mein Kinder!"

6. Waterloo by Bernard Cornwell. A Sharpes novel, depicting of course the conventional theory of the battle as a great great display of English military skill, especially by one Lt. Colonel Richard Sharpe.

7. Wellington's Army by P. Haythornthwaite. Wellington was the one who so changed the British army that became the foundation of "Queen Victoria's little wars". This book tells what he changed and how he changed it. A very scholarly and well written book.

8. Tongues of the Monte by J. Frank Dobie. A typical Dobie book of stories told to him by Mexican vaqueros during a summer that he took off and spent with the peons of the Sierra Madre mountains. Good, easy, relaxing reading.

9. The Battle of New Orleans by Robert Remini. A detailed explanation of how General Andrew Jackson completely beat British veterans of the Peninsular War commanded by Wellington's brother-in-law, General Packenham. I had never read a good description of the battle, and this is a very good one. Charles P. doesn't share in my praise of Jackson, but he was without doubt the best soldier in the United States in the War of 1812. Although to be correct, the war was over two days before the battle was fought. Good book for the military historian.

10. Inferno by Dante Aligheri - and I may have misspelled his last name. One just can't be ho-hum about one of the greatest pieces of literature ever created, but I guess I'm sort of "ho-hum". OK, so at least I read it.

11. Brittania Rules by C. Northcote Parkinson. This is one of my favorite authors but this book by him did not turn me on. It is the old story of the adventures of "iron men and wooden ships".

12. Midaq Alley by Mahfouz. First fiction I ever read by an Arab and it was very good reading. The story is well paced and has good character development. Set in the slums of Cairo it carefully examines the motivation and methods used by one of the inhabitants to break the poverty chain and get out. Quite different from the usual stuff that I read. I am glad I read it and may keep my eyes open for some more Mahfouz.

13. Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng. A chilling book about the seventeen years of prison and constant torture this Chinese lady went through because she refused to admit that she was an imperialist spy. She finally won and was released with an apology saying that a mistake had been made. Then she finds that her daughter who was seventeen when she was imprisoned had been killed by the Red Guard. This book will convince you that the Chinese communist regime of Mao and his successors was and is as despotic and cruel as all of the other communist regimes have turned out to be--at least it convinced me. The convoluted logic of her guards and oppressors is scary.

14. The Years With Ross by James Thurber. A delightful book! In retrospect as I type this I don't know why it is not on my top ten list for the year. This book has so much subtle Thurber humor. It is not funny "ha-ha" but funny "hmmm".

15. The Greatest Generation Speaks by Tom Brokaw. As is true of most sequels this book is not nearly as good as The Greatest Generation but was well worth reading.

16. The Poems of Heinrich Heine by Heinrich Heine. I am glad that I read this book because now I know for sure that Heinrich Heine is not my favorite poet - not any way near. I don't think I would have cared for Herr Heine himself, as uncharitable as that sounds.

17. 12, 20 & 5 - A Doctor's Year in Vietnam by John Parish. If you can picture MASH with out any of the humor, no women and written from a very journalistic point of view you have a good idea what this book is. A rather routine and gory book about how casualties were handled in the Vietnam War. For those of you who like the hero to kiss the horse and ride into the sunset - as I do - this is not the perfect book. The numbers in the title refer to the routine helicopter approach calls and give information about how many live, wounded and dead bodies they had aboard so the surgeons could get ready.

18. Pacific War Diary 1942-1945 by James Fahey. Once again not a book that I got very excited about. The daily (almost) diary of a destroyer sailor in WW II.

19. Duty, Honor, Empire by John Lord. This is an excellent book about the life and times of Richard Meinertzagen and his adventures in WW I, the Zulu War and the Boer War. I found it extremely interesting, and although I would not have wanted Meinertzagen as a room mate I found him a very interesting fellow of the Sir Richard Burton ilk. A good insight into the Victorian era.

20. The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder. I can't say enough about this gem. It is number three on my list of ten best for the year. It is the story told in letters from Caesar to his friends and relatives about the situation in Rome in the days and weeks leading up to the assassination. Very cleverly done and well crafted.

21. The Sand Pebbles by Richard McKenna. Number nine on my list of ten best for the year. I had previously seen the movie starring Steve McQueen and liked it very much. I don't know whether it is better to see the movie then read the book or vice-versa; but I like to do both even though it often makes me very angry at Hollywood for ruining a good story. I have never seen a case where Hollywood improved on the story. That will probably get a long list from two or three of you. In any case the book and the movie were very much in parallel and both good.

22. Rogue Warrior by Marcinko. If I can save one person from reading this book then this message will have served a useful purpose. A true piece of self-aggrandizing trash. Marcinko would like to think - or like you to think - that he founded the Navy SEAL organization and almost single-handedly won the Vietnam War, which incidentally we lost. He loses sight of that fact. I think that he is a phony. Don't tell him I said so; he is meaner than Hell.

23. Driving Over Lemons by Chris Stewart. Beautiful story of a guy who used to be a drummer in a rock group and his wife who quit the city scene and moved to Andalusia in Spain and tried to make a living and raise a family on twenty or so acres of Spanish valley. It is a very happy book and the beauty of the book is the Spanish people that are portrayed in it that come to the aid of the loco Englishman and his wife. Super relaxing book to read. Chris has no regrets that the drummer who took his place in the rock group made millions.

24. The Chinese, Portrait of a People by John Fraser. Fraser was Chinese bureau chief for the Toronto Globe and was stationed in Peking (Beijing, if you prefer). His book comes to the same conclusion as Nien Cheng that Mao and his successors were nothing more than a bunch of thugs. Good, but journalistic, writing.

25. Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War by Noft. Nothing to get excited about. Noft has a few facts that he stretches to try to make a book. Make a book he does, but it is not very good.

28. Chickenhawk by R. Mason. A book which greatly raised my opinion of the courage and skill of the helicopter pilots of the Vietnam War. They did some scary things. Mason was tried and convicted of smuggling cocaine into Florida after the Vietnam War, but I still think that his writing was great.

29. Papa, My Father by Leo Buscaglia. Like all Buscaglia books this one drips with sentimentality and family centrism which is not very popular these days, but I like it. Not his best writing, however. Many people consider Buscaglia a fake, but I don't. He is just an Italian.

30. Sir Vidia's Shadow by Paul Theroux. Theroux considered himself a friend and admirer of V. S. Naipaul for many years then had a dramatic break with him and wrote this scathing, almost vitriolic analysis of Naipaul's personality and life. It is very cleverly written and you don't know until you are deep in the book that Theroux is going to cut Sir Vidia's literary throat. This is fourth on my list of best for 2000.

31. Making the Corps by Thomas Ricks. A close examination of the dramatic switch in USMC training methods and boot camp routine and the interplay between D.I.s and recruits. I enjoyed reading it. With both Weldon and Alec now in the Corps I have to keep up with these things.

32. The Bluebird Sings To the Lemonade Springs by Wallace Stegner. A story of Stegner's life during the great depression. Strangely enough even though it has just been a few months since I read it I can't really recall very much about it. That's how it gets when your 73 sometimes.

33. O, Pioneers by Willa Cather. I will have to say that I have never read anything by Willa Cather that I didn't like. She is just great as an author. This story is about a strong dominant woman pioneer on the plains of Nebraska who is forced to manage a sizable farm and the lives of her children, relatives and friends. The best book that Cather ever wrote is "Death Comes for the Archbishop", but this story probably ranks as second. It is ranked as number six on my list of ten best for the year - and should probably in all truth be higher.

34. The Road From Coorain by Jill Kerr Conway. The story of a very strong minded and strong willed girl who was raised in the outback of Australia and was told that she could never attain anything in academic circles, because she was home educated through the high school level; and besides that she was a woman and all the best positions in academia were reserved for men. She got mad, got a PhD, and now teaches at some university of note in Pennsylvania. Good reading - and you just have to like Jill Kerr.

35. Travels With Lizbeth by Lars Eigner. Weird book. Lizbeth is his dog. Eigner is a social dropout. He lives under bridges, in makeshift tents in bamboo thickets , in park thickets and other similar places. All of his supplies including everything he eats comes from dumpsters and a large part of the book is a treatise on how to live from "dumpster diving". All of this is done in his home town - Austin, Texas - with maybe a trip a year to California for a short stay. He is gay. He is not a thief, an addict and really only wants to be left alone. He has no desire to work and make money. He does occasionally write and sell gay erotica to some magazines that handle that sort of thing. Everybody ought to read this book. Eigner is a very interesting personality.

36. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It had just been so long since I read any Sherlock Holmes that I just had to have a fix.

37. A Bend In The River by V.S. Naipaul. Despite all of the bad things that Paul Theroux has to say, Naipaul is a great writer - a better writer than Theroux by the way. This story is about an Indian man who moves from the coastal area into the interior of Africa to set up a general store at a bend in the great river. This man is at first very successful but is caught up in the politics of the region and finally loses nearly everything he has and has to escape to save his life. It is probably a good description of what happens to a lot of people in developing nations.

38. Naked is the Best Disguise by Sam Rosenberg. Rosenberg is (or rather was - he recently died) a unique type of person. He has a cavernous mind and photographic memory and can recall the plot, characters and in some instances the actual wording of everything he has ever read. During his lifetime he was in great demand as an expert witness at copyright cases in court. It was Rosenberg's conviction that there was no such thing as a new plot or character and that if you showed him a plot he could show you a number of times it had been used before. If someone was suing you for copyright infringement he could get you off by proving that the suing party was himself a plagiarist. Rosenberg claimed that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a touch of this capability and got most of his plots and characters from others but also had a sexual hang-up that caused a certain sequence of events to occur in everything he wrote. It is a fascinating book and my choice as number one of the ten best I read this year. The title incidentally is from the writings of William Congreve: No mask like open truth to cover lies, As to go naked is the best disguise.

39. Hold Autumn In Your Hand by George Sessions Perry. Super book by a Texas author. The story of a dirt poor sharecropper's effort to make a crop for himself and family and live until autumn came with its harvest and despite the dirty tricks played by nature and neighbors. Despite the grim theme there is a wealth of humor in the book. I have chosen it as number five in my best books of 2000.

40. Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev. Set in the 1840s this is the story of a Russian man stranded in Bavaria Who falls in love with a beautiful girl and goes off to visit a noble lady with intent to sell his estate in Russia, so that he will have enough money to marry the cute young Bavarian girl. Well, he starts negotiations with the noble lady and they go for a long walk in the woods and.........adios Bavaria. Well written but maybe a trifle pedestrian.

41. The Hills of Tuscany by Ferenc. I always like to read books by people who go off to live in some corner of the globe in a different culture - like FPT in Minneapolis for instance. This is a very good one. The family has two daughters, both born in Tuscany. The wife is an atheist, the father is Anglican, the oldest daughter is an initiate of some African tribal religion and the younger daughter is staunch Roman Catholic. That is an eclectic household. It is a good book.

42. In The Footsteps Of Clive by Davis. The author is a distant relative of Clive and goes to India to retrace his ancestor's footsteps. I thought that it would be good, but I found it boring.

43. No Life For A Lady by Agnes Cleveland. Story of an early pioneer lady in New Mexico, who, when her father died and her brother proved unwilling, decided to run the family's 20,000 acre ranch - and did successfully for the rest of her life. I read a lot of books in 2000 about strong women, and this was one of the strongest. Well written.

44. New Orleans ER - by ???. Don't waste your time.

45. Within Tuscany by Matthew Spender. Story of a sculptor and wife who moved out into the rural Tuscan scene. There is some humor in this, but it doesn't really carry the book.

46. Commonplace Book by E M Forster. Excellent, but very sophisticated and arty, book. I didn't know until I read this that Forster was openly gay. His commonplace book is partly a diary, part literary criticism and part invective against writers that he didn't like. It is a good read.

47. Marine Sniper by Charles Henderson. The adventures of one of the most expert USMC snipers in Vietnam, and it is very skillfully written.

Well That is the crop. Only 47 books this year - a tad below average. But if the first three months of 2001 are any measure, far more than I will read this year. Maybe not. Perhaps I will get back in the groove. Let me urge you to read! It broadens the bottom.

Love

Dad. granpa,ami