Books Read In 2002

 

 

As a generality the books read in the first half of 2002 are less in number and less in quality than the books I read in the first half of 2001 but there are a few jewels in this dung-heap:

1. Over Hill, Over Dale by Gervase Phinn. A delightful, peaceful little book. A sequel to a previous book by Phinn, who is an Inspector of Schools for the British Department of Education in the Yorkshire Dale district. It is reminiscent of Herriott books but has no animals in it. I recommend it.

2. People of Darkness by Tony Hillerman. One of the better Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn mysteries featuring the activities of these two Navajo Tribal Policemen

3. Tea - Essence Of The Leaf by Sara Slavin. This is a delightful little book about all the different types of tea and all the stuff that goes along with drinking tea. Sara doesn’t hold with iced tea. She thinks the coldness robs one of the subtle flavor of the leaf. Also she thinks it is a sin to boil tea leaves or pour boiling water over tea leaves. Too much heat is involved. She says that the water for making tea should be between 190 degrees F and 200 degrees F. Since reading this little book I always have a mug of hot tea for breakfast here at home. Recommended.

4. Sophie And Ben - A Family Love Story by Helen Nardecchia. Sophie and Ben are the parents of my high school friend Sabbatino Nardecchia (now called Bud) and Helen is his wife. They live in Georgetown, TX. He is a retired HRB tax franchise owner in Austin. It wouldn’t have much meaning to any of you, but Bud and I were very close in high school, and I enjoyed it immensely. He was a U.S. Marine in WWII and in the first wave at Iwo Jima. His parents immigrated from Sicily.

5. Dead Man’s Ransom by Ellis Peters. Another Brother Cadfael mystery and the only one I had never read.

6. Bias, How The TV Networks Distort The News by Bernard Goldberg. Not really very good writing and organization of the book, but a subject I was glad to see addressed.

7. My Life As A Real Dog by Dido as dictated to Chapman Pincher. Super Book!! This will be one of my best ten for the year. Dido not only understands dogs, she is an expert people trainer and psychologist - and philosopher.

8. Our Marvelous Native Tongue by Robert Claibourne. Another Super Book!!! I have always liked books about the language.

9. A Fair And Happy Land by W. A Owens Probably the best book I read in the first half of 2002. An unusual book by a favorite author of mine. I think that I have now read every book he ever wrote. This book sets out to trace the various locations in which his maternal grandmother’s ancestors lived from New York, to Pennsylvania, to Virginia to Tennessee, to Arkansas and finally to Texas; and he goes into great detail about the history, the folklore, the geography of each of these parts of the country at the time that his ancestors lived there. I enjoyed it terrifically, but I doubt that the book would be of great interest to all of you.

10. The Diary Of Samuel Pepys for 1665 by Samuel Pepys. I try to read one year of Pepys’ diary every year. It is a very good bedtime reader. Pepys was a most intelligent, erudite and very human man. He confides his bad thoughts as well as his good to his diary, which he wrote in code.

11. Commodore Hornblower by C.S. Forester. Probably my fifth or sixth time to read this book. I started reading them in high school. I believe I have a copy of every book Forester ever wrote.

12. Lord Hornblower In the West Indies by C.S. Forester. I actually picked this up to look up a little story about St. Elizabeth of Hungary but re read the first page and didn’t stop until I got to the end.

13. Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif. I first read this book when I was in the eighth grade at Cuero, Texas but thoroughly enjoyed reading once again about the great disease fighting scientists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

14. The Ninety Days by Thomas Carmichael. Carmichael was in the first wave to hit Guadalcanal. He was in the Marines. This book is the story of his ninety-day stay on the island during the worst of the fighting. It is kind of a standard war story but well written.

15. The Age Of Reason Begins by Will and Ariel Durant. Anyone who has not read Will and Ariel Durant’s history of civilization should definitely read at least a volume or two to get the flavor of the way they write. I think that perhaps I have learned more history from the Durant’s than from any other writers. It is painless writing also.

16. Sharpe’s Rifles by Bernard Cornwell. Reading Cornwell’s Sharpe’s series or watching the videos of the series that are often very different in plots and characters is ultra relaxing to me. I have done both so often that I could almost spot a missing word in the text due to printing error. Good bedtime reading. It puts me right to sleep there with all of the sword-spilt blood and gore.

17. Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men by Donald McCaig. The first book by McCaig that I ever read was Nop’s Trial, which I fell in love with. I am a soft touch for sheep dogs. This book is the story of his hunt across Scotland for a really good sheep dog to take back to America. He finally finds her. He also describes all of the men from whom he tried to buy a dog, hence the title. None of his books has been as good as his first, but I have enjoyed all the others too. Have you ever noticed that an author’s first book is nearly always his best? Why is that?

18. Wellington as Military Commander by John Glover. Of all the books I have read about Wellington, and there have been a few, I think that Glover has done the best job of outlining the decisions W. made in battle and why and where he was right and where he was wrong in hindsight. This is a very readable battle history of the Peninsular War and of Waterloo. I started not to buy the book because I had covered this ground in other reading, but I couldn’t pass it up, and I am glad that I did not

19. Convoy North by Philip MacCutchan. A gripping story about a WWII convoy of ships loaded with munitions and aviation as it fights its way against German surface and air forces across the Arctic Sea from Scotland to Murmansk, Russia. It is a story of extraordinary courage. I enjoyed it.

20. Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet by Elizabeth Pargeter. This author also wrote a larger number of Brother Cadfael mysteries under the pen name of Ellis Peters. She is an excellent writer. This book takes us across several decades of a war between Welsh “princes” and the “Marcher Barons” of Henry III and his immediate successor. Very good reading if you don’t mind not being able to pronounce any of the towns or peoples names - which I don’t. It is actually four novels bound in one cover. You could spend a summer with this book.

21. Summer Of The Danes by Ellis Peters. The only Brother Cadfael mystery I had never read. Good.

22. Journey Among Warriors by Colonel Victor Croizat. This is not just another WWII book about a Marine, although it is that too. Croizat was born in Algiers of a French father and an Italian mother, who subsequently moved to Italy then to France, and when Victor was nine years old to the United States. By the time Victor was 14 he spoke Italian, French and English flawlessly. He attended a private military school and then joined the Marine Corps as a Second Lieutenant two years before the beginning of WWII. He was trained as an expert in operation and repair of AMTRAC amphibious assault vehicles and rose to command status over all AMTRAC operations in the Pacific by War’s end. After the war he spent much of his time acting as translator for a number of top military and diplomatic figures on missions all over the world. Interesting book, but it won’t quite make my top ten.

23. The Revolt Of O’Wain Glyn Dyr by John Davies. A non-fiction history of the last great revolt of a Welsh prince against the English crown. O’Wain was the last Welsh prince. If it is easier for you, read that name as “Owen”. Sort of a tough read.

24. The History of Wales by John Davies. Same author as the book above. I must admit that for me Davies is hard to read. I struggled all the way through this book, but to be fair about it I am afraid it was dullsville. Ms. Pargeter can tell the same story in historically accurate fiction and make it interesting, but Davies just does not have her knack. It is a massive book also.

25. John Wesley Hardin by Lewis Nordyke. This is a gripping biography of our local Texas folk hero outlaw, who by the age of twenty-four had killed 24 men in “fair” fights and was feared by all the law enforcement men of Texas. Nordyke tells the story of this unusual man very well. It is difficult to realize after reading the book that Hardin was after all an outlaw and killer and should have been hanged - he was eventually shot in the back - something he never did to any man. Hardin was probably the only man to ever twice challenge Wild Bill Hickock to draw on him and Wild Bill declined. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.

26. The Official Rules And Explanations by Paul Dickson. A nonsense book that I chuckled my way through such things as, “The probability that an open peanut butter and jelly sandwich will fall gooey side down is directly proportional to the price of the carpet.” That is the only one I can now remember out of about two hundred pages of them — probably due to my age.

27. Under Oath by Shelby Yastrow. This is a well written courtroom drama — no murders involved, that has good character development and a uniquely twisted plot that maintains suspense from beginning to end. It made me a Yastrow fan, but I am dismayed to find that he wrote only one other book. It contains excellent courtroom scenes and would make a super movie.

28. The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes by Mark Urban. It seems as though I have heard bad things about Mark Urban but can’t remember what they are. Anyway I really enjoyed this biography of Major George Scovell who was the cryptographer on Wellington’s staff and who broke the “gran chiffre” cipher used by Napoleon to communicate with his Marshals in Spain and with his brother on the Spanish throne. As a result Wellington was nearly always in possession of the intent and plans of his enemies — a super advantage in warfare. Scovell ended up with a Knighthood and promotion to Major General’s commission despite Wellington’s postwar attempt to cover up Scovell’s success so as not to distract from his own actions by making his decisions look easier.

29. Great Court Martial Cases by Joseph di Mona. This book is a very interesting exposition of the courts martial of about fifteen American military men in different branches of the service. The trial of Colonel Billy Mitchell in the Army because he predicted in the 1920s that Japan would attack Pearl Harbor by aircraft launched from ships, the trial of Lt. Calley – infamous for the My Lai massacre, the trial of the only soldier in WW II to be shot for cowardice and desertion — many more. All of them are very interesting.

30. Soul of Battle by Victor Davis Hanson. A most unusual and very enlightening book by a military historian, who in this book at least does not concentrate on battle tactics but rather on the psychology of three warrior generals that he believed to be similar and perhaps the greatest generals of all time. The three were Epaminondas of the Boetians, William Tecumseh Sherman, and George S. Patton. Hanson claimed for these men the power to capture the souls and imagination of the men they led and that they promulgated in their time a new type of warfare that took the battle constantly to the enemy and avoided the stalemate of static warfare. A “must read” if you are into military history, and interesting if you are not. Did you know that Sherman suffered the fewest casualties per capita in his Army of the West of any Union generals in command of a field army? Sherman also took few prisoners and slew few Confederates compared to other generals in the Union Army, but put more Confederates out of action than any one else by severing their supply lines. Good book.

31. Cassidy’s Run by David Wise. A true spy tale of all of the spy activity surrounding the development of nerve gas in the US, UK and Russia and the developing events following the “dangling” of a Sgt. Cassidy who worked in the US nerve gas laboratories before a Russian attaché and the subsequent twenty-year long sting operation of feeding misinformation to him. It is a book I did not want to put down once I started it.

So that is the crop for the first half of 2002. As usual I will most likely bring this up to date after December. I don’t consider this lot to be extraordinarily good, but the best of the bunch are listed below in the top ten. I take no responsibility for your opinion of any of these.

So what does the second half of the year offer? There are a few real goodies but I still have the feeling that 2001 was a better year for book quality.

34. Buster’s Diaries by Roy Hattersley. Buster is a dog, as you might have guessed, of indeterminate breed. He is a wooly shaggy dog with a curmudgeon’s view of the world and acutely aware that he has failed to properly train his master. The book is well written and very entertaining. It doesn’t really compare though to "My Life As A Real Dog" By Dido read earlier in the year for real quality of insight into the world, and for its contribution to the advancement of canine philosophy. Buster is still a pleasant read and a delightful character

35. One L by Scott Turow. This is the story of Turow’s first year at Harvard Law school and the pressures and events that turned him into a lawyer. Turow is difficult for me. Some of his books I like very much and others leave me definitely cold and disinterested. This book being non-fiction didn’t exactly fit into that pattern. I was very interested in it at first but grew tired of it before it finished. As you will note below he really grabs my attention with some of his books and doesn’t let go.

36. In The Bosom Of the Comanches by T. A. Babb. A small book, thankfully, that I would not recommend. Babb is very fundamental in his writing and the book gives the impression of having been written by a third grader. It also fails to inform the reader to any great extent about the Indians. Babb was a captive of the Comanches for many years.

37. Burden of Proof by Scott Turow. A court room drama that held me spell bound from start to finish. I could hardly put the book down to eat or sleep. Turow’s character development was very good, but his real long suit is his intricate plotting, his sustained suspense and his fast pace through the book.

38. Turning The World Upside Down by John Tebbel. Super book!! One of the best I read all year. It is a history of the American Revolution with great attention to a detailed analysis of the many errors committed on both sides and to the contribution made by the flawed characters who fought it. It pays far more attention to the analysis of the characters than to the military situation errors. I learned a lot about the circumstances of the American Revolution that I never knew before.

39. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. Another very good Turow courtroom drama that really takes the prize for plot structure and surprise ending. I really liked this one.

40. Sharpe’s Triumph

41. Sharpe’s Fortress

42. Sharpe’s Trafalgar by Bernard Cornwell. These three novels fill in Sharpe’s experiences in India prior to the series in the Peninsular War. The first two cover the battles of Seringaputum and Gawillighur, and the last happens to cover his rescue of Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar.

43. Blind Man’s Bluff by Sherry Sontag. A good journalistic explanation of what went on in the cold war with the missions of our nuclear subs. I found out a lot here that I did not know. I enjoyed it.

44. Stories of I.C. Eason, King of the Dog People by I. C. Eason and Blair Pittman. This is a most unusual and entertaining book. It involves a group of almost illiterate settlers in the east Texas “Big Thicket” country who lived a sustenance life of hunting and gathering in the woods adjoining the Neches River. These people had lived on the river and had lived this life style since the Civil War. In the early 1930s a group of lumber companies had persuaded the federal and state governments to license them to do selective lumbering in a certain area of the Big Thicket inhabited by I. C. Eason and various of his friends and relatives who the townspeople called “the Dog People”. After a ten-year fight involving several shoot-outs and court battles Eason finally won his battle with the lumber companies. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is richly illustrated with photographs and is well written.

45. Legacies by Betty Bao Lord. Betty was wife of the U.S. Ambassador to China during the time of the so-called “cultural revolution”. She had been born in China but had escaped to the U.S. and later married a man who was appointed Ambassador to China. Betty still had many relatives in China and some of her relatives were punished because of actions that Betty and/or her husband took. I think that Mrs. Lord is a great writer and I admire her spirit. I enjoyed the book.

46. Among The Mountains by Wilfred Thesiger. Thesiger is also the author of "Arabian Sands", a book that I have read at least ten times - obviously one of my favorites. This book is a good one but doesn’t come close to his previous effort in "Arabian Sands". Thesiger is one of those mad Englishmen who traipse around in the wildest corners of the globe and outdo the natives by being more primitive than they are. In this volume he visits the rugged mountains of Kashmir and the Hindu Kush and goes native, Pakistani style. It is a good travel book.

47. On The Road With Wellington by August Schaumann. I read this book once before in 2000. Schaumann is perhaps the best of all the “personal experience “ diarists of the Peninsular War. Schaumann was a commissary for Wellington. As such he was technically a civilian but was uniformed as an officer and accorded the privileges of a first lieutenant. It was his duty to provide meat, bread and spirits (beer, wine, rum or brandy) to about ten thousand troops daily. He had many adventures and follows Wellington through all of the Peninsular War and on to Waterloo. Oddly, Schaumann was not even an Englishman but rather a Bavarian. But then so was the King of England at that time.

48. The Nuremberg Trial by Ann and John Tusa

49. The Trial of the Germans by Eugene Davidson. These two books are both about the post WWII war criminal trials. They cover much the same territory, and it really isn’t necessary to read both. I have always been of the opinion that the Nuremberg Trials were illegal, lacked competent jurisdiction, failed to have a codex of laws applicable to the accused, and should never have been conducted. After reading these two books my opinions in that regard are merely amplified. We should never have had the Nuremberg Trials nor the Tokyo Trials. It will come back to haunt us yet.

50. The Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton by Emmett Tyrrell Jr. A trashy little book about a trashy little guy. I did learn a few facts about WJC and HRC that I did not know about and learned to vilify both in my mind a little more — if that is possible.

51. Silent Prey by John Sanford. A total loser. I think the protagonist in the book is a smart ass, and the villain is a stupid creep not worth knowing. Don’t read it.

52. The 100 Days by Patrick O’Brien. Story of the adventures of British Admiral Jack Aubrey and his Renaissance man Savant Stephen Maturin during the 100 days of Napoleon’s escape from Elba. O’Brien is a good writer but does not compare to C. S. Forester, Dudley Pope or Alexander Kent who write in the same genre.

53. The Nightingale’s Song by Robert Timberg. One of the best ten books of the year for sure. It takes the lives and actions of five men and analyzes them from the time they enter Annapolis until after the Iran-Contra affair. The five men are John McCain, John Poindexter, James Webb, Robert McFarland and Oliver North. They were amazing men and important to that part of my history called “the Cold War”. The title is based upon the fact that a nightingale who is separated from other nightingales and never hears another nightingale sing will never sing like a nightingale but the minute it hears a nightingale sing the song it knows the whole intricate sequence as if it had always known it. All us moderns should read this book and learn the song of these five men. Very well written book.

54. Woman Rice Planter by Elizabeth Allston Pringle. This lady came home to her father’s thousand-acre rice plantation in South Carolina and found that his former slaves, now free, had almost wrecked the big plantation house, stolen all of the food and wrecked the furniture and killed the livestock. The plantation workers were hostile. They were free but hungry and had no place to live or way to make a living. Despite the fact that Elizabeth was the only white woman in 26 miles, had no male kin to help her and no experience as a rice planter, she decided to try to make a go of it. She gathered all of the former slaves around and made them a proposition. She would rent each family an acre of rice land and an acre of garden land for a fee of ten bushels of rice a year plus the agreement to work her retained rice land at whatever the prevailing wage was and wait for the rice harvest to get their pay. They all agreed. She not only saved her father’s rice plantation, but later married a man who owned another plantation six miles from hers. He only lived three years after she married him and he died of malaria, so she suddenly owned two one-thousand-acre rice plantations and worked both. Mrs. Pringle was a real entrepreneur. I liked her, and I liked this book.

55. As The Romans Do by Alan Epstein. A fun book about a semi-hippie family of two with
two kids who decide to move to Rome, just because they like the ways the Italians
live. The Epsteins are Jewish which brings several conflicts in Rome. Alan speaks
Italian, but wife Dianne does not. It’s a funny book with a lot of astute observations
of Italian character in it. I enjoyed it very much. Epstein is a good observer. Can you
name the seven hills of Rome?

57. Hermits by Peter France. In this book France examines the whole concept of
being a hermit as well as telling the story of some very famous and well known
hermits of history. It was interesting but not the sort of thing to take to a desert island.

58. The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa de Meir by Fray Servando. Born in Mexico city,
but educated in Spain and trained as a friar in France, Fray Servando returns to Mexico City to serve out his life as a friar. He immediately alienates the Bishop of Mexico and the Inquisitor General, who cook up some charges and throw him in prison. The big problem is that Fray Servando has a big mouth and ready tongue and will not assume a servile attitude with the bishop. He is sent back to Spain in chains to stand trial by the Inquisition in Madrid but manages to escape and is heading for France where he has friends on a stolen donkey when he is recaptured. But that night he escapes again and spends the next thirty years of his life dodging the Inquisitors. Fray Servando is not too bright but he does manage to dodge the Inquisition and assumes a very influential position in the French Catholic hierarchy.

59. Chronicles of the Frigate Macedonian by James Tertius de Kay. An excellent book. It is the biography of a ship and of all the men who commanded her in two navies. The
Macedonian was originally built as a heavy frigate in the British Navy. Both of the first two British captains who commanded her screwed up royally. The first Captain got
into a big argument with his sailing master (who was right) and nearly wrecked the ship,
and was consequently relieved of command. But the second captain got into a fight
with American Captain Stephen Decatur, who soundly outsailed him and captured the
Macedonian. She was the first big ship captured by the Americans in the War of 1812.
She was used in many ceremonial occasions in the U. S. Navy and was not
decommissioned until 1922.

59. American Bestiary by Jack Schaefer. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Schaefer takes
about twenty different American mammals and gives a very complete life history and natural history of each in a most readable fashion.. He is an excellent wildlife observer and a good writer

60. A Flower In The Desert

61. At Ease With The Dead

62. The Wall of Glass by Walter Satterthwait. Satterthwait’s hero is Joshua Croft a Santa Fe private detective. Croft previously had a partner in the agency but he got killed and his wife, Rita, shot and confined now to a wheel chair is Josh’s partner and super sharp computer fact finder. I love the dialogue in these books. Josh is a bit of a smart ass but very likable, and the dialogue is very well done. A new find. I will read all of the Satterthwait I can find.

63. The Voice Of The Desert by John Wood Krutch. Krutch is a quite famous America
nature writer but I had never read him before. He writes mostly about the desert southwest and lives most of the time in southern Arizona. He is a very good wildlife
observer and writer.

64. A Coffin For Dimitrius by Eric Ambler. Of course Ambler is a famous writer, and this
story is famous both as a book and a movie. I had never read any Ambler nor seen
the movie, so it was a new world for me. A carefully crafted murder mystery with spy
thriller overtones. This has to be one of my top ten for the year. Super plot. I must
read more Ambler. One gets a lot of European culture reading this book.

65. Animal Happiness by Vicki Hearne. Well! I’ve had it with Hearne. No longer will I be
tempted by the doggy covers and catchy titles. I just don’t like the way that the woman writes. In the first place, she talks down (way down) to her audience, and you get the impression that she thinks her readers are not nearly as smart as her dogs - which may be true, but she doesn’t have to say it so definitely. This is my third book of Hearne’s. Three strikes and she is out.

66. At Ease with the Dead by Walter Satterthwaite. Another Joshua Croft mystery story and a good story. His relationship with Rita becomes closer and finally she can control her legs a little and there is evidence that they will make it together. Good dialog and characterization.

67. The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell. This is the same author who wrote the Sharpe’s
series of books. This book is set in 580 A.D. in the time of King Arthur and is told in the first person by a Saxon slave boy who is adopted into the tribe of Britons. It is well written and well placed. I don’t know enough about that time to judge the historical accuracy of the detail. It would make a wonderful movie, and I am surprised that it has not been made into one. King Arthur is not treated quite as kindly by Cornwell as you might think. He is portrayed as a fabulous fighter but a rather fickle woman chaser and irresponsible rogue. Good book. Good to read on long winter days.

68. Marine Sniper by Charles Henderson. I was brought to read this book by the events of
the Washington D.C. Beltway Sniper duo. It is the premise of this book that it takes a
man of unusual personality to be a good sniper — not just a good marksman. It gets
rather deep into the psyche of the sniper. The sniper in this story had 93 confirmed
kills in Viet Nam. Several of these kills were at ranges in excess of 2500 yards. It is a good book.

69. The Archer’s Tale by Bernard Cornwell. A very good story of a small town English boy
of fifteen who is the sole survivor of a small English village on the Channel Coast that is raided by the French who really steal nothing other than a spear from the village church that purports to be the spear which pierced the side of Christ in the crucifixion. The boy goes to France in the time of Edward, the Black Prince to wreak vengeance on the French pirates - and does so. Good book.

70. Shipwrecks Unforgotten by Norbert Freitag. Why anyone would read this book I don’t
know, but I certainly spent hours and hours with it. It is nothing but a list of shipwrecks that occurred along the Atlantic coast from New Jersey to Florida. It lists the ships name, pinpoints the wreck’s location, and tells what kind of ship (or airplane) it was and why it sank. For most ships it also gives the cargo. What fascinated me was the mention of ships with cargo like “240,000 pounds of gold ingot” (that particular ship was sunk by a German submarine in 1918). This is a daydream type book.

71. Quartered Safe Out Here by George Macdonald Fraser. Yes, I read it again, and I
enjoyed it more than the first time. It is really both a very funny and very serious book. I think that Fraser is a great writer. He is still alive and lives on a small island off the Scottish coast—and still writes. I first read this in 2000. It is one of my favorite all-time books.

72. Until The Sun Dies by Robert Jastrow. Non fiction. A very interesting detail explanation of how the universe was formed and what its future is according to the “Big Bang” theory of the universe. Jastrow takes a very hard subject for an untrained layman (me) and makes it seem logical. This book was actually published in 1977, which may mean that the theories and explanations that Jastrow floats past the reader are obsolete by current thinking in the scientific community. But when we scientists talk about millions and billions of years, why worry about the fact that the book was twenty-five years old? It is well written without “talking down” to the reader, and I am glad that I read it.

73. The Pope’s Armada by Gordon Urquhart. A very detailed explanation of the effect
on the modern Catholic church of three organizations of mixed clerical and laity
members which have developed since WWII. These three organizations are the
Neocatechumenate, Communion and Liberation, and Focolare. All three of these organizations are secret in their operations, powerful in their effects upon church politics, totally and personally dedicated to Pope John Paul II, and through the current Pope receive complete support for their activities. They were established by lay members and are run by lay members, but may contain priests in their membership. They have both secular and religious goals. The activities of these organizations are worldwide but are much more concentrated in Europe than in other parts of the world. I am a non-Catholic who has always been interested in both the history and the position of the Catholic church.

74. Sharpe’s Skirmish by Bernard Cornwell. A weird little book—partly because it surprised me to find that it existed. It is only 63 pages long. Bernard set out at one time to write another Sharpe’s adventure which was to follow Sharpe’s Sword in the series. After these 63 pages he became disenchanted with it and just dropped it in a desk drawer only to discover it some twenty or thirty years later. He was the prevailed upon to publish it by some friends and it was done in very limited quantity and is quite rare today. I don’t know what disappointed Cornwell about the book. I rather liked it and wished that he had finished it.

75. All Gone by David Seidman. An old man’s book, because it is a discussion of things
That used to be commonplace in our life and culture that have now become obsolete or disappeared from our culture. Very well put together and is a nostalgia wallow to read.

76. The Client by John Grisham. This is my first Grisham read, and I think that he is a
marvelous storyteller. This story concerns a twelve year-old boy and his younger brother who witness a suicide in a park and later are hunted by both police and gangsters, because the suicide knew the location of a murdered politician’s body and had told one of the boys before he committed suicide. A tight, tense, very readable piece of fiction. After reading it I went to the used book store and got several more Grisham books. He is a good story teller.

So that is all of my book reading for 2002. It was not a banner year but it had some good books My picks of the top ten are listed below. Remember that a selection here is an expression of how much I enjoyed the book not of its literary merit, which I do not claim to be able to judge

 

The Ten Best of 2002:

Quartered Safe Out Here

A Fair And Happy Land

My Life As A Real Dog

Soul Of Battle

A Coffin For Dimitrious

Stories Of I.C.Eason, King of the Dog People

Brothers of Gwynned Quartet

On The Road With Wellington

Over Hill Over Dale

The Voice Of The Desert

It started out pretty slow but turned into a pretty good reading year. Anything else I read this year I’ll put on 2003’s list.

Right now I am reading “The Pelican Brief” by John Grisham.