I’m not sure how this one slipped through the cracks for me. I’ve read a fair bit of Anderson in my youth. Most notably his Time Patrol stories and his Psychotechnic League stories.

I picked up a paperback copy of Ensign Flandry at Camerons’s Books in Portland, OR. If you live there, or are passing through, Cameron’s is a bibliophile’s used book store erotic dream. Southeast of the larger and infinitely more well known Powell’s books, which also sells used books and could arguably be called a bibliophile’s screaming orgasm, Cameron’s is Powell’s hot younger sister.

The plot of this one caught me by surprise. When I saw it on the shelf, I wanted to read it because the Flandry series had a large influence on one of the biggest roleplaying games of my youth, Traveller. Anderson’s terse writing style lulled me into thinking this would be a textbook example of space opera, a homage to E.E. Smith.

It is that, surely. And it has all the attendant qualities of good space opera: a handsome young idealistic hero who can fight his way out of any scrape; exotic, sexy aliens with a beautiful, sexy female leader with the hots for our hero; and bad guys who have nothing but malice for the good guys and a plethora of evil plans with which to exercise that malice.

Well, that view lasted until about Chapter 3 where Anderson introduces quite a bit of ambiguity into the setup. The Terran Empire is in conflict with the Merseian Empire on the planet Starkad, using the two dominant sentient races as proxies. The story gets complex and Anderson deftly weaves layers of intrigue and politics into the story. He wrote this one in 1966 and it became clear to me that, on one level, the story can be seen as an allegory for the Vietnam War.

This one is a page turner and when it ended, I was left very pleasantly surprised and hungry to read the rest of the books in the Flandry series.

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My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I first read this book as a freshman in high school. It left a a lasting impression on me because its accurate portrayal of the samurai life and the high standards of honor, service, and self-discipline was a stark contrast to what I was going through in the cutthroat jungle of high school social politics.

I vividly remember the moment in the book when Blackthorne finally understands the Japanese mind. How even the lowliest of workers had the highest honor, even more than Blackthorne did. It gave me strength at a time when I needed it the most.

This book sparked a lifelong interest in eastern philosophy and thought.

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My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
I bought this on impulse one day at Powell’s. It had been over ten years since I last reads a Greg Iles book, Black Cross I think, and I really enjoyed that, as well as Spandau Phoenix. I figured I couldn’t go wrong and I was right.

This book is a taut page turner with a complex plot. The characters are well fleshed out. The good guys are likable and the bad guys are assholes.

I couldn’t put this one down.

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My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a must read for anyone interested in how the U.S got to where it is now with its foreign policy.

The book, dense with facts, is a sobering read. It will pull the scales from your eyes.

It broadened my historical perspective and, while I’ve never been subject to Bush Derangement Syndrome, it made me realize that Bush’s foreign policy is very much a function of the incompetency of the CIA, an incompetency which stretches back to its founding and thus has tainted the foreign policy decisions of EVERY president since Truman.

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My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
I’ve tried reading this one three times. I got almost within a hundred pages of the end this last time and I could see the ending coming a mile away. Given how utterly annoying the characters are, life is too short to finish it.

Heinlein is a master at blowing your mind with great ideas, but even masters of their craft have turkeys.

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I was curious enough to see if Harry was indeed killed off as many people have been speculating so I skimmed the last few pages for his name. No, I didn’t read the ending, I just looked for his name.

I know it’s going to be a good read, a quick read and I’ll enjoy it no matter how the story ends. J.K. Rowling has proven she’s above simple sentimentality and has killed off a couple of major characters in previous books, so I know the story isn’t going to be all sweetness and light and resolved all neat and tidy like a sitcom episode. There will be unsatisfactory conclusions for some of the characters which will not make me happy, but that’s the mark of the a good author. She’ll take the story where the character’s lead her, not where I want them to go.

In his novel A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin kills off my favorite character, Eddard Stark, in a rather gruesome way. I remember throwing the book across the room in disappointment, but the overall plot of the story was better served with that character’s death. It’s a mark of Martin’s skill as a writer to make me like a character so much I would be sad to see him die.

The end of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King was similarly disappointing, but I agree with King when he says that’s the only ending the character of Roland had. It was disappointing, not because Roland dies, but because his quest wasn’t resolved. Nevertheless, it was the right ending for the overall story because it made me realize that Roland was an Eternal Hero (see Michael Moorcock and his Elric and Prince Corum stories).

If you want some satisfying reads that are quick and come to satisfactory conclusions, I highly recommend a trio of sci fi novels by John Scalzi: Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, and The Last Colony. Set in a future where mankind has colonized the stars, only to find the galaxy crowded and good real estate at a premium, Scalzi takes a few standard sci fi memes and adds some unique twists that are entertaining and thought provoking. I read all three novels in a week last month and was well satisfied with them. I look forward to reading The Android’s Dream, if only for the fart joke he says is in the first chapter.

It looked like those farmhouses you ride by in the country in the middle of the afternoon, with the chickens under the trees and the dog asleep, and you know the only person in the house is the woman who has finished washing up the dishes and has swept the kitchen and has gone upstairs to lie down for a half an hour and has pulled off her dress and kicked off her shoes and is lying there on her back on the bed in the shadowy room with her eyes closed and a strand of her hair matted down on her forehead with the perspiration. She listens to the flies cruising around the room, then she listens to your motor getting big out on the road, then it shrinks off into the distance and she listens to the flies. That was the kind of house it was.

At the risk of playing Captain Obvious here, I love books. I love reading them, and I have a deep and abiding respect for the people who put forth the effort to write them, even the books that suck. It’s not easy to sit your ass in a chair every day for hours at a time, alone, pulling ideas out of your head and organizing them in a way that will entertain a few people and if you’re lucky, a lot of people.

It is a craft. When it is done well, the words lift you from the page and transport you to those places the writer has created out of whole cloth as easily as getting out of bed in the morning. Robert Penn Warren is a master at his craft.

The book was made into a movie, winning the Best Picture Oscar and Best Actor for Broderick Crawford in 1950 . Another movie is coming out this year with Sean Penn in the lead. I haven’t seen the first movie and I look forward to this new one with hope that the lyrical poetry of Warren’s language is captured in some small way.