BillP's Book\Miniature\Wargame Blog

During the back half of May I wrapped up another four books, mostly biographies; Leonard: My Fifty Year Friendship With a Remarkable Man by William Shatner, Keep Mars Weird by Neal Pollack, American Caesar by William Manchester and Slim: The Standardbearer by Ronald Lewin

Leonard: My Fifty Year Friendship With a Remarkable Man by William Shatner was a bit of a disappointment. It is a fairly straightforward recounting of how the lives of the two leads of the Star Trek franchise intertwined but lacks any real substance. It is mainly remarkable for its (unintentional I suspect) display of Shatner’s narcissism. Time after time in the book, he recounts some falling out with Nimoy that was the result of some action by Shatner by acknowledging the falling out, and describing his part in it while denying that he remembers doing whatever it was that gave offense. I’m glad I got this from the library.

Keep Mars Weird by Neal Pollack was a very strange little book about a pair of Earthbound ne’er’do’wells who get exiled to a Mars that is devoted to trendy social mores and totally dominated by the Mars Development Corporation. These two bozos wind up on different sides of an insurrection against the MDC and not much hilarity ensues. I get that part of it is social satire, but I just didn’t find it compelling. Think of Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress if it had been written by Garry Trudeau. One interesting aspect of the book was the transposition of the semi-bohemian culture of Austin TX (Keep Austin Weird, SXSW) to Mars. This book was just weird.

American Caesar by William Manchester is a biography of Douglas MacArthur that more or less compares Mac to Julius Caesar. Like most all Manchester books, this one is very well written and engaging. The book also seems very well balanced. MacArthur’s intellect, personal courage, and military acumen come through as well as his vanity and paranoia. The thesis of the book, that Mac and Caesar are more or less analogous, is interesting and supported by enough evidence in the book to make one think.

Slim: The Standardbearer by Ronald Lewin is, of course, a biography of Field Marshall William Viscount Slim the British commander of 14th Army in the CBI during WWII. This is the first book I’ve read about Slim (or indeed Burma during WWII) so I can’t say too much about its accuracy, but it was certainly well written and engaging and has strongly motivated to learn more about Slim and the CBI.

38 for the year

OK, so I finished another book yesterday, this time is was yet another in the interminable series of Dirk Pitt NUMA adventures by Clive Cussler Havana Storm. This one is co-authored by his son Dirk Cussler. It is a classic Dirk Pitt novel, a great big ball of kinetic violence set at sea with a thin veneer of history, in this case involving ancient Aztecs, the sinking of USS Maine in 1898, and the current Cuban government. There’s also (as usual) a potential environmental disaster. This is standard issue Cussler, if you like that sort of thing. It ain’t great literature, but it is a good way to kill a couple of hours…

Red Hope by John Dreese has a number of problems that collectively make it the worst book I’ve read in quite some time.