Book and Series Reviews
This will be a long round up of media (netflix series and books) since I've been meaning to do one since at least December and books keep getting added!
STREAMING SERIESES
Andor
A friend gave me his password for Disney+ so I once again had access to Star Wars stuff. This seems to be what we do now to get around the multitude of streaming services -- share eachother's passwords.
Anyway so I'd been hearing good things about this "Andor" series so I decided to check it out. I really liked it! It had that feel of the original Star Wars universe, as opposed to the overly-CGI feel of most Disney Star Wars productions. But best of all I liked the setting (right around the time the "Galactic Republic" is becoming The Empire and becoming evil), and the chosen theme of this descent into evil. Too often, almost invariably really, shows like to use the shortcut of X is already evil, and the evil characters are just .. evil. Several reviews I've read of it refer to it showcasing "the banality of evil," which is to say how it follows several "bad guy" characters and shows how they by pursuing their own relatively reasonable personal goals are the gears that make the whole thing more evil. I feel like I'm not at my most eloquent right now, how many times have I used the word "evil" here? I'm descending into banality. Where's chatgpt to rewrite this?
Anyway, I digress. My one criticism of Andor was that the main character suffers from severe maincharacterism. A driving plot element in the beginning, and this isn't a spoiler because it's literally the first thing that happens, is that he kills two security guards on one planet and then flees to another -- the Star Wars universe I've known all my life is a gritty place where it's not an interstellar incident when two low ranking security guards are killed, so it kind of immediately stretched my suspension of disbelief of the established norms of this universe when great efforts were made to track down and apprehend him (notwithstanding they establish the supervising security lieutenant is super OCD, still in the Star Wars universe I've always known, on the scale of a planet, security guards would be getting killed daily and it wouldn't be this kind of big deal) and in fact it's immediately discussed among Imperial security staff on the capital planet Coruscant. In a universe of millions of planets the death of two security guards in some backwater comes up?!?!?! Imagine, two security guards at the remote Russian industrial city of Norilsk are shot in some late night scuffle and it ends up getting discussed at the UN shortly later. Now multiply how absurd that sounds by about a million. And much later the fact that this main character's adopted mother's funeral (or was it birthday?) is coming up again somehow makes interstellar news and significant resources are put into preparing for his expected attendance there (notwithstanding he's become of more interest to the Empire by then, it's still a stretch I think that they're so excited about his mom's party).
So all in all I really liked it and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for the next season, but definitely suffers from some plot weirdnesses pertaining to a tendency to shoehorn the importance of the main character to the galaxy at large.
Mandalorian Season 3
I had watched the first two seasons of Mandalorian and generally liked it (although, magic key fobs that can track anyone anywhere seriously?). This time, watching it right after the really good series Andor it didn't shine so brightly. By comparison the plots were cheesy, almost cartoonish, and it broke something fundamental about the universe. In bad bad bad sci fi, characters fly at less-than-light-speed from one planet to another in a different solar system -- in reality solar systems are lightyears apart (our nearest neighbor is 4.35), so it would take years in sublight to get anywhere, which is why all but the dumbest sci fi have some sort of warp or hyper drive to surpass light speed. In every other Star Wars thing I've seen they always go into hyperspace from one place to another, which you don't have to be a theoretical physicist to assume is much much faster than lightspeed. Anyway guess what the Mandalorian did? In an epside where they quite unnecessarily harped on the plot point that they couldn't enter hyperspace tehy just flew at sublight speed amongst three planets that appeared to be in different solar systems. Ugh. I don't think I finished the season.
Rings of Power
I watched the first episode of Rings of Power but it really didn't grab me. I've been a lifelong fan of the Lord of the Rings books. But the first episode of this series just seemed to be kind of all over the place, not starting in a riveting manner. It seemed really to be filled with whatever the inexpressible je ne sais quois frou frou of what I didn't like about the Peter Jackson movies was. I didn't hate his Lord of the Rings series, but there was something I didn't like about it, a overly romantic hollywoodness of people slowly turning their heads while the light plays around them and their hair blows in the wind and some soulless warbling music plays. It's like they took the essence of that to make this series. Or at least that's how I felt about the first episode, and I didn't watch any more.
BOOKS
The Travels of Ibn Battuta - Okay let's see the furthest back book I can remember recently reading since last set of book reviews is The Travels of Ibn Battuta. Ibn Battuta is often described as "the Muslim Marco Polo." In 1325 he departed his home in Tangiers, Morocco, to embark on what would turn out to be a 70,000 mile journey through Egypt, the Middle East, down the African coast to the coast of Kenya and Tanzania (but not, as is often mistakenly reported, to Zanzibar, as I found upon reading it), Turkey, Byzantium, the Crimea and the Mongolian khanate then occupying the area of southern Ukraine, down to India, and the Maldives. The actual book he wrote (well someone else apparently wrote by taking down his stories directly) is apparently really really long but the book I read is an abridged version that seemed really good. It seemed true to the original text, with frequent useful annotations. I'm not sure if it was the original tone or the translator's but the writing felt so casually contemporary I found myself forgetting just how long ago it's set -- much earlier than most anything else one is likely to read -- until there'd be a reference to something seemingly anachronistic to the later time period my brain kept drifting into thinking it must be. I found his details of visiting the Byzantine court particularly interesting. There's those famous varangian guards (apparently they stand on slightly raised platforms in front of the doors, who knew?), and the famous palaces I've seen the barest ruins remaining of.
Ibn Battuta himself is a devout Islamic scholar of the medieval era and some of the things he culturally accepts as perfectly normal sometimes come across as jarring notably when he seems to casually marry and divorce women with such casual reference it seems on a scale of some modern dudebro saying he got laid in this city or that. And then he casually mentions buying a slave girl, later mentions the slave girl was with child and it's only much later he mentions what I suspected, that the child was his own.
Anyway, it was a very interesting book. I wish I could find a similar book about Marco Polo's travels. I've googled around for it before but as far as I can tell there's a confusingly vast variety of versions and it's further confused by his departures into pure fantasy.
Congo Journey by Redmond O'Hanlon - This book has been on my shelf since I was about to go to the Congo way back in 2017. Was planning on reading it while I was in the Congo. Finally decided that since I had no Congo trip in the foreseeable future I might as well read it. I loved it! I don't know how much is strictly true and how much has been shaped to make beautiful plot arcs, but clearly he's taken some literary license because plot arcs don't just work out that perfectly all on their own. But I didn't mind it at all, in fact I was in awe of it. Clearly he made the trip and I have no doubt most of the events happened though maybe not his very topical dreams or the predictions of the fortune teller and the like. I was so impressed I immediately went on amazon and ordered two more of his books ("In Trouble Again" (subtitle: "A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon") and "Into the Heart of Borneo"), which I haven't read yet. I'm particularly interested in the In Trouble Again one because the Orinoco flows through the middle of Venezuela so presumably a fair bit of the story is set there before they then get into Brazil.
Throwim Way Leg - This book I had actually been given by my friend Billie a bit ago (We often exchange books, I gave her the abovementioned O'Hanlon book just last weekend) but somehow that title just didn't really call out to me. But actually when I had a houseguest visiting from the states in late January she read it and then recommended it to me as being kind of like the book I'm currently trying to write. So I picked it up and verily it was quite enjoyable. The author had been a biologist studying the mammals of remote Papua New Guinea (which notably features illusive tree kangaroos), and the book is an entertaining and interesting collection of notable stories of his adventures there in the 70s through 90s. The title is a pidgin phrase for embarking on a journey. Every time I think of this book I remember I had been talking to a Papa New Guinean chief about a beekeeping project there and I should get back in contact with him.
African Kaiser - This book had also been on my shelf for a fair bit of awhile until I finally got around to it. It's about WWI in Tanzania, East Africa. The main character and hero of the story is German colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who throughout the war defies something absurd like 137 British generals sent against him (obviously not all at once) leading of ever smaller force of Germans and locals in guerilla resistance to all the allied efforts to snuff out his force. Told with scrupulous historical research and detail and frequent quotes from the diaries of many of the people involved. von Lettow himself comes across as an honorable admirable individual who treated the locals as equals, earned the respect of his adversaries .. and much much later essentially told Hitler to fuck himself when offered an ambassadorship by the same (and had his generalship revoked for being implicated in a coup plot)(I noted that it was principally the Germans who had come across as the biggest asses who supported Hitler later). I was surprised to find author Karen Blixen (Out of Africa) make a cameo appearance herself when she was on the same ship as von Lettow to East Africa (and apparently they became close friends); and the Battle of the Bees, one of my favorite battles for obvious reasons, which I previously only knew from a short wikipedia entry appears in minute detail -- I was disappointed to find that as pieced together here it doesn't actually appear the bees were the cause of both sides being in simultaneous retreat as I had always thought. Also there's a very interesting chapter about an attempted zeppelin flight from Germany to East Africa to resupply von Lettow that all of itsself sounds like a fascinating story. And then there's the whole plot line of the German cruiser Konigsberg that ends up being besieged in the Rufiji Delta for 252 days -- the longest naval engagement in history to this day.
In conclusion I really liked this book and strongly recommend it if your interests touch on any of the subjects covered in it.
Last Cruise of the Emden - Okay this isn't a recent read, in fact I read it way back in The Beforetimes before covid (2018 I think actually) but because it relates to the above and I don't think I've written about it before I'll write about it here. The Emden was a German light cruiser (ie fairly big warship) in the Indian Ocean in WWI. It was very successful at capturing or sinking allied commerce but also earned a reputation for treating the captured crews very humanely. When the Emden was eventually sunk the crew captured a sailing yacht, sailed across the Indian Ocean to Arabia, and had many further adventures traveling overland before they finally reached a railhead in Turkey that made the remainder of their return home finally unadventurous. Another very good book I recommend. I think my copy is also out on loan to Billie.
The Long Way Home - Okay now I'm just rounding up related books, this one I also read back in 2018 just after Emden. This in WWII. In this case a Pan Am flying boat ends up somewhere west of Hawaii when Pearl Harbor is hit and can't fly back home via the planned route back East but must continue West the long way around the world. Not as quite as well written as the other books above but written in a clear workmanlike manner nonetheless and its a very interesting story. I ended up giving my copy to a friend who is a retired airplane mechanic since a lot of the adventures the crew of this flying boat encountered involved jury-rigged fixes to mechanical problems. Recommended if you're into that kind of thing!
For Future Review: I saw people making fun of a book title on twitter: "Unprotected Females in Norway" and after reading the actual description of the book (two English women travel through Norway in or just prior to 1857) I decided it actually sounded very interesting and ordered it. Have since read it. And reading about that book led to reference to another book: "Three in Norway (By Two of Them)" in which three English young men travel through Norway in 1882. I am reading this book now. Reading about this book led me to references that it had inspired a sort of homage book that was well received itself: "Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)" published in 1889 about the described travelers boating on the Thames. This book I have also acquired and will read next.
AUDIOBOOKS
The Flashman Papers - How did I not know about this series earlier??? I only stumbled upon it quite by accident while reading wikipedia entries about historical Ethiopian figures, as one does. The Flashman Papers are a series of books about the protagonist Harry Flashman, who rather stumbles into numerous hisotricl events between 1839 and 1894. The author, George MacDonald Fraser was a journalist and an impressive amount of background research is very evident. What makes this series distinctly different from other such series, notably the Sharpe series, is that Flashman is an immoral coward who somehow accidentally winds up in these situations and often comes out with completely undeserved credit for heroics. I found this infinitely more enjoyable than for example the popular Sharpe series (or Last Kingdom series by same author as Sharpe, featuring essentially same protagonist because he sucks as an author) where the protagonist is a badass who laughs at fear and solves all the problems while historical heroes are only unfairly getting HIS credit ::rolls eyes::. I suppose the one reason this series might not be more popular is that the protagonist, in keeping with his scoundrel personality, regularly says fairly racist things (though I don't think the character actually behaves any worse to the derided minorities than he does to everyone else; and crucially the author doesn't seem to have any racism in his portrayals) which can be hard to swallow for today's audiences.
I don't know why Audible will have nearly all of a series but be missing a few books in the middle but frustratingly two of the 12 books weren't on audible, including the one where he goes to Ethiopia! Such sauce! Anyway I actually really loved this series and was sad to find that the author is now dead and there'll be no more (the series was being published between 1969 and 2005). Frustratingly he clearly intended to write a book taking plae during the US civil war, makes numerous reference to events that presumably take place in that book, but never wrote the book!
I was also greatly amused that in one of the last Flashman stories he stumbles into a Sherlock Holmes story I recall reading, and Sherlock and Watson (unnamed but clearly recognizable) find him while he's pretending to be passed out drunk, and Sherlock applies his famous deductions to come up with wildly wrong conclusions about Flashman. I liked Sherlock Holmes but felt his conclusions were often tenuous at best so I was highly amused by this little incident.
Thomas Flashman Series - Flashman and the Seawolf So when I saw another author had picked up the torch to publish a series about the abovementioned Harry Flashman's uncle Thomas I was excited and read/listened the first in that series on audible. It.... reads like bad fanfic. It's about the exact same events that Master and Commander (the book not the movie) is about, one of the most adventurous cruises in the age of sail and material Patrick O'Brien ably made into one of the best naval adventure books of all time. So, why Robert Brightwell thought he should even attempt to write a book about what O'Brian had already covered (43 years earlier) is... certainly ambitious. And somehow out of this fertile material he wrote something another reviewer described as "Thomas Flashman watches paint dry" (I should have read the reviews first -- I didn't). It might have some potential for redeeming qualities if Brightwell had managed to capture the same poltroonery as Harry Flashman had, and his book jacket description had promised that, however the character of Thomas Flashman really fails to exhibit any notable moral lapses at all, he's just kind of a boring guy. Needless to say I don't recommend this book and will not be continuing this series.
Master and Commander - I almost never re-read a book, but it has been over ten years since I originally read Master and Commander and after reading the above I really had a yen to reread THE book about those events described. Anyway last time I had read the physical book (while at sea!), this time I listened to the audiobook. Sure enough, within the first paragraphs I was in awe of the quality of this classic. Such descriptions! Such nuance, such fleshed out characters, such skillful hinting at certain events and motivations without having to spell it out. There's some books, like the above Thomas Flashman series, where one reads constantly thinking "god I could have written that so much better," and then there's books like this one where one is just thinking they could never write something so good.
One thing I like about it is that it subverts the cliche recipe for plot development. I always love things that break the rules. It doesn't begin on a dramatic in media res cliffhanger or action scene, it begins with the two protagonists being annoyed with eachother at a concert and then the whole first chapter or so is protagonist Captain Aubrey outfitting his ship, which would SEEM like a really boring way to start but such is O'Brien's skill that he absolutely makes this work. The reader is just immediately drawn in to the engaging character interiority and immersive setting.
If you haven't read the Master and Commander series I strongly recommend it. Heck I clearly can recommend it even if you HAVE read it already.
Not sure if going forward I'll go through the whole Aubrey-Mmturin series again on audible or try to resist to cover new ground.