Review of The King's Coat

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The King's Coat:

In The King's Coat first in the series, Lewrie is forcibly introduced to the navy. Nicknamed "the little bastard" by his father, he was the product of an early premarital and pre-war fling of Sir Hugh, his father, adopted, pampered and rather spoiled. Alan, at age eighteen, enjoys the ladies, but even he is surprised when his half-sister, Belinda, propositions him. They are busy having a grand old time in bed, thinking the house is empty, when much to their, or Alan's, consternation, they are surprised by the local priest, Alan's father, the butler, and Sir Hugh's father. Alan springs out of bed wearing only a silk sheath condom — "he was only fairly sure of her latest amours," — she cries rape, and Alan decides it's time to run. Unable to escape their clutches, he is given a choice of joining the navy as a midshipman or facing the local magistrate, where the penalty for rape is the gallows. Not being a fool, Alan chooses the former, where, the reader learns, Sir Hugh hopes he will be killed. There is the matter of an estate that Alan might inherit but of which he knows nothing. With him out of the way, Belinda and Sir Hugh, get the goods. Alan has his suspicions, but no evidence. I like Lambdin, and he may become my favorite after O'Brian. He's much more blatant and shameless than Forester or Kent. After putting to sea in the Ariadne, new hands typically had difficulty getting their sea legs. "Those with touchy stomachs were being dragged to the lee rails to 'cast their accounts' into the Channel, and those who could not wait were being ordered to clean up their spew." Our hero at first appears immune, but before long he begs to die. "He honestly could not have choked anything down that could possibly have scratched on the way back up." The designation of all the lines at first stumps him and he often becomes confused. When asked to "baggy-wrinkle" on old lines, Lewrie thinks to himself, "Shit, new words again. Baggy-wrinkle? Sounds like my scrotum about now." All turns out well, and following numerous close escapes and lucky turns, at first appalled by the conditions of the service, he discovers to his surprise that not only is he good at it, but he likes his new trade as well. Only twelve more volumes to go.

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Releasing Old Nonfiction Books When Facts Have Changed - NYTimes.com

Releasing Old Nonfiction Books When Facts Have Changed - NYTimes.com:

 "Journalism is meant to be the first draft of history, and newspaper articles fit that mold nicely, fading into the archives. But books are not so neat."

But, it would seem to me that both journalism and books, which, one might argue are a third or fourth draft of history, have an obligation to the "truth" or at least a set of verifiable facts. I suggest the publishers really need to make an effort to revise an earlier book's material based on new evidence and not to do so is merely succumbing to monetary gain at the expense of accuracy.

To suggest that Rosenthal would have thought otherwise is specious and self-serving.

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Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Ellipsis

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of Ellipsis:


The 14th in the Tanner series. It's very good. Tanner is hired to bodyguard (something he rarely does) a wildly successful, but very bitchy, author. Someone wants her dead. I'm already in trouble with the spoiler police so I'll leave it at that.

I'm all screwed up. I decided to read the whole series, they are that good, but now I've read three totally out of order and it would appear this is the last one Greenleaf wrote (will write) in the series, a shame. Bring Tanner back. Now I'm back to the first and will proceed in order.

Review of State's Evidence

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of State's Evidence:


Many people have compare Greenleaf to Ross MacDonald and I can see why. There is the same undercurrent of corruption and complicated familial relationships suffering from events that occurred many years before. Greenleaf has been much under-appreciated and that's a shame.  I recently ordered a bunch of his Tanner novels and will be vegging out on them over the next few days.

In this one Tanner is asked by the Deputy DA Tolson of El Gordo to help find a missing witness.  Mrs. Blair reportedly had seen a local thug hit-and-run a pedestrian.  Tolson wants to put this guy away.  Teresa Blair has disappeared, even while being under police protection.  For his own reasons her husband, James, also wants her found. The local Chief of Detectives, Grinder, has his own reasons for wanting Tanner to report to him instead of Tolson and  a neighbor , Kathie, fears for Teresa's life thinking James wanted to do her harm. Then there is Wayne, the neighbor's husband, who, having found religion had been booted out of the house, but is stalking his son.  And we won't even mention the feds who have their own interest in not wanting Tanner's involvement.

Everything comes together in an ending I just didn't see coming.

It's pretty hard not to like a book that indulges in the use of words like crepuscular and preterlogical and has paragraphs like this one: "I started to say something, then stopped. Fluto had built a life out of that warped rationalization of benevolence and it would take a better sophist than I to knock it out of him. That’s why people like Fluto are both dangerous and ineradicable. They become criminals not out of need or desperation but out of conviction, out of a premeditated, preterlogical, almost genetic determination that crime is the only honorable mode of existence, the only way to retaliate against a government and a society they assume to be alien and oppressive. The mob rises out of that psychology, but Christianity and Nazism have their roots in alienation, too. Doctrine and ritual are the sanctuaries of the outcast, and I had encountered a lot of proof of that in this case."


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Review of The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest

Goodreads | Eric_W Welch (Forreston, IL)'s review of The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest:

I love reading about mountain climbing even though wanting to be the one-thousandth person to climb and having fixed ropes and ladders laid out by underpaid third-world sherpas hardly seems like a valid way to spend $70,000. Now Mallory's attempt is something else entirely. (I'm reading Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest.)I read Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster and very much liked it.

This book was presented by some as an alternative, or rebuttal, to Krakauer's account. I have no experience climbing anything larger than small stone and so I have no way to judge the authenticity of either story, but common sense would seem to dictate that both could be right since they are both very personal stories told by the participants, all of whom were under an enormous amount of stress and whose perspective will naturally have been shaped by their very limited personal view of events. Krakauer was sent specifically to record events of that year's climb and was taking notes, so I would tend to give his account the edge. When it comes right down to it, I don't remember any substantial discrepancies between the two books and suspect that much of the controversy is manufactured for PR purposes. Much of that comes from the co-author DeWitt who tells Boukareev's story. In both versions he is portrayed as a hero; DeWitt's account just feels a bit manufactured. Of course, he wasn't there.

Boukreev's account is more measured and reasoned; Krakauer's has an underlying passion that drives it and helps to make it such a wonderful read. Read both of them.
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