Jaws – Peter Benchley, 1974 ★★★

Divine Judgement on Long Island Sound

When the people of a Long Island resort town abandon themselves to lives of carnal frolic, suburban complacency, and underworld corruption, only a 20-foot Great White shark can set them on the path to righteousness. So goes one reasonable takeaway from this bestseller.

Another would be that this is nothing like the classic movie it would spawn the following summer, though that isn’t so a bad thing. Jaws the novel is just a different kind of fish.

Martin Brody, the sheriff of the economically struggling shoreline town of Amity, has two problems. One is the shark that has begun feeding off its population. The other is the community would rather the beaches stayed open, just to keep tourist money rolling in.

Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh, 1930 ★★★½

Aiming for the Gut

So much of what made Evelyn Waugh great, including the decade he blossomed in and the smart set he dished so ruthlessly about, is on display in this, his second novel, a triumph of form over substance.

No doubt Waugh intended it just so.

In many important ways, Vile Bodies marks a turning point in the author’s career. He already had his signature voice worked out. Here he aims for scope and bite, casting a wide net on the social antics of the jaded aristocratic scions dubbed the “Bright Young Things.” These were people he knew and loved best. And they loved him back, even more after he pilloried them in print with this mordant, often acid book.

The Divine Wind – Rikihei Inoguchi & Tadashi Nakajima with Roger Pineau, 1958 ★★

Survival Was Not an Option

Call it bushido, call it warrior spirit, call it wanton military terrorism, there is something about the idea of young men willingly flying their planes into enemy ships that is hard to process, even more than 80 years after it was part of daily life in World War II.

To read the story the way it is told by two principal architects of Imperial Japan’s kamikaze program, the problem wasn’t finding volunteers for these suicide missions. The problem was saying no to those who had to wait for another opportunity.

Believable? Not entirely, to be sure. But two things about Japan in 1944 helped make the kamikaze idea reality. One: Their people were steeped in a tradition of honor centered around self-sacrifice. Two: They had already all but lost the war by any conventional metric.