El Borak And Other Desert Adventures – Robert E. Howard, 2010 ★★★★½

Wilder, but not as Weird

What happens when you take classic Conan, strip out all that juicy weirdness and sorcery, and double down on the daring-do by making it even more bloody and kinetic? The answers are in these stories featuring another Robert E. Howard character, El Borak.

Lesser known, yes, but in terms of pure escapism and satisfaction, this Texas gunfighter turned Middle Eastern troubleshooter plays second fiddle to no one. Del Ray’s 500-page collection of El Borak tales blazed past my eager eyes in a blur of viscera, censer fumes, and sandstorms.

The collection features seven stories Howard penned near the end of his short life featuring Francis Xavier Gordon, known to people in the hills in and around Afghanistan whom he either fights or befriends as “El Borak,” meaning “the Swift.” Four other desert-set stories of earlier vintage feature two other Howard protagonists, Kirby O’Donnell and Steve Clarney.

The Bill James Baseball Abstract 1985 – Bill James, 1985 ★½

Phoning It In

People who complain about the use of sabermetrics in baseball miss the art of the matter. Statistics tell a story, lots of stories, all awaiting a chance to delight and deepen your appreciation of the game.

Normally this is where I bring in Bill James as my guru, whipping out often amusing, sometimes astounding facts from endless seas of data. So what can I say when he delivers a book so tiresome that it makes the naysayers seem like they have a point?

Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad, 1900 ★★★★

The Price of Dreams

Nearly everybody grows up with ideals; few of us can even try to live up to them. Adulthood is tough enough without that little fact thrown in. Joseph Conrad puts us on a very dark journey by examining how one young man’s failure to measure up costs him everything he had.

The result is a gripping read of probing psychology and cultural displacement that simultaneously raised the bar for naturalistic adventure fiction at the dawn of the 20^th century.

At the root of everything is the man called Jim. Is he a hero, a coward, or just, as we are often reminded, “one of us,” a man stuck in the middle who can only ever see himself at opposing ends of the bell curve of human conduct? Conrad keeps us wondering.

To The Gates Of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign – Stephen W. Sears, 1992 ★★★½

An Overlooked Bloodbath

Even for many American Civil War buffs, the Peninsula Campaign and its climactic Seven Days Battles are undiscovered country.

For concentrated blood and fury stretched out over an entire week, the Seven Days’ intensity is unrivaled. The Peninsula Campaign saw the first armored engagement – between the Merrimack and the Monitor – and the origin of “Taps,” yet people know the name “Bull Run” more than “Malvern Hill,” despite the latter’s higher body count and import.

Perhaps the campaign eludes easy comprehension because there wasn’t a clear winner. The North lost most of the battles, but the South lost most of the men. Fear trumped opportunity, while leaders of varying abilities all to varying degrees wilted under the spotlight.

Gettysburg it was not.

Ivanov – Anton Chekhov, 1887 ★★★ [Translation by Ann Dunnigan]

Hell Is Other People

Whether it be garden parties or the bonds of matrimony, social conventions carry oppressive connotations in the plays of Anton Chekhov. This is established in the first and least famous of his multiple-act plays, Ivanov.

Despair is a common thread running through his plays, making them tough for me to enjoy the way others do. But for all its angst and despondency, Ivanov does have some things going for it, like humor and an active plot, that make for a more positive reading experience.

If only the title character wasn’t so much of a pill, even if his character is what makes this a full-blown tragedy.

Thunderball – Ian Fleming, 1961 ★★★½

Bond Discovers Health Food...and SPECTRE

Why do people say movie adaptations are never as good as the books? Bond movies are nearly always better than the books, even when the books are pretty good. Take this one, Thunderball.

Ian Fleming sets James Bond up against a quicksilver plot and a new villain to take the place of the tired Soviet Union. Just in time for the new decade, 007 is also challenged by an independent Bond woman. The undersea descriptions are immersive, the core mystery developed in an ingenious manner that creeps up on a reader who may think they know what is going to happen.

Thunderball is for the most part great fun, keeping the outlandish vibe of Bond novels since Fleming failed to kill 007 in From Russia, With Love but grounding it somewhat more firmly in reality. Add to it the debut of Bond’s arch-nemesis Ernst Stavro Blofeld, and you have a second life for a series that lasted the rest of Fleming’s lifetime – and beyond.

Iberia: Spanish Travels And Reflections – James A. Michener, 1968 ★★★★½

Stuffing an Entire Nation into One Big Book

James Michener was known for producing doorstopper tomes, phone-book sized novels that spanned decades and generations while taxing reader attention spans to the limit. But sometimes bigness is a virtue, as with this memoir of his travels around Spain.

Spain may get ignored by many, including me, when considering the sweep of Western civilization. Then I think on this: In 1966, while Michener was in Spain gathering material for this delightful book, Sergio Leone was there directing The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly and John Lennon was there writing “Strawberry Fields Forever.”