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.”

The Savage Tales Of Solomon Kane – Robert E. Howard, 1998 ★★★½

Wrath of a Godless Puritan

Many action heroes offer at least some depth of character; few put their gut-wrenching angst on display like Solomon Kane.

A Puritan unable to rest while there is evil to confront and defeat, whatever the odds, Kane makes for uneasy company, torn between steadfast religious convictions and violent engagement with a world which mocks his belief in a compassionate Creator.

Robert E. Howard is best known today as the creator of Conan, but Kane may be his most enigmatic character, certainly his most existential one. Del Ray presents every original Kane story Howard produced between 1928 and 1932, along with some fragments and poems that only deepen his mystery.

The Liar’s Club – Mary Karr, 1995 ★★★★½

Texas Is a State of Mind

Does memory ever reflect reality? Is it instead a mixture of nostalgia, cerebral junk-drawer scrounging, and lies you sell yourself into believing? And if fact and fiction wind up jumbled, are you better off?

The title of this memoir about growing up in East Texas at the dawn of the 1960s begs those questions. I guess it also gives an answer, which is print the legend. No doubt Mary Karr lived the life she writes about. But did she remember every detail of it, like the texture of her mother’s bedquilt, or the brand of coffee can her father spit tobacco juice in?

Color me skeptical, but so what. Karr’s ability to enrich this recounting of her childhood in such fulsome detail enhances a reading experience that becomes very soon not at all like paper and paste but rather a piece of living soul quivering in your hands.

Candyland: A Novel In Two Parts – Evan Hunter & Ed McBain, 2001 ★★★★½

Tag Team of One Makes Winning Combination

If schizophrenia is not merely talking to yourself but answering, what is it when a famous novelist partners up with his own nom de plume? 

Evan Hunter wrote some popular novels around broad social themes like juvenile delinquency, homophobia, and racism. Ed McBain wrote the famous 87^th Precinct crime novels and countless other mysteries. Candyland brings the pair together, for the first and only time.

It is a nifty idea for a novel which delivers on the page, Hunter’s faculty for writing in sensational, pinpoint detail about a particular human ill developing naturally into McBain covering its criminal aftermath. As a bonus, you get a suspenseful underlying meta-mystery of how and/or if these two plot threads will come together in the end.