Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City

 

Death in the Air: The True Story of a Serial Killer, the Great London Smog, and the Strangling of a City, is the story of two crimes, the death by air pollution of thousands of Londoners in 1952, and from a serial killer.  The book paints an excellent portrait of post-War Great Britain; it was the victor in WWII, but in economic and social shambles.  The city is gritty, unsafe, and dirty (look at pictures from that time).  Food and other items are rationed. George Orwell was inspired by the post-war decay of England when he wrote 1984.  This book does an excellent job counting the cost of victory for Great Britain.

I do not see much of a connection between John Reginald Christie’s murders and the killer smog, except that they both deprived people of air.  So, the two threads of this work do not necessarily belong together.  Still, the author paints an excellent picture of post-War London in all its grays and blacks; and the book largely succeeds on that count.

Read Bloodlands First

I tried to read Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder and put it down at least twice.  Although interesting, I found it thematically repetitive   A much shorter work could have packed more punch.  I suggest you first read his Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (which he wrote first) which is in many ways a more accomplished and complete work.  Then Black Earth will have a firmer context.

The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

 

The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress, by Harry Freedman, is a superb idea for a book, which the author executes quite well.  

The Talmud deserves a biography.  It is a most unique book, difficult to define, harder yet to read and study – but it has become crucial to Jewish religious identity in the last thousand years.

Freedman provides a well-researched and clear account of the vicissitudes of the Talmud's long, and at times troubled, life.

Alien Virus Love Disaster: Stories

Alien Virus Love Disaster: Stories by Abbey Mei Otis, is certainly an interesting collection.  As the title suggests, the stories delve in the well-trod areas of sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, climate change, and then a series of tales that defy categorization, and sometimes sense.

This lack of conventional clarity occurs toward the middle of this book, and by the end is fully in bloom.  I did not necessarily mind it, although I missed the voice of the first few stories.  Otis was balancing the demands of genre with a very deep investigation of character.  She was weaving beauty in ugly situations.  

Then there is the shift, and Otis loses me.  In the end it does not matter.  She probably planned the stories this way.  As our world sinks further into a morass of non-meaning, our fiction should reflect this as well.

Not Really on the Go

 

Despite its title, this is about 26 hours of instruction in Israeli Hebrew.  Shy of taking a class or hiring  a teacher, this is the best you can get from a book/audio source.

Where God Begins to Be: A Woman's Journey into Solitude

Where God Begins to Be: A Woman's Journey into Solitude by Karen Fredette is a gentle book about a former nun’s journey to a solitary life.  In many ways, her journey to solitude in small house in West Virginnia is the inverse of what most of us would experience.  She became a nun when she was a teen, and lived in a community for twenty years.  Then she lived a solitary life.  Eventually, she left that life, and married (this is not covered in the book).  Most of us would approach solitude from the angle of having a family, entering a religious community, and then seeking solitude.

Fredette is a a gentle soul, telling a heartening tale of simplicity and the quest for compassion without tricks or artifice.

The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (Mandarin Chinese and English Edition) by Cold Mountain

 

The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain (Mandarin Chinese and English Edition) by Cold Mountain, is a translation of the legendary poems of Han Shan, who lived in the ninth century.  Translated by Bill Porter, these poems, and their notes, provide a window into the world of blended Taoist/Buddhist Chinese traditions; especially as related to the path of hermits and solitude.  Bill Porter explored this in his incomparable work Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits.  Read Road first, and then this work.  You will understand the context of the poems far better.

The Unfinished Work

I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara, is certainly an interesting work, but a few things hold this book back.

Unfortunately, Ms. McNamara died before completing it; so, parts are done, while others are taken from notes, still others from articles she wrote in other places.  The latter half of the book was writen by others.  So what we get is a disjointed account of the Golden State killer’s crimes.  I learned more from a brief documentary of these crimes than this book.

No doubt this would have been a far better book had the author lived.  Her writing is clear and interesting and no doubt she could have completed accomplished work.