Happy New Year, everybody! Welcome to the first post of 2013. Though it may look like only three books this time, I’m claiming four, as you’ll see in just a bit. To paraphrase Monty Python… And now for some things completely different.
Non-fiction
Married to Laughter - Jerry Stiller($14.00/$.50, copyright 2000, 336, Trade Paperback)
Let me admit up front that I was never a big fan of the act Stiller & Meara. I remember seeing them on the Ed Sullivan show and thinking that they weren't very funny. Of course, I was pretty young and maybe I didn't get the humor in the Irish girl/Jewish guy thing. But having read this autobiography, I have a better appreciation of their relationship. He starts with his early years in Brooklyn and on the lower East Side, where he became fascinated by vaudeville and decided to become an actor, and where he first met Ann Meara. He pursued this choice through his days in the Army, and his time in summer stock and with Joe Papp‘s Shakespeare in the Park, and ultimately to movies and TV (he ends the book after his stint on Seinfeld and just as he gets the call for King of Queens). Through it all, his relationship with - and marriage to - Anne has proved to be his strength. He’s said that she was always the pillar and he the neurotic. It’s part success story, part memoir, part comedy, and part love story. The blurbs call it “laugh out loud” funny. I didn’t think so, but I did enjoy it.
Miscellaneous
The Complete Brigadier Gerard - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ($9.95/Gift Card, Copyright 2005, 380 pages, Trade Paperback)
OK. Anyone reading this knows that I am a fan of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. But did you know that he created other just as famous characters? This collection contains all of the Brigadier Etienne Gerard stories, published in the Strand Magazine between 1894 and 1903, (during the period when Holmes was “dead“.). These stories were originally published as two separate volumes - “The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard” -8 stories -and “The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard” -9 stories - 17 stories in all. Doyle was fascinated by the Napoleonic Wars, and had done a lot of research. These stories are historically accurate but the character is far from Holmes. For the most part, they are told in the first person, and as if by a long-retired soldier living on a pension, passing the time with neighbors. He’s a Gascon, much like D’Artagnan from the Dumas stories - which is to say that he is given to exaggerating his abilities. But, as you read the stories you get to know the character, and the times he lived in. Though Doyle, on several occasions, reduces Gerard to the level of a buffoon, he always brings him back to the survivor who lived through the Napoleonic Wars by trying his best to follow orders even though he doesn‘t always understand them. The mood of the stories run from the joy Gerard feels at riding into action to the grimness of the retreat from Moscow. There is adventure, action, some romance (although Gerard always gets the short end here) and some real comedy. At times, the stories get repetitive - given the limited time/area - but Doyle has a way with words. I enjoyed it.
Series
Bold Sons of Erin - Owen Parry ($7.99/$.50, copyright 2003, 392 pages, Paperback)
Though not the first in the series, this was my introduction to the Abel Jones novels, which are set during the Civil War. Jones is a former sergeant from the English army who, having served in India, has relocated to America and now, as a major in the Union army, is tasked with solving murders and mysteries that may affect the outcome of the war. Abel is a short-statured Welshman - and a Methodist - with a bad leg due to a wound. In this book, he is sent to the coal mining area of Pennsylvania (where he and his family just happened to live) to solve another murder - that of a Union general on a conscription mission among the Irish miners. Parry paints as realistic a picture as possible of how life is for the Irish at that time, as well as how things were during the war. He brings in historical figures such as Lincoln and Seward in Washington, Black Jack Kehoe among the miners, and Meagher at Fredericksburg. And he doesn’t hold back from the carnage that was the Civil War, the incompetence of many of the Union officers, nor the corruption of mine owners and railroad operators. The murder turns out to have twists and turns that swing from Russians (autocrats and revolutionaries) to a parish priest and, even, witches. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
As I said, some different things this month - an autobiography, some non-Holmesian Conan Doyle stories, and a mystery series set during the Civil War. Maybe, in the months to come, I'll be telling you about some other different things I've been reading. Then again....maybe not.
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