I only managed two Le Carre books in November. I don’t know that I will ever get back to my pre-law school pace.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

John Le Carre

I think this, or maybe Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, is Le Carre’s most famous work. I see why this one is so well regarded. Alec Leamas is in charge of a spy ring in divided Germany. When his last active agent is killed, Leamas is called back to London. However, he is approached by higher ups at the Circus to take on one last mission, posing as a disaffected former agent and infiltrating the other side to take down a long-standing nemesis.

Leamas is an old operator who thinks he knows how amoral his business is, but he really doesn’t. He is contrasted with other characters who are either more idealistic than he is, or more pragmatic and amoral. Leamas’s actions are amoral, but he still believes in his cause. But as the mission goes on, he starts to doubt that. If his actions, and the actions of Control and the Circus, are the actions of the good guys, how good can they be. The whole thing comes in under 300 pages and packs a lot into it. It is really good and gives the reader a lot to chew on.

The Looking Glass War

John Le Carre

This one is brutal. It is a comedy of sorts, with a decrepit, failing spy organization bumbling into an apparent mission and having to activate the machinery of running a spy operation for the first time since WWII. The head of the organization is still caught up in an interagency rivalry with another British spy organization, the Circus of many Le Carre books, but seemingly unaware of how little his group can accomplish. The closest thing to a real protagonist is John Avery, a newcomer to the agency with no real skills or experience. They’ve had reports of Soviets amassing weapons in Germany, and the man they sent to retrieve pictures of the site has turned up dead. After a mission to retrieve his body doesn’t go well, they decide to activate a German speaking field agent from the war to go and take a look himself.

The whole thing is a comedy of errors. Everyone just wants one last, or first, chance at glory. There is no real evidence that the lead they are chasing is anything at all; it is all a waste. The first thing Leiser, the agent, does is kill someone, essentially ruining the mission as it starts. The whole thing is a mass of failure and incompetence from the jump. Yet still, Le Carre makes the reader feel something. You do start to care for Avery; he doesn’t really accomplish anything, but he is trying very hard. But he’s too green and too unskilled to recognize how futile everything is. When it gets to the end, your sympathies are with him as it all goes awry.

I spent the whole month studying for the bar exam, so not a lot of reading happened. I finished up a couple of books I mostly read in June and that’s about it. Next month hopefully I can read more.

The Color of Law

Richard Rothstein

This book is infuriating. Not because it was poorly written, but because the truth of the law and history it explicates is so frustrating. I don’t know what I have to say about it. I think it is an important book, one that people should read if they want to understand why certain things in the US are the way they are. The Color of Law lays out the stark reality of how racism has embedded itself in the history of American housing policy. The fact is that policies like segregation were deliberate government policy, and remained such long after most people think that stopped.

Cold Magic

Kate Elliott

I was a little disappointed with this. Mostly because it was sold to me as a mix of a Gothic romance and a fantasy, but I don’t think it really delivered on the romance part. It starts with a very romance-y set up, with protagonist Cat forced into marriage with a mage by her aunt and uncle. Her parents died when she was young, so she was raised with her uncle’s family. While it starts with that romance but, the whole novel doesn’t really slow down enough at any point to let the reader get comfortable with its characters. It kind of follows the outline. At first her new husband is short and peremptory, quickly rushing her from place to place and seeming completely unrelatable. That facade starts to crumble the further on they get, and protagonist Cat starts to show her mettle.

Still, I enjoyed this book well enough. Elliott sets up a very interesting world and some interesting characters. It is just that this book seemed to end just as the revelations were starting. I am already on to the sequel; hopefully it follows through well after this fine but introductory feeling first volume.

Four books in June, and a good mix of genres and tones. It feels good to be back on pace.

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine

Set in a vast, aging space Empire, A Memory Called Empire follows a new ambassador, Mahit, from an independent space station coming to the Teixcalaanli Empire to assume the place of her recently deceased predecessor. She has trouble adapting to her new post. Part of it is the suddenness of her having to assume that role. The bigger part of the problem is that her home station has technology to implant the memories and expertise of people’s predecessors in their minds, and Mahit is going in blind. It is especially hard because she has to keep the existence of that technology secret, unless her predecessor has already spilled everything.

Mahit is thrust into a swirling mix of colonial condescension, succession politics, and general intrigue. She has few, if any, allies and no real idea what is going on. She spent her life on her home station training for this job and learning all she could about the Teixcalaanli, but still when she gets there she is clearly an outsider. The book has her navigating these fraught waters just as the entire political makeup of the empire is starting to come apart, as the Emperor is getting old and someone will have to replace him. It is heady, heavy stuff, but wrapped in a propulsive thriller plot. I am eagerly awaiting the follow up.

Shades of Grey

Jasper Fforde

I wrote a whole thing about this book already. It is definitely one of my favorites.

In Farleigh Field

Rhys Bowen

This is kind of a spy/mystery set during WWII. At Farleigh Place, the home of Lord Westerfield and his family, an airman’s parachute fails to open and he falls to his death. This is tragic, of course, but it also opens up a mystery because no one seems to know what regiment the man is from. The family’s daughters are spread around, one still living in Paris, trapped there while studying when the war began. The youngest is the one who stumbled upon the body in the field. Another, Pamela, is aiding the war effort in London. Family friend Ben Cresswell, injured himself as a young man, works for MI5 and is tasked with finding a German spy in Britain. That search ends up bringing him close to home.

There is the mystery of the spy and the dead man. There is also a romance between Ben and Pamela and Jeremy, an RAF hero pilot. There is some more political and family stuff in the background. It is a book with a lot going on, but none of it hits quite as hard as it could. It all feels just a little vague or insubstantial. Still, the central characters are likable enough. I’m trying not to spoil anything, but the answers are a little too obvious from the start, taking any kind of surprise out of the mystery. Still, for a bit of light reading I enjoyed it enough.

Flinx in Flux

Alan Dean Foster

Flinx in Flux is one of a series of space adventures following a young man named Flinx. He has a telepathic collection with some kind of venom spitting, flying space snake. In this book, he encounters a young woman almost dead in the wild and tries to help her get back to safety. She is being hunted by some ecological terrorists who want her for her ‘gengineering’ expertise. That expertise makes Flinx wary, since he was genetically engineered, which is why he has telepathic powers and that is why he is not of the practice. Still, a bond forms between him and the woman, Clarity, as he tries to get her back home.

The book didn’t really do anything for me. The ideas it explores are not ones that greatly interest me. The adventure parts are fine, I guess. I assume that if someone read the whole series perhaps they would have greater affection for the characters and perhaps a greater interest in the setting. As it is, it is a perfectly fine piece of science fiction.

I read a lot in April. The situation kind of allowed me to indulge in sitting with my kindle for long periods of time. I expect similar results in May.

The Bully Pulpit

Doris Kearns Goodwin

I loved this book. It looks into a fascinating time and one of the most interesting stories in American history. The book follows three separate, but related threads. The first follows the life and career of Teddy Roosevelt. The second does the same for William Howard Taft. And the third follows the muckraking journalists, from the magazine McClure’s that were influential at the time, both influencing and being influenced by Roosevelt and other progressive politicians.

It does a good job of condensing the history into a readable story. I have read several Theodore Roosevelt biographies, and this does an excellent job of giving a quick, yet fairly thorough look at his life and his time as president. I know less about Taft, but it makes for a readable look at his life and the forces that shaped him. I knew next to nothing about McClure’s and this book does an excellent job of showing how the magazine came to be and why it was so important for a time.

The real meat of the book is the friendship between Roosevelt and Taft, and the completeness of its rupture during Taft’s presidency. It plays out almost like a Shakespearean tragedy. How they worked together so well while Roosevelt was President to the inevitability of everything coming apart once Taft ascended to that office. Roosevelt had this absolute need to be the center of attention, and he was never going to be comfortable stepping aside. Especially since he honestly could have won a second/third term had he run for it. While Roosevelt was brash and commanding, Taft was slower and more contemplative. He lacked the force of will to get things done that Roosevelt had, and Roosevelt treated his compromises as turning his back on the things they did together. So things fell apart.

The Bully Pulpit really changed my opinion of Taft. He comes across as the true tragic figure here. From his continually put aside desire to be a Supreme Court justice to his wife suffering a stroke early in his presidency to his demoralizing defeat in the 1912 Election. He comes across as a flawed but reasonable and conscientious man. The most crushing part is the anecdote from an interview, which never ran, from just before the 1912 election, where he was asked about what happened between him and Roosevelt and all he could say was that Roosevelt was his best friend.

This is a great look at a very interesting time in American history.

Dragon Weather

Lawrence Watt-Evans

This book is a take on the Count of Monte Cristo, but with dragons. The protagonist, Arlian, loses his family to a dragon attack when he is young. In fact, he is the only survivor from his town. Unfortunately, when he is found by the scavengers searching through the destruction, instead of saving him, they sell him into slavery. After growing to adulthood in some mines, Arlian manages to escape and sets out to get revenge on the men who sold him as a slave and the dragons who destroyed his town.

I really struggled staying interested in the first part of the book. After Arlian gets out of the mines and starts to plot his revenge I liked it a lot more. There are still things that give me pause. This book has a lot of mutilated women. It is a harsh book all around, but it is all seen through the eyes of the protagonist, and he seems to focus on women missing body parts. That said, it is mostly an enjoyable read. I don’t really have a lot to say about it.

Fairest

Gail Carson Levine

This is related to Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted; this time a retelling, of sorts, of Snow White. Aza feels ugly compared to the rest of her adopted family. She does have the power of magic ventriloquism. A useful skill in a land that greatly values one’s singing voice. This eventually leads to her getting entangled with the beautiful, but weak singing, new queen of her homeland. It deals a lot with how much Aza lets her perception of how people see her control how she acts. The queen, who isn’t really evil here, has similar problems, focusing mostly on her looks and being afraid to let people know her weaknesses. It was an enjoyable enough take on a fairy tale retelling.

The Mystery of Three Quarters

Sophie Hannah

Another of Hannah’s Poirot continuations. I enjoyed this quite a bit. I don’t think it really reads like Christie in the prose, but the mystery is suitably inventive and it does a good job of fleshing out a wide variety of characters to be potential suspects. The book starts with four separate people coming to Poirot, angry about a letter he had written to them, accusing them of murdering a man. Poirot is confused, both because he did not write any such letters and because the letters accused the four of them of murdering the same person. That person was an old man who died without any suspicion of foul play. Still, Poirot begins to investigate, as the letter writer likely intended.

The four people initially seem to be unconnected to each other, but as Poirot digs in, some connections start to turn up. Also, all four appear to be keeping some secrets from him. Somewhere in those secrets is the truth about who wrote the letter and who, if anyone, committed a murder. It seems to play fair, and the mystery keeps you guessing. I don’t know that I completely buy the big revelation near the end, but it did not lessen my enjoyment.

The Crime at Black Dudley

Margery Allingham

I’ve now read two of her books, and I do not think Allingham is for me. I have found both this, and its sequel Mystery Mile, which I accidentally read first, to be kind of muddled. Nothing about them comes across particularly clearly; not the characters, not the plots. This one clearly sets the eventual starring detective Albert Campion as a clear side character. It is about a group of guests invited to a house party at a remote manor, the titular Black Dudley. It is a mysterious old manor, with hidden rooms and secret passages. Things start to get strange when they play a party game based around a family heirloom jeweled dagger. The owner of the manor falls ill, with some of the guests convinced he is actually dead. It is soon pronounced, by a doctor present, that he is indeed dead. Things get weirder from there, with the victims’ associates, who are not part of the house party being thrown by the victims nephew, confining everyone to the manor and sabotaging their cars. One fly in the ointment is Albert Campion, a party crasher who seems to know more than he lets on.

The central figure to the mystery is one Dr. Abbershaw, who is trying to get to the bottom of everything and win the heart of Meggie, another guest at the party. It plays out as much like a spy adventure novel as it does a mystery. Really, there isn’t much mystery to it. Maybe knowing who Campion is going changes how I viewed things, but it seemed pretty clear who were the bad guys and who were the good guys. It was also pretty clear generally what people were up to, though not all the detail. I just can’t tell you much about Abbershaw or Meggie, let alone the bad guys. It’s just not for me.

Manners & Mutiny

Gail Carriger

This is the fourth of Carriger’s Finishing School series. They are kind of hard to define; steampunk historical supernatural adventure romances, I guess? It has been some time since I read the first three. I remember enjoying them, but I don’t really remember the details of what happened. I did retain a solid memory of who the characters are. Sophronia is now close to graduating from her finishing school. That school is set on an airship that flies around an alternate reality Great Britain. And this finishing school trains its students to be expert spies and assassins. Sophronia is just as much of a go getter as she ever was. She has taken her lessons to heart, and she is a very talented operative, if not an especially stealthy spy.

In this book, the school gets taken over by the nefarious Picklemen, and Sophronia, who knows more about what is going on than even her teachers, stays on the ship to try to stop them. That is the big climax, the first half is exactly how Sophronia came to have that knowledge. It also has her dealing with her love life. While she seems to have pretty definitely chosen between the two handsome young men who are interested, social issues seem destined to keep her and her love apart.

It doesn’t have the impact it likely would have had I read it closer to the rest of the series, but once I got into it, it was really enjoyable.

Given the way things are now, I expected to finish more books in March than I did. However, I am certain I will have read a greater number of books in April, I will have read more if I just finish the ones I started in March. Though I am not making the progress I thought I would be being stuck at home. Still, three books in March is not bad, given everything else that is going on.

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

Sarah Smarsh

This is a non-fiction look at poverty in America, and how growing up poor can affect your entire life and outlook. It reflects Smarsh’s personal and family history, but it also highlights larger problems. There are no systems or structures in place to actually help people get out of poverty. The time period covered by the book details the erosion of much of what could help, especially in the farmland where she grew up.

Smarsh’s story does a great job of showing the cycle of poverty that catches people in ways they can’t escape. Her grandmother keeps moving, but cannot make enough money anywhere to give her protection when any sort of financial or personal tragedy hits. No amount of hard work or skill can counteract the weight of the system against the poor; meritocracy is a lie.

If there is a weakness to the book it is the sentence to sentence writing. Smarsh uses a conceit where she is writing to her unborn daughter, a conceit I do not think really works. Other parts are just kind of awkward. None of that really gets in the way of the power of the story she is telling. I grew up in a similar area, if just a little more well off than her family. Smarsh really captures the feeling in rural communities.

Justice Brennan: The Great Conciliator

Hunter R. Clark

My second biography of one of the greatest Supreme Court Justices to ever sit the bench. This one is less in depth than the previous one, but it is still good and gives an excellent look at the life and jurisprudence of William Brennan. As the title indicates, this book highlights Brennan’s ability to build consensus. While other Justices were often brilliant, they could also be rigid. Getting Hugo Black or William O. Douglas to agree to a compromise in an effort to reach a decision that the requisite number of judges could agree on was no easy task, even if one agreed with them. The same could be true of conservative justices like Rehnquist or Burger. Brennan had the ability to determine where the disagreements were and to build a consensus. When the court took a rightward turn in the 1980’s, he used that ability to limit the damage they did to the court’s jurisprudence. Brennan is not one of the most exciting figures of the court; he has nothing on the life of Douglas or Thurgood Marshall, but he was definitely one of the most effective justices.

Myths & Mortals

Charlie N. Holmberg

The second of Holmberg’s Numina trilogy. I do not have a lot to say about this book. I liked Holmberg’s Paper Magician books, but this one feels a little like the story is chasing its own tail. It is the same characters doing the same things, never really feeling like they are making progress. I am intrigued by the world and the characters, but until near the end here, I do not think this book did much. I will likely read the third book at some point, but I have not been crazy about these.