Puttering in the Study

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

I needed some big books for reading on our recent trip, and this one looked like one that I ought to read, so I picked it up.  It is very well-written, but takes forever to read (took me two days, but that was reading virtually full-time on sea days) and while it's interesting, and I liked the characters, the perils of Prior Philip just got old after a while, and you were ready for the villain to get his comeuppance once and for all, and get the thing done and finished with.  I saw the sequel in the bookstore in the airport on the way home, and passed it up.

How They Won the War in the Pacific: Nimitz and His Admirals - Edwin P. Hoyt

I've been looking forward to reading this book for some time.  It's perhaps somewhat dated by now, as it was originally released in 1970, but it's still a good summary of the story of the Pacific War from the perspective of the admirals who fought it.  It shows Nimitz as the clear-headed leader that kept all the egos and agendas from pulling the war efforts in the Pacific apart, and explains what he did and why involving the promotion and assignment (and reassignment) of admirals during the conflict.
It may be because it predates some better research - I don't know - but I found Hoyt's explanation of some controversial episodes insightful.  He was fair to Admiral Fletcher at Midway and especially at Guadalcanal (he's not so fair in a later book I'm reading) and makes Leyte Gulf a lot clearer by explaining that far from abandoning the invasion fleet at Leyte, Admiral Halsey was never charged with protecting it if an opportunity to attack the Japanese fleet presented itself.  Whether he should have been so charged is really the question, and strangely enough, the blame here actually might have been Nimitz'.  Hoyt relates the story of how Nimitz' son, a sub commander, happened to be at CincPac when Leyte occurred, and when he read what Halsey's orders were, he told his father that the blame lay with his father for not charging Halsey with protecting the invasion fleet - Halsey did exactly what his orders told him to do (although he was at fault for not making clear what he was doing, which Hoyt explains was an example of Halsey's chronically bad staffwork).  Historians seem to assume that he should have, but that job was actually assigned to the Seventh Fleet, not Halsey's Third, and was just another by-product of the divided command structure that caused problems (which you are actually surprised weren't worse)  of having dual commands in the Pacific - Nimitz and MacArthur.  This book, by the way, illustrated those proiblems better than anything else I have read, surprisingly including E.B. Potter's Nimitz, which came out at about the same time as this book.

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

I've read this book before - see post here - but I liked it so much that I've been looking for the opportunity to reread it in a quiet environment such as sea days on a ship.  So I picked up a softcover edition before we left on our trip and reread it over a couple of days. 
Again, really, really enjoyed it.  My favorite part has become the verisimilitude of the relationships in the book, which are just a pleasure to read, but I still can't pass up commenting on how much I like that she insists when describing Dracula (and other undead) that there's just something unnatural about the way that they look, move, and smell - something deeply not right about them.  I've always felt that you just can't pretend that a walking corpse that's hundreds of years old works exactly like a live person, and she's the first author to get that.  

Mistress of the Elgin Marbles: A Biography of Mary Nisbet, Countess of Elgin - Susan Nagel

I nearly stopped reading this book after the first sentence.  Beginning a book with the statement that 200 years ago the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Napoleon, Lord Nelson and various other glitterati were all "burning with curiosity" to meet this young noblewoman is a promise of an almost complete lack of objectivity in a historical book - a warning that what is to come, while it may be (and proves to be) a well-researched and written book about an interesting corner of a significant historical event, it is at bottom a hagiography that will always assume the best of its subject and present it as historical fact, with no historical basis whatsoever (I checked - the book has six pages of Notes, and the repeated subjective statements about Mary are nowhere supported by anything whatsoever).  So from the beginning - although in fairness about halfway through the book the subjective statements really drop off as the historical record begins to be so fleshed out that they're not really needed - you're treated to a barrage of subjective statements about how intelligent and studious and kind, and extraordinary and beautiful and charming, and sought after the extraordinarily wealthy Mary Nisbet of Scotland was.
Again, in fairness, the book is well-written, and the author's attraction to the subject is understandable, given that the one fault Mary should have had as an extremely wealthy young bride of a spendthrift earl - being a spendthrift - she most emphatically did not have.  While I don't buy that she was showered with jewels or attention at the Ottoman court because of her own charms - it was the culture and she was the wife of the ambassador of the premier world power - she not only did not seem to especially value such baubles - she sent as many as she could home to be sold to try to stem the bleeding from her husband's profligate spending.  And as the book goes on, it becomes clear that while her role in the acquisition of the Elgin marbles might not be as large as the book claims, it was undoubtedly a key one - something I did not know previously (despite having read a lot on the subject).  In short, Mary was certainly not a nitwit socialite.  She was a conscientious young woman who ended up with a bad marriage and who eventually flatly refused to endure another pregnancy, even at the cost of losing her children and her reputation in polite society.  The heart of the book is the assertion that she was an early champion of women's rights, and while it's not clear to me that that's completely true - she did have an enormous family fortune to fall back on after her break with her husband, as well as a husband in waiting, and while she lost her children for in some cases decades, they did all eventually come back to her (she did, after all, have an estate to bequeath that at her death was worth in today's dollars some $400 million in income per year).  But she does serve as a useful illustration of precisely what rights women had at the time she divorced, which was almost precisely nothing.
Again, a good subject, and a well-written book, but I really wish the author had left out the unsupported subjective statements, and simply let Mary's well-documented life tell her story.  She didn't need the help.

One additional thought - I checked the story of Mary's divorce from Elgin against the account in St. Clair's book on the Elgin marbles, and it differs in several respects, which is actually a credit to this book.  According to the St. Clair book, Elgin (and later his son) was suffering from syphilis, and that was why Mary (understandably) would not have relations with him.  But from his perspective with only one male heir - and that one sickly - he had to have more heirs.  Nagel to her credit avoids this easy out for Mary and points out that he in fact did not have syphilis - both his and his son's symptoms were actually the result of mercury poisoning as a result of medicinal use, and that she did not object to remaining married and to sleeping with him - she simply insisted that he agree to use birth control, which she points out was available at that time in the form of a useful device brought to the attention of King George III by his physician, a Dr. Condem (I'm serious). Elgin was equally insistent she bear additional heirs, and that - not the alleged adultery with Robert Ferguson which may or may not have happened, but which would without question not have ever even been brought up otherwise - was what ended the marriage.  Proving adultery was simply what the law required at that time to obtain a divorce, which Elgin needed to obtain additional heirs.  Again, whether it in fact happened prior to the divorce we'll never know, but because of the requirements of the law, both sides actually needed (and in Ferguson's case, didn't even oppose) such a finding, so Elgin got himself a new wife, and Mary got a husband who would use, uh, you know... 

The Amber Room - Steve Berry

This was my last Steve Berry book to read, and I think I can tell that it was his first.  The plotting and the subject matter was not quite as developed as in his other books.  Still, I enjoyed it a great deal, and as always I enjoyed how deeply he grounds the book in a real historical subject.

The Lost Tomb - David Gibbins

I picked this up in an airport bookstore headed out on our recent vacation, and generally enjoyed it, but with some reservations.  First, the author's exposition style is clumsy - he has a great deal of background historical material he has to convey (all of which I liked) but he does it by having people just say it in completely unbelievable conversations, using words like "disgorge".  Reading along I could see better, more believable ways that the exposition could have been handled without destroying the veracity of the scene.  The end result is that you never are allowed to forget that the characters are not real people, but instead just mouthpieces for a plot, and they are constantly having to stop acting believably to spout off professorial dissertations to inform the reader what's really going on.  A related problem is the way characters inexplicably open conversations by talking in paragraphs about experiences from the prior book, and using words and phrases that people just don't use in ordinary conversations.  They may be thinking these thoughts, but this isn't what they'd say, and again, believability is lost. 
Second, the author has a real thing for underground archaeology, where divers enter a tomb or cave from underneath (since the site in question is usually inconveniently located under the center of a major city).  As well as the author writes (and it is good) it was always hard somewhat hard to visualize what was happening, and it strains credulity to believe that all these sites are conveniently accessible from underneath via some sort of tunnel or excavation.  After a while it becomes pretty clear that the reason they're accessible is because the characters have these really cool underwater suits, and the author is just looking for ways for them to use them.  When you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, I guess.
That having been said, I did generally enjoy the subject matter and the book, but again, with another minor caveat.  The overall theme is that there's a gospel written by Jesus personally, and it is of vast historic importance because it contradicts traditional church teachings (a good theme handled well in Steve Berry's The Third Secret).  The problem here is that the key teaching is - literally - the last two sentences of the book, which just aren't supported enough to really support the book, I didn't think.  Berry's Third Secret of Fatima is thin enough, designed as it is to conveniently contradict every major contemporary church teaching - but it is grounded enough in the plot throughout the book that when you finally read it it makes sense from a storytelling perspective.  This one looks a lot like a convenient deus ex machina.
But, again, I generally liked the book - maybe even more so because I started to get interested in how its shortcomings could be defined and fixed.  Guess I've been editing too long...

2008 Europe trip – part 2 – Naples (Capri), Civitavecchia (Rome), Livorno (Florence & Pisa), Cannes (Cannes, Nice & St. Paul de Vence), Barcelona

Well, we’ve been busy the last several days!  After our first at-sea day Sunday October 5 during which we came down the east coast of Italy, rounded the end of the peninsula and then came up the west side, we arrived at Naples on the morning of October 6.  We decided to spend the day on Capri, where we’d had such a great time in 1999, when we rented a scooter and cheated death for most of the day.  We took the jet boat to the island, then boarded small buses to take us up to Anacapri, where we took the chair lift to the top of the island (beautiful views) and then toured the Villa San Michele, which had beautiful gardens and views of the island below.  We then took the bus across the island to Capri, where we had lunch, saw the view from the gardens of Augustus, and then did some shopping, before taking the funicular back down to the harbor and the boat back to Naples.  The pictures for the last several days have been added to the photo album – same web link as last time - http://mcsmith.blogs.com/photos/2008_europe_trip/.

If it’s Monday, October 7, we’re in the harbor at Civitavecchia, which is the port of Rome.  Another bus ride to St. Peter’s Square, where we were dropped on our own for the day.  Jamie and I had just realized that morning that we had not gotten a number for my cousin Cathy’s son Paul Kolker, who’s a seminarian at the Pontifical North American School, and we really wanted to see him, so we called and woke Paul’s dad Mike up (at 1:30 am, Texas time) to get numbers.  We left messages for Paul all morning, but didn’t actually reach him till early afternoon, when we learned that he’d be finishing up giving a tour under St. Peter’s at exactly the same time we were meeting at St. Peter’s to leave, so the drama was intense all afternoon wondering if we’d actually hook up.

But we found ways to amuse ourself anyway, getting on a tour bus for an hour and a half tour of the city just to get to the Colosseum , which was the one major Roman monument we’d missed two years ago.  We hooked up with a guided tour (which we enjoyed very much) then grabbed a cab back to St. Peter’s.  We were headed into the tunnel for the bus station when Paul came running up and we took a quick picture of the three of us before getting on the bus.  Coincidentally, Paul’s seminary was literally only a hundred yards from where our bus let off, so he actually walks through our terminal daily to get to and from St. Peter’s.

Tuesday, October 8 we were at the port of Livorno (where we saw our first cruise ship, formerly the Marco Polo, now under a different name) where we caught a bus for tours of Florence and Pisa.  In Florence, we were dropped near the Accademia, where our guide took us to see Michelangelo’s David (second time for me, and third time for Jamie, but we never fail to be amazed).  We then walked through (though not in) virtually all the Florentine sights – the cathedral (with the famous Duomo), the Ponte Vecchio, the Uffizi, the Palazzo Vecchio, and ended up shopping at Santa Croce, where Jamie bought her first Italian purse of the day.  Time for lunch, so our bus picks us up on the banks of the Arno, and we head east to a villa outside town, Villa La Massa for a “gourmet lunch” and neither the villa nor the lunch disappointed. 

Then back on the bus for the trip to Pisa, where we were dropped near the Campo dei Miracoli, where they have this campanile (bell tower) that leans a bit.  Tour groups can go up it, so Jamie and I did (after she bought her second purse of the day), and you can see from the pictures that we had a great time.  It is truly unnerving to be circling a leaning building going higher and higher, and when we came outside of the building at the bell tower level and then had to circle the leaning building on an outside railing to go to the very top – well, Jamie did it, but I stayed at the bell tower level!  But we were feeling those 294 steps the rest of the day (and into the next day). 

Wednesday, October 8, we finally left Italy for France, and spent the day touring the Cote d’Azur from Cannes.  We picked up a tour bus in Cannes and drove past the waterfront to Nice, where we got out and toured the flower market (incredible, incredible food for sale – Jamie bought a hunk of parmesan, some figs and nut candy, and I photographed the octopus, squid, shark, and eels for sale for the boys).  We then toured the city and went up to the original castle site to get pictures from the air. 

From Nice we went to the medieval hilltop fortress of St. Paul de Vence, sort of a fortified French version of Santa Fe, where we looked at art and bought a tablecloth and napkins for home.  The bus took forever to get back to the ship, and we were very, very happy when it finally did.  (I haven’t mentioned this, but the first thing we’ve done every day, as soon as we got in was take a nap for two (sometimes three) hours before dinner.  We’re on open seating for the first time w/Princess, and to our surprise we’ve just loved it.  We’ve never know who we are sitting with, and have enjoyed every night.

Today we were in Barcelona, and since we’ve seen pretty much everything we wanted to on prior trips, we slept in and didn’t go into town till almost noon, when we went to La Rambla (the main street for shopping) for a couple of hours.  We had an excellent lunch of tapas in the Barri Gotic region, then came back to the to the ship a little early to relax in our room.  Tonight we’re skipping the dining room for dinner at the Crown Grill on deck 7, and looking forward to our second sea day tomorrow.

2008 Europe trip – part 1 – Venice

 We started our 2008 trip to Europe Wednesday October 1 with four flights – Shreveport to Dallas, Dallas to Miami, Miami to Madrid, and finally Madrid to Marco Polo airport on the mainland across the lagoon from Venice.  I read Rick Steves’ 2009 book on Venice essentially cover to cover during the trip, but we also referred to DK’s Venice “Top Ten” book. 

Once in Venice, around noon local time on Thursday October 2, we caught the Alilaguna (water bus) from the mainland to various stops on Murano and Venice proper, finally getting off with our four suitcases, two carry-ons and two shoulder bags at the San Marco stop about an hour and a half later.  We didn’t actually have a map that showed where our hotel for the first night was, but before leaving Miami we’d narrowed it down to somewhere in the vicinity of the La Fenice opera house in San Marco.  So we rolled our suitcases up and down one bridge up three streets to where we thought it would be (it wasn’t) then asked a helpful local where the Palace Duodo hotel was.  He directed us right to it (unfortunately we had to cross one more bridge!) and we checked into our room around 2pm.  You can look at picture of the hotel and the rest of our trip on our online photo album here.

Since we were not that tired, we had a quick lunch at a nearby restaurant on Campo San Luca, then Jamie went back to take a nap while I window-shopped.  I got turned around, and accidentally found myself on St. Mark’s Square (which is where I took the picture) so I went ahead and went through St. Mark’s Basilica since I hadn’t been there before, I wanted to get a little more familiar with it before Jamie and I went through the next day.  I then went back and we napped till about 8pm, since we wanted to see the city at night.

Venice at night is a totally different city – there are relatively few tourists, and everything looks completely different.  We walked down to St. Mark’s Square and watched the dueling orchestras, window-shopped, and had dinner at a small restaurant on Calle de Teatro, across from another old Venetian opera house.  We then walked down to the Rialto bridge and had gelato (and took pictures by the bridge) then back to the hotel.

Friday morning, October 3 we were up late getting ready to transfer to the ship.  After Thursday’s fisco lugging bags to the nearest water bus, we splurged on a water taxi direct from the hotel’s canal door to the Emerald Princess at 4:30, which left us most of the day to sightsee.  We started with a long tour of St. Mark’s Basilica, including a lengthy trip through the excellent museum (which included time on the balconies overlooking the square, where we took more pictures, as well as up close looks at the beautiful mosaics and the patriarch’s reception room – formerly the doge’s – which was now also a museum).  We also took the separate tours of the Treasury, which had the best collection in existence of formerly Byzantine treasures (chalices and such) most looted in the Venice-led sack of Constantinople in 1205 (which I’m still irate about).  The Treasury also had a couple of hundred relics of saints, and while few were labeled, there was a skull of saint someone, several arm bones (an arm and a leg of St. George) several leg bones, a hand, and many, many other fragments too small (and too poorly lit) to identify.  There was also a fragment of the pillar Christ was scourged at, three of the stones used to stone St. Stephen, a thorn from the crown of thorns, a piece of the True Cross, and possibly a nail from the Cross – although that might have been at a different church – they were not clear at all on what was what.  The highlight of the tour was a beautiful Byzantine gold altarpiece, the pala d’Oro, although the ceiling mosaics were a close second – they were amazing.  When left the church apparently the tide was coming in because we had to walk on duckboards, and the square (which was raised an additional six inches just two years ago) was beginning to flood. 

We next went across the square to the Correr Museum, which has some works by Canova, whose Josephine Bonaparte we (or at least I) ogled at the Borghese Museum in Rome year before last.  It also had extensive displays of artwork and displays on the history of Venice, which we enjoyed – although by this point we were getting really tired.  We picked up books on the basilica, the basilica museum and the Correr museum, as well as a children’s book about Venice for the boys.  We had a quick lunch after that and wandered around another couple of hours before going back to our hotel to catch the water taxi to the ship.

I think I can safely say that we’ve never been so happy to see our ship after two days of walking and lugging suitcases.  We breezed into the stateroom and got unpacked, thoroughly enjoying listening to all the moaning and groaning and complaining of the other passengers.  The profile of the average passenger on a transatlantic trip hasn’t changed since our last one nine years ago – the average age is deceased, and they enjoy nothing so much as complaining all the time.  Anyway, we had a very nice dinner four very nice older couples, and turned in immediately after dinner.

Saturday morning October 4 we were up at 5:30 am to get ready to meet our tour group at 7:15.  We boarded a water bus and went to Murano, where we watched a glass blower make a vase and a “leetle ‘orse.”  Jamie shopped for necklaces on the canal, and we boarded the shuttle to go to Dorsoduro (across the Grand Canal from San Marco) where we had a gondola ride across the Grand Canal and through much of San Marco, then back across the Canal.  We really enjoyed the ride.  After we boarded the shuttle we crossed the Guidecca canal to San Giorgio Maggiore, where I finally got to see an original Palladio-designed building.  Jamie and I were actually not really impressed, with the exception of the beautiful altarpiece (see pictures) and the stunning cherry wood carved choir behind the altar.  We then returned to the ship in time for lunch, and watched the ship leave Venice from our stateroom balcony.  After dinner we toured the ship and watched a movie on deck (something about Las Vegas with Cameron Diaz which we really liked).  We searched the ship in vain for a cup of hot chocolate, but did find a buffet somewhere up on deck 16-ish towards the back so we decided what the hell and ate dinner again, finally going to be around 2.

This morning (Sunday) we had breakfast in our room at 9am.  I say “we” because I ate a little of it in bed and then went back to sleep till a little after noon.  Jamie never ate or got up, suceedding in sleeping a good ten hours before she got up to go to a seminar on acupuncture and weird spa treatments.  We met at the art auction at 2pm, after which she did some more due diligence on spa treatments and I did a lap around the ship.  Seas are moderate today so the ship is bouncing all over the place, so I’m on half a patch just to make sure I don’t feel bad during dinner tonight – our first formal night,

That’s it from here for now – the next several days are busy, busy, busy with stops in Naples, Rome, Livorno (Florence/Pisa), Nice/Cannes, and Barcelona, so we’ll post again when that’s done.