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A good month for reading, at least, if for little else. Your humble servant savored the twilight of the printed word with the following volumes:

The Poe Shadow, Matthew Pearl. This one was a vexing mix of good and bad. The concept, a fictional investigation into the real-life mysterious death of Edgar A. Poe, was promising. And the story was compelling; I was drawn into the sinister atmosphere of conspiracy and eager for answers throughout the book. And yet, perhaps even more impressive in a perverse way was how this story managed to fascinate in spite of the maddening idiocy and arbitrary behavior of the protagonist. If in future the author can manage to develop plausible explanations for his lead character’s path through the intricate plot, he’ll really have something.

1453: The Holy War for Constantinople, Roger Crowley. I very much enjoyed another work by Crowley a few years ago, about the siege of Malta; this one started off a bit slow but once the action of the siege commenced he was back on form. Given the known outcome, Crowley managed to inject a great deal of suspense into his narrative, though admittedly he had good material to work with: while the last holdout of the Byzantine empire was probably doomed to conquest by the Ottomans, sooner or later, Constantinople came remarkably close to surviving in 1453 and might very plausibly have lasted another generation or two. Still, “things fall apart.”

Lost States, Michael Trinklein. I’ve been looking for this one for a while. Trinklein’s book is a fairly breezy but entertaining and beautifully-designed tour of dozens of states that might have been. He stretches the definition of “candidate for U.S. statehood” to absurdity in a few places, though this is balanced in a sense by other could-have-been state proposals that only failed through last-minute chance circumstances that might easily have gone another way.

Monday Morning Quarterback, Peter King. Another delightful design and typography confection, this one is a “best of” collection of the author‘s sportsillustrated.com columns of the same name. I am not at all an “Xs and Os” guy as football fans go, and fortunately the material in the book really doesn’t fall into that category. Morever, along with the trivia and anecdotes, MMQB includes a number of pleasant surprises and just plain good writing.

The Vanished Kingdom, James Roy. Perhaps August was a month for books about “places you can’t go back to,” as along with 1453 I also read this excellent examination of Prussia. True, there is still a Prussia in modern Germany, but much of what was Prussia before World War II has been “written over” a good deal more effectively than even Christian Constantinople. The Vanished Kingdom mixes a history of Prussia with the author’s explorations of the now thoroughly Polish region, and conversations with some of its former German inhabitants.

I did have one quibble with this otherwise excellent work, however, that being Roy’s attempt toward the end of the book to introduce the old “has Germany truly reformed, might not the old instincts toward aggression threaten peace once again” bogeyman. This notion always baffles me. I suppose it must have been fairly reasonable when John LeCarré, for example, repeatedly worried over this idea in his novels 50 years ago. Yet he was still doing so in 1990, placing him very atypically in the company of Margaret Thatcher, among others. Roy’s book was only published 11 years ago and he still would not let the ghosts of World War II rest. Perhaps it’s just some generational difference, e.g. the notion of Germany as a serious, persistent threat just will not loosen its grip on those born prior to 1970 or so, while for those of us born since the notion seems a delusional paranoia. I don’t know.

Before the Dawn, Nicholas Wade. Purporting to be a book about humanity’s long history before recorded history, going all the way back to early proto-hominids, this was a decent effort though the author had a tendency to wander off into “look what cool things the latest conclusions of genetics or linguistics can tell us” digressions, even when these led some ways from the realm of human prehistory. The examination of why humans are the way we are, mostly in the first half of the book, however, were definitely fascinating and rather humbling. (For what it’s worth, though, I would recommend that those interested in this kind of thing start with Jared Diamond’s more-focused The Third Chimpanzee.)

The Last Tycoon, Scott Fitzgerald. This was Fitzgerald’s last novel, left incomplete when his efforts to kill himself with booze finally succeeded. I can’t say a lot for it; the writing is certainly good and the bits about the Hollywood machine were interesting enough, but the rest of the plot, and the two different narratives, didn’t really work for me. Still, it’s called The Last Tycoon. I had to at least give it a chance.

Known to Evil, Walter Mosley. I think I read this mostly in one sitting. Mosley is an enormously talented storyteller, and probably would be whatever he chose to write about, though I confess that the immersion his novels provide into a world largely parallel and unknown to my white bread middle American life adds considerably to the interest. The closest I can come to criticism is noting that one or two things, such as Scandinavian women repeatedly throwing themselves at Mosley’s protagonists in multiple novels, might be verging on a bit of a literary tic. And even then, honestly: who cares. I’m not going to tell the man what to write.

The Short, Victorious War, by David Walder. I’ve been looking for a book on the Russo-Japanese war for some years and finally found this. A good work, this one, with fair share of wit along with the facts, if never quite rising to the level of, say, James Stokesbury. It may be that, like the Franco-Prussian war, the Russo-Japanese war is simply hard to make into a really engaging narrative, because events were so one-sided. As with Napoleon III’s France, the rot had sunk deep in turn-of-the-century Tsarist Russia and scarcely anything went right for the Russian forces against an aggressive and disciplined rising industrial power.

I can’t resist also noting, for what it’s worth, that the “short, victorious war” of the book’s title refers to one Russian minister’s expression of hope for such a conflict to replace discontent with patriotism among the nation’s populace; remarkably, despite doing nearly everything wrong, Russia at least managed to achieve half of that aspiration whereas America’s similarly-motivated adventures of the past decade have failed to be either short or victorious.

Travels in the Scriptorium, Paul Auster. More of a short story than a full-fledged novel, but quite satisfactory all the same. Standard territory for Auster, arguably, with a great deal of mystery about not only the characters and events of the story but the nature of the narrative itself. I suspect that some clues probably escaped me, but in any event the story certainly doesn’t come close to dotting every “i” and crossing every “t.” Being familiar with the author I didn’t expect anything else; the mystery is the point, and in Auster’s hands this approach works.

Everlasting Flower: A History of Korea, Keith Pratt. I have also been looking for a good general history of Korea for some years. Had I known that the Russo-Japanese war largely took place in Korea I might not have chosen to read this at the same time as Short, Victorious War, but given that Everlasting Flower covers the peninsula’s history from early civilization to the 21st century, the overlap between the two books was naturally rather small. Everlasting Flower was, basically… okay. It was a little dry, and while I commend Pratt’s decision to devote space to cultural pursuits rather than restrict his history to battles and kings, the repeated diversions into painting, music, etc., were of limited help in the format of a black and white book. Perhaps this content would work better in a documentary, with sound and color. In any event, whether a fault of myself, the author or simply the material itself, confess that I finished this book with much the same sense of Korea as when I started: it’s between China and Japan, basically, geographically and otherwise. Oh well.

As this Year of Our Common Calendar 2010 began its downhill slide, I turned 32 years old, saw bleakness on all sides of me, and read the following books:

The Rise of the Roman Empire, Polybius. This one took forever. Not because it’s long; I read the far more lengthy Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in much less time. Whereas Gibbon’s prose still seems very contemporary after a couple of centuries, however, no translation can really quite bridge the ten-times-as-long gap between us and Polybius. As I find to be the case with many classic works, it was interesting, and if you settle into its rhythms you can make good progress, but it’s still very easy to set aside.

Having finished it, I confess that I’m still not entirely sure how Rome built its empire; this book was really more like “How Rome subdued Carthage and became kingmakers among the Greeks.” I can note, however, that while “killing those who opposed them” certainly did play a role, I really don’t think it was the key. (After all, a province with a productive, taxpaying populace was of far greater value than a desolation.) In fact the Romans employed canny diplomacy as much as sharpened steel.

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Not a real banner month for awesome books, this time out. During June’s thirty-day span I finished reading the following:

Noir, Robert Coover. This was a kind of intentionally over-the-top send-up of the hardboiled PI novel, per Hammett and Chandler. It had its moments of real wit, but in the end was a fairly pointless exercise. I won’t tell anyone to avoid it, but won’t advise them to make an effort at finding it, either.

Young Irelanders, Gerard Donovan. A collection of short stories, written over the course of many years, about the author’s fellow countrymen and their lives in a changing Land of Erin. This one seemed tremendously promising for the first two or three entries, demonstrating some fantastic storytelling, and then… I’m not sure. Maybe it just lost steam, or maybe I just got bored with what the book turned out to be. In fairness, it may be that stories of bored people squabbling halfheartedly over sex, dating and marriages within a generic setting nearly indistinguishable from every colorless suburb in America actually is an accurate picture of Irish life in recent decades. But it just didn’t do a lot for me.

Embers, Sandor Marai. This one also flagged a little, but still had a lot to offer. For whatever reason, I guess that I enjoy atmospheric, almost meditative accounts of an isolated character reflecting on his life and routine, when well-written. (Hmmmm.) There was a good deal of that in this story of an old, retired Austrian general, though the core of the book turned into a strange near-monologue on the main character’s relation to an old estranged friend and, ultimately, to life’s purpose and meaning (if any exists). A good work, all the same.

By the Sword, Richard Cohen. A big, if by-no-means comprehensive, tour of the history of fencing. Mostly this book was quite enjoyable, its only real weakness being the lack of any sort of unifying narrative, which made it easy to set aside. While I was on vacation and could actually just sit and read without being concerned by other priorities, I finished the book quite easily.

The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. Comparing this with Noir, in this instance the original is far more enjoyable than the parody. Beyond that, it’s a Philip Marlowe novel; I won’t say they’re all interchangeable but on the whole all of them share the same strengths. A few minor flaws did stick out while reading this one, especially toward the end, but maybe I’ve just read enough of these to see things that I overlooked previously.

A Conspiracy of Paper, David Liss. Yet another historical mystery novel, but a fine effort in the genre. Given that the author acknowledges this book as being an outgrowth of his research into Georgian-era economic transitions and the evolution of people’s concepts of money and value, it achieves a quite effective balance. The mystery plot and the characters were better-than-average, and the socioeconomic history content (similar, however, to territory explored in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle) was interesting without getting in the story’s way.

Tales of Times Square, Josh Friedman. A 1986 examination of the seedy world of Times Square; this work of historical nonfiction has now become something of an curious historical artefact itself, given the further changes to the square and its reputation during past quarter-century. Interesting, though frequently somewhat nauseating in its frank, almost bored, documentation of every form of sexual private enterprise on offer in 1970s Times Square.

I would offer this book as Exhibit A in defending my long-held belief that fellow liberals’ frequent lament about “gentrification” is largely (not exclusively, but largely) daft. Toward the end of the book, the author shakes off his otherwise detached tone to express his own disapproval of the destruction of the area’s history by what would be called, more recently, the “Disneyfication” of Times Square. And yet, while I’m sure most land developers really are greedy fiends, and I definitely support historic preservation, Friedman’s complaint seems absolutely random and incredible in the context of his depiction of a neighborhood completely rotten with misery, exploitation, crime and, even speaking as a decided non-prude, irredeemable filth. The glories and historic treasures of Times Square weren’t threatened by urban renewal, guy; they were already long-dead anyway. Even a hasty burial is better than leaving them decomposing on the street.