Category Archives: Review

Book Review: SANCTUARY by Faulkner

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SanctuarySanctuary by William Faulkner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A debutante is kidnapped by a cold-eyed killer. A lawyer leaves his wife to return to his small-town home and gets caught up in the trial of a bootlegger accused of murder. This novel interweaves the tales of the two. It’s a story of murder and white slavery.

Faulkner’s employment of language is phenomenal, often poetic and always visceral. His slate of characters, virtually all of whom are fallen, is masterfully created. It’s immensely readable both with respect to the pace and  intensity of the story and the brilliant use of language.

If you haven’t gotten around to this one, I highly recommend this book.

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Book Review: We Are Soldiers Still

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We Are Soldiers StillWe Are Soldiers Still by Harold G. Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is a mix of the story of meetings between American and Vietnamese military men a couple of decades after the war and a treatise on leadership and war –plus some filler material. It’s a follow-up to a book written by the same authors on the Battle of Ia Drang, We Were Soldiers Once… and Young. That book was the subject of a movie starring Mel Gibson.

Both parts of the book are interesting, but this book is at its best when it discusses the meetings with Vietnamese officers. General Moore (Lt. Col. at the time of Ia Drang) gets to meet with the opposing commander at Ia Drang, Lt. Gen. Nyugen Hu An, and get his perspective on the battle. While the meetings go from being tentative to cordial with changing political winds, one gets a feel for the tension and the melting away of those tensions. With the latter meetings, additional U.S. fighters from Ia Drang are present, and not all have as easy of a time letting bygones be bygones as Gen. Moore. The group of U.S. soldiers spends the night on the Ia Drang battlefield (in an area that was near the border and not entirely settled at the time of their return.)

I don’t wish to suggest that the second part, which talks about leadership strategies and views on war, is not worthwhile, but it very much felt like padding to get the book up to a salable thickness. Gen. Moore is obviously quite competent to address these subjects, but the shift in the book is glaring and jarring.

This is very different kind of book than its predecessor. If you are expecting a tale of war, that’s not what you’ll find. If you are interested about how mortal enemies can be come close friends, you’ll find this book intriguing.

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Book Review: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1)The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) follows an earthling, Arthur Dent, as he is introduced to galactic hitchhiking by a Betegeusian named Ford Prefect. This duo joins the other sole-remaining human and the Galactic president aboard a stolen ship. Along with a chronically depressed robot, the group gets to the bottom of life’s grandest questions.

I just finished re-reading this book. I wouldn’t have figured there was any reason to review a 34-year-old book. To my knowledge, there isn’t another movie in the works. Surely, everyone who is likely to read it already has, right? Young people like new stuff, and if you’re… let’s say… youthfulness-challenged and haven’t gotten around to it then it’s probably not your cup of tea (which, sad so say, means you are likely devoid of a sense of humor.)

Then I saw a “best in 2012” list by genre, and H2G2 was on it. Yes, I realize that “best-seller” lists are a euphemism for “most-printed” and are not a perfect indicator. Of course, when I went to look for said list, I was unable to re-discover it. It may have been the “top 20 books used to prop up the corner of a coffee table” for all I can prove. However, in looking for the list, I did find H2G2 on a lot of other lists including best-selling books of all time and most popular sci-fi of all time.

In short, read this book.

I don’t want to give a lot of spoilers, but here are just a few of the things H2G2 will do for you:

-It tells you the answer to life, the universe, and everything. (Now everything else will be anti-climactic and thus stress-free.)

-You’ll never look at a mouse the same way.

-It tells you what you need in order to hitchhike through the Milky Way (Spoiler alert: a towel.)

What more could one want from a book? (If you say vampires or zombies, I’ll choke you through your USB port.)

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Book Review: Takagi Oriemon, Budo Hero of Shiroishi

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9781447769033Takagi Oriemon: Budō Hero of Shiroishi by Mamiya Hyoemon

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an English translation of a book that was written long ago. The translation is by the Jinenkan Honbu Dojo — specifically Manaka Unsui (the head [Kancho] of the Jinenkan) and his students Robert Gray, Maurizio Mandarino, and Eric Shahan. The original is entitled Budo Shiroishi no Ei and was written in Japanese.

The book is the story of the seven-year warrior pilgrimage (musha shugyo) of a warrior named Takagi Oriemon who lived from 1625 to 1711. Takagi founded a martial arts school that, as was typical, branched out over the centuries. As I understand it, there are two or three descendant schools still in existence today.

Takagi was legendary for his strength. The book offers many accounts of descriptions of both his physical strength (from moving boulders to help farmers to chopping down a house to create a fire break) and his strength of mind (e.g. staying where others were afraid to because of hauntings.) However, mostly it portrays Takagi as a supremely humble and virtuous man. He misses no opportunity to assist those in need of help, and always humbly declines reward. He does not use his great power for wanton destruction, but does punish the wicked when no other choice remains.

Unlike Musashi’s Book of Five Rings or Yagyu’s The Life-Giving Sword, which are mostly about strategy, this book is mostly examples of virtuous living with a few strategic concepts thrown in.

I can offer a test for whether a reader might enjoy this book or not.

You’ll love this book if you:
– are fascinated by biographies of great martial artists.
– enjoy learning about life in Japan during the Tokugawa period.
– enjoy morality tales and the example set by great men and women.
– like to be inspired by people who really had their stuff together.
– don’t mind the occasional ghost story.

You won’t like this book if you:
– are an editor or English teacher and things like errant apostrophes make your head explode.
– are turned off by the flouting of conventional writing style (multi-speaker paragraphs of dialogue abound in this book.)
– find that ghost stories or supernatural elements completely ruin an otherwise down-to-earth read.
– find typos grate on your nerves.
– are really grossed out by gory manga-style line drawings (they are not all like that, but some are.)

I had to deduct at least a star for the many grammatical and formatting deficiencies of the book, but I still think everyone would gain from reading it and seeing the life example set by Takagi Oriemon: Budo Hero of Shiroishi.

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Book Review: Breakfast with Buddha

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Breakfast with BuddhaBreakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Merullo’s “Breakfast with Buddha” is a classic road-trip / odd couple tale. I found it to be engrossing and engaging. It is a book that attempts to convey life lessons as it entertains. In my opinion, this type of book succeeds best when the lessons do not draw too much attention to themselves, but rather subtly plant a seed. In some cases Roland Merullo’s book succeeds on this regard, and in other cases his middle-of-the-road protagonist comes across as a bit preachy and holier-than-thou.

The set up is a road-trip from New Jersey to North Dakota in which a spiritual but only vaguely religious skeptic is joined by a Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche. The Rinpoche conveys life lessons, largely of a Buddhist nature but somewhat non-denominational, to the protagonist — often at breakfast (hence the title.)

Merullo does a great job creating a character who considers himself spiritual, but who is not so comfortable with spiritualism that is out of line with western rationalism or which expresses religiosity in the doctrinaire Western tradition.

The protagonist, Otto Ringling, undergoes a sort of transformation that is satisfying –though some may find it to have gone a skosh too far.

Those who my Religious Studies professor called Homo religiosis will likely find the book objectionable, but atheologists (not atheists, but those not believing in religion, though believing in god / God / gods) will probably relate to it quite nicely.

I recommend it.

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