History's Lost Treasures by Eric Chaline

Photo: The book's cover, from its Amazon page.

The second-to-last book I read in 2014 was this extremely interesting and informative book probably best read on The Throne, especially since each chapter is two pages long, max.  But the articles can teach the reader quite a bit about history, which the author, who I've never heard of, clearly knows thoroughly.  He writes about people, events and things very casually, as if he's so familiar with them that he forgets others may not be.
 
This could've led to pedantic and professorial prose, but it never does.  In fact, Chaline clearly took great pains to make this as conversational as possible, sometimes to a fault.  At points it becomes too author-intrusion opinionated.  At others, it becomes a bit pedestrian, like the authors' bios at the back of YA books that try too hard to connect to the YA reader.  The kids are much more sophisticated than that, I assure you; similarly, the author here at times forgets that his audience might be a little more sophisticated than he thinks.
 
I bought this in the remainder bin (for less than seven bucks), and I had to list this title manually on Goodreads (where you'll find my reviews for dozens of books), so take those for what they're worth.
 
All that notwithstanding, this is, as I mentioned, a very interesting and informative book that reads like it was written by scholarly-type on a scholarly-type website, and it probably is somewhere.  I'll guess you can find it on Amazon for a few pennies. (Not that I'm in favor of the public doing that, as the author generally loses out.)
 
Lost treasures (some found, some not) include:

Wondrous burial goods: Tutankhamun's death mask • A real crock of gold: The treasure of Villena • Sunken plunder: The Nuestra Señora de Atocha • Religious rarities: The unique Jain bronzes of Chausa • Stolen artworks: The missing van Gogh paintings • Dazzling gems: The La Peregrina Pearl

No matter how you get a copy, you should do so, even if you read it in small doses, in the room I mentioned above.  There's no sin in that.

The Hunger Games -- Mockingjay, Part 1

Photo: Poster used in the viral campaign for the film, from the film's Wikipedia site.

Mockingjay, Part 1 is a very good, effective film that can be seen as a YA action movie, perhaps the first of its breed.  Jennifer Lawrence's performance and the just-right balance of action and politics carry it, and save it from being just another action film, or just another angry YA film.  I could've done without the (for me) unnecessary romance angle, but I'm not exactly the target audience for this film, and I'm okay with that.  In fact, this film deserves the same kudos as the Alien franchise, and maybe Thelma and Louise: usually action films have male main characters and the females are slower-witted things who get told what to do.  Mockingjay is exactly the opposite of that: the women here are large and in charge, and it's the men who look and act lost.  The men have to be saved by the women, not the other way around.

This is a smarter-than-usual YA movie, which I mean in the kindest of all possible ways.  It's political message is strong: if we all fight each other to the death, surely we will all die.  This makes sense.  Yet, does that mean you shouldn't rebel, as this movie (or, at least, the Capitol, strategically) says for awhile?  The answer is No, of course not.  The rebels will die if they don't rebel, and they may only die if they do.  Furthermore, it makes no sense to support a system that suppresses you.  This makes me want to go on a tangent about Southern Republicans, and the women who support the men behind that social and political system, but for now I'll refrain.  But don't get me started.

This movie should work for the older crowd, such as myself, as long as said crowd remembers that it is a YA action movie, not necessarily made for guys my age.  One immediate criticism (you knew there'd be at least one) hit me, hard, during the movie: Just as the female protagonist (Sigourney Weaver / Ripley) did in the first Alien, Jennifer Lawrence / Katniss (or, more specifically, her sister) does here: during a violent life and death crisis for a large group of people, these two women went back to get the cat.  True, Katniss goes back for her sister who had gone to get the cat, whereupon Ripley simply went back for the cat, but it's still the same.  Of course, the point is that love conquers all--and I'd be a hypocrite if I said I wouldn't risk life and limb for my own pet--but that doesn't stop me from picturing someone in the underground rebel stronghold murmuring: "Uh, could someone close that door, please?  Aren't we getting bombs dropped on us?"  It's a bothersome sequence, though, in 1979 and now, if your point is to show that women can be just as formidable in war as men.  The scenes fit the YA movie, but it didn't fit the movie's subtext.  I'm just sayin'.

And, like me, you may have to assume that the moviemakers really don't believe that an emotionless tyrant in charge of a totalitarian regime--someone so evil that he would bomb a hospital just to prove a point--would let some fighter jets and some really good, sophisticated fighters come and go as they please just to deliver a brainwashed former-boyfriend to a teenage girl who stands mostly as the symbolic representation of a rebellion.

Read that sentence again.

This point was actually discussed between a friend and I recently.  I tried picturing Saddam Hussein, for example, doing the same.  Or, maybe Stalin.  Hell, even Sherman or Ulysses S. Grant.  But, no.  They'd just overwhelm and kill such fighters, or--like Sherman and Stalin--just burn to hell everything in their paths to starve them out.  Chances are, such men wouldn't even know what such emotions were.  There's a war to win here, after all.  Snow wouldn't think he was fighting one teenage girl.  He'd know he was fighting a rebel army, with a solid leader, good fighters, a sophisticated technology expert, etc.  If a brainwashed and violent guy would be trained to go after any of those people, Katniss Everdeen would be the last person he'd strangle.  He'd be sent after President Coin first, the tech guy second.

That'd be like the U.S. South sending a hitman after Harriet Beecher Stowe, who for many was the symbolic representation of the North's stance against slavery.  Didn't happen.  (Well, to the best of my knowledge, anyway.)  Hell, that'd be like Hirohito sending kamikaze pilots after Rosie the Riveter.

But I digress.  I liked the movie.  Seriously.  It's good for all ages, if you like action movies with a political message.  Or if you enjoy looking at Jennifer Lawrence all pissed off.  Maybe she was thinking of the guy who hacked into her cloud.  (Sorry.)  Anyway, go see it, but repeat three times: It's a YA action movie...It's a YA action movie...It's a YA action movie...and a pretty good one, at that.    

Comments for "So Many Reasons," now published in On the Premises

Photo: Norman Rockwell's "Merry Christmas, Grandma!" at addictinginfo.org (Not my kinda site, but it had a good photo of this painting).  Is Christmas ever this old-fashioned and homey?

"So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season," my most recently-purchased story, about how a best-selling author deals with a collapsing marriage on Christmas Eve, was published by On the Premises (Link: www.onthepremises.com) on March 10th, in Issue #19. Use the link above, then click on "Latest Issue (March 2013)" and then click on "So Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season," four stories down on the page. Check out other good stories in that publication as well. It's all free. When you're done, please go to this blog entry and leave a comment. Let me know what you think. Thanks!

For those who care about such things, this story is especially important to me because it is the first non-genre piece I've sold.  This means that it's not science fiction, or horror, or mystery, or speculative fiction, or a specific genre like that.  It's a more everyday story, very contemporary, very today.  And it's about relationships, about how they end, and about not lying to yourself about them.  It's a tough lesson to learn that your life is crappy, and that you're full of crap as well, but that's what happens here.  But I digress: this is especially rewarding because there aren't any tropes of a genre that the writer can fall back on.  For example, in a horror story, you expect some blood, some terror, some fear.  In a mystery, you expect a puzzle, a whodunit.  In both cases, the writing itself doesn't have to be all that good, in a way, as long as the blood and terror keep coming, or as long as the reader is hooked so much on the whodunit that he doesn't notice how terrible the writing is.

In a non-genre story, it isn't that easy.  There are no bloodletting scenes, no whodunit, no YA romance, nothing that a genre writer can fall back on when nothing else is working.  It's just a real-life guy and his real-life problems.  Characterization is more important here, and so is the conflict and the reality.  So when something like this sells, the writer feels a little more confident because this type of writing can be much harder to create than a genre piece.

So if you've taken the time to read it, thank you; if you haven't, please do.  And please comment below.  Let me know what you think, good or bad.  Let's have a discussion about it.  As long as your comments are politely stated (and a specific example from the story would help), I promise to publish them.  Please, and thank you.

As usual, thanks for reading my stuff.  I appreciate and respect the time you sacrifice to do so.