Book Series Review: The Crazy Rich Asians Trilogy: Crazy Rich Asians (2014), China Rich Girlfriend (2015), and Rich People Problems (2017). Kevin Kwan.

The first and best known of this three novel series, Crazy Rich Asians, was the basis for the blockbuster romantic comedy film of the same name (2018). 

It tells the story of a young Chinese-American woman and college professor, the daughter of a single mother who immigrated from mainland China, who falls in love with a handsome young Chinese man in New York, not realizing that he is the only son and primary heir of one of the oldest, most powerful and wealthiest families in Singapore. 

The problems begin when he invites her to a friend’s wedding back home in Singapore, without warning her about his family or his position in society there, and she begins to experience and realize the full power of the social forces arrayed against her, and her otherwise happy romance with her charming and attractive boyfriend.  

China Rich Girlfriend and Rich People Problems continue the stories of the same cast of absurdly wealthy contemporary characters and their families from Singapore, mainland China and Hong Kong, presented as modern-day novels of manners, but with a large amount of tongue in cheek. 

This is all fun, light entertainment mixed with plenty of amusing social commentary. Kwan clearly enjoys detailing, relishing and skewering the excesses, cluelessness and foolishness of the over-privileged and over-indulged super-rich from Chinese society and elsewhere. Recommended.

TV Review: The Mandalorian. Seasons 1 & 2 (Disney+).

I watched the whole first season of Disney’s first venture in monetizing the Star Wars galaxy for streaming TV with only modest enthusiasm, but it improved steadily over the course of the second season.

The story takes place in a remote corner of the galaxy, after the destruction of the second Death Star, and the apparent death of the Sith Lord and Emperor Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi. It’s a lawless time – the New Republic is struggling to extend its well-intentioned reach, while the fractured forces of the evil Empire are still out there, and they’re up to no good.

Into this Wild West universe comes a lone ranger in shining metal armor, with a jet pack and a lot of other hi-tech weaponry. He is known only as “The Mandalorian” (a reference to his warrior  people and their beleaguered home planet), and he makes allies of convenience and a number of new enemies as he takes on a dangerous mission to save a small child of the Yoda species from mysterious forces.

There is plenty of Star Wars type action and scenery, and a whole new set of gritty characters, strange planets, and plot twists, with a surprise appearance by one of the major Star Wars characters at the end of season 2. Recommended.

TV Review: The Brokenwood Mysteries. All seasons (1-6). Amazon (Acorn).

This was a quirky but quite endearing mystery series, featuring a rumpled older detective inspector with a beater car and a love for American country music, along with his two young wise-cracking detective sidekicks (a woman and a man), and a delightfully oddball female Russian pathologist, who solve local murders in small town New Zealand.

I found by the final season that I was wearying of the story and the characters, which I find is not unusual with many TV series. Producers and writers don’t always know when it’s time to pull the plug on what was a very good idea when it started. With those reservations, recommended.

Book Review: December 6 (2003). Martin Cruz Smith.

In my ongoing search for reading and entertainment available from the library by e-book during the pandemic, I started looking for novels from the past in the thriller/mystery vein by well-known authors in that genre, and fortunately stumbled on this one.

I knew I'd read several of the very good Martin Cruz Smith mystery novels about his Russian detective character Arkady Renko a long time ago, but this book is about another sort of anti-hero protagonist, Harry Niles, a cynical, rebellious son of American missionaries who grows up in 1930s Japan.

Niles is a gaijin (a white foreigner) who is nevertheless steeped in Japanese culture, art and criminality from having grown up in it, yet with a part of his identify and loyalty still tied to his American family and roots.

The novel is a well-written, gripping story of life on the edge of danger in Japan during the China war of the 1930s, with a little bit of a spy thriller plot about the impending Pearl Harbor attack included, along with an interesting portrayal of the China war and the lead-up to World War II as seen from the Japanese side.

This was definitely a worthwhile, interesting and exciting read in an unusual and little-visited historical setting. Recommended.

Book Review: The Splendid and the Vile (2020). Erik Larson.

I had to take two runs at this one to finish it, primarily because I've already read a very large number of books about Winston Churchill, the Battle of Britain, and World War II, so I have a low boredom threshold for new books covering this by-now familiar territory. But in the end it was worth the effort, due in large part to Erik Larson's proven ability to bring history alive through his research, and through his descriptions of the lives of notable individuals living through interesting times and experiences.  

This latest Churchill biography focuses on the legendary British Prime Minister during the war years, and particularly on what people in his inner circle of family, friends and close associates were doing during this period. 

Some of it was new; other parts were by now familiar from earlier sources, and not all that fascinating. That made it a readable but not exceptional addition to the vast trove of Churchill books, distinguished from the others chiefly by the author’s access to interviews with and the papers of several of Churchill’s closest political supporters and family members. Recommended.

Book Review: Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (2018). Patrick Radden Keefe.

This popular book from 2018 is about the Provisional IRA (commonly known as "the Provos") and the murder of a mother of 10 children during "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. 

Very well-written and suspenseful, this history of the Troubles, and the political violence and terrorist groups of the period (as experienced by a number of the Provisional IRA leaders, members, defectors and family members), was made possible in part due to confessions made by several of the Provos as part of a long-term history project at a major Boston university.

The participants in the study who provided testimony to the project were promised their words would be held in secret until the participants were all dead. That promise failed, however, when U.S. courts intervened on behalf of IRA victims and Irish police investigators, and opened some of the history project files, adding to the climate of mistrust, fear and retribution among the people, organizations and events of the period.

The author interviewed many of the key players, as well as the family members of victims of IRA terrorism, and particularly spotlighted the role and activities of Jerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein (the Provos' political front group), which was a recurring topic throughout the narration.   

This is probably one of the best and most moving histories of that bloody period, one that describes clearly the terrible personal costs of living and trying to survive in a civil war zone. 

Given the increasingly open advocacy by some in our own society for the idea that insurrection, religious and ethnic intolerance, paramilitary violence and civil war are what we need here in the United States, it can be read as a stark cautionary tale of what that experience actually feels like, and of the harm it inflicts on all those forced to live through it, regardless of which side they're on. Recommended.

Book Series Review: The Dune Chronicles: Dune (1965), Dune Messiah (1969), Children of Dune (1976), God Emperor of Dune (1981), Heretics of Dune (1984) and Chapterhouse: Dune (1985). Frank Herbert.

Today I'm doing something a little different.  Instead of writing a review of one book, I'm doing a quick summary of a series of related books by an author that deserve to be recognized as a whole body of work. There are several such series that are lifetime favorites of mine, so I'll begin with Frank Herbert's Dune Chronicles, a 6-book set written and published during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.  

(I am not including in this discussion the many other Dune novels spun off and written by Herbert's son Brian Herbert, and several other writers with whom he collaborated, even though I understand that many of them were based on notes and ideas for stories which Frank Herbert had created).

There is no doubt that the Dune Chronicles is one of the greatest book series, if not the greatest, in all of science fiction.  I re-read all three of the first three Dune books recently for the first time in decades, and then kept going with the other three books in Herbert’s 6-book epic Dune series, in part to see how well they have withstood the test of time.

I’m pleased to report that they are still every bit as relevant, as prescient and as timeless as they seemed when I first read them long ago; in fact, some recent commentators have suggested they’re even more relevant now, given the geopolitical, military and ecological developments on planet Earth since Herbert finished the last of the books in the 1980s.

The first three and best-known novels in the 6-book set, Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune, trace the rise and fall of a galactic empire under a young nobleman, Paul Atreides, who becomes the messianic leader of an oppressed people on the desert planet of Dune when he acquires the ability to see the future. Its narrative arc is centered around a classic “hero’s journey” story line, inextricably linked to a long tale of revolution, imperial foundation, conquest and dissolution.

The stories feature great power conflicts and intrigue on a bleak desert planet, a poor but well-adapted nomadic people with a mysterious, fierce religion, and a valuable resource they control that is key to all interplanetary travel and trade. Sound familiar? It did in the 1960s and 1970s too, even before the 1973 Oil embargo and the Middle East Forever Wars of our recent times.

The remaining three books (God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune) are somewhat more esoteric. God Emperor of Dune brings a final end to the Paul Atreides-centered imperial era, by revealing how his son Leto II acquired godlike powers and near immortality, and then instituted a forced era of peace and civilizational stagnation across the galaxy spanning thousands of years.

Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse: Dune then trace various further developments in the long history of interstellar humanity, and the ultimate fates of several of the secretive organizations and movements that played such important roles in the first three Dune novels.

I actually found the latter three books better, and more memorable and intriguing this time, than when I read them when they were first published in the 1980s, but I believe they are more of an acquired taste. They may be too complex and too far removed for many readers from the simpler “hero’s journey” and “rise and fall of an empire” themes of the first three books.

Nevertheless, all these stories are rich in ecological, political, religious, military and economic speculation, and come with loads of intrigue and adventure. They were also exceptional compared to most "golden age" science fiction stories, in Herbert's interest in and explorations of the power and importance of women and their social roles, intellects and abilities in the human story, as well as those of the men. Very highly recommended.

Movie Review: Te Ata (2021). Netflix.

This is a short historical docudrama about an early 20th century young Chickasaw woman from Oklahoma, known as Te Ata, who became a famous actress and performer despite discrimination and prejudice against her as a Native American and a woman.

She eventually became a friend of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and a legendary storyteller and performer of traditional American Indian cultural stories and myths. I had never heard of her before, so this was an interesting and worthwhile revelation. Recommended.