book reviews

I have quite a few books to catch up on. My reading speed has taken off recently, and I'm moving along at a much better clip. Still not shrinking the stacks as fast as I would like, but getting better, at any rate.

Barbara Ferry Johnson, Lionors: Arthur's Uncrowned Queen. I've had this one for years and read it several times. It's my favorite retelling of the Arthur myth - largely, I think, because it deals with this woman Arthur supposedly had an affair with, and so there are a lot of domestic details and the action of the court goes on offstage, as it were. It holds up well to rereading.

Louis L'Amour, The High Graders. A decent effort. Needed a bit of fleshing out, if memory serves, and not a tour de force by any means, but still - perfectly fine book.

Archie Binns, The Land Is Bright. An Oregon trail story, The Land Is Bright belongs to the school of books with little pity for their characters. Bad things happen, but as was the case in real life, the rest of the people go on because they must. Overall I found the book eminently readable, the characters both complicated and interesting.

Shelby Foote, The Civil War: Fredericksburg to Meridian. The second volume in an immense three-volume survey of the entire Civil War, this one lived up to the first. Detailed, intricated, filled with small details to capture the reader's interest and discussions of the deeper issues - they're dense, but well worth it. And as reference works, highly useful.

Ira M. Rutkow, Bleeding Blue and Gray. This book started out tremendously. I was so excited - it answered a lot of questions I had about the topic of medicine during the Civil War, illustrated them with examples, and discussed the complexities in depth. Sadly, by the end of the book Rutkow had lost the thread a little bit, and it became a lot less about the battlefield and what actually went on with medicine in the War, and a lot more about Washington politics and the machinations behind the Surgeon General's post and the Sanitary Commission. Interesting topic, but not what I had hoped for. It's worth keeping for the first half, but I wish the editor had been more on the ball and kept the author a bit more in track. It had such potential.