Five Passengers from Lisbon by Mignon G. Eberhart

I am listening to Mozart's Die Zauberflote.  I am not a huge opera fan but I do love Mozart's operas because they're so witty.  Die Zauberflote is pretty out there and the production we watched was a modern take and maybe a little too over the top in some of its costumery, but the singing was superb, especially the Queen of the Night.  The above link is only for the overture since singing might be intrusive to your reading.

Five Passengers from Lisbon by Mignon G. Eberhart

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I read this out loud to my parents and to make the book more readable I skipped all the description of irrelevant detail. One thing I did learn is another lesson in good writing, but first the storyline:

WWII has just ended and Europeans and Americans are scrambling to get out of Europe to North or South America as fast as possible to bury the past and start over. We are introduced to five such people.

Luther and Daisy Belle Cates: millionaires who stayed in France throughout the war, even though they are American. Why? Will we find out?

Gili: A European woman from unsure origins and even less sure morals. We do not know what she did to survive the war but it probably wasn't pretty.

Mickey: A man who had a rising promising career as a concert pianist before the war. He became a part of the French resistance before getting captured by the Nazi's and held in a concentration camp until the end of the war. To torture him they mutilated his fingers.

And our protagonist who also serves as our third person limited narrator:
Marcia Colfax: Marcia is an American living in Paris and she fell in love with Mickey before the war. When he was captured, she was determined to wait it out until he was released, a big assumption on her part. She moved to Marsailles, and, when the war ended, she and Mickey meet up again, only now he is Andre Breton and she mustn't forget it, because his passport says so.

All five of our characters have purchased passage on a Portuguese carrier to South America which is where the story starts. Unfortunately for them, the boat is sinking and they find themselves on a lifeboat with three Portuguese sailors in the dead of night in the middle of the Atlantic trying to negotiate stormy waves, each of which threaten to overturn their boat.

Finally dawn turns the sky to gray and also shows an American Red Cross ship heading toward them. All is saved!

Except for one. One of the Portuguese sailors collapses after fighting the waves all night with an oar.

Or so it seems. After everyone boards the Red Cross Ship it is discovered that the Sailor is dead and not from exhaustion. He has been murdered and the knife in his back proves it.

Who on board the lifeboat murdered him? And why? That is what the rest of the story leads you to (um.. to who did it and why).

The mystery was good enough to hold one's attention but the unnecessary description of every item in a room, of how everyone was dressed, the color of the skin, how one always bit her lip, how the captain furrowed his white eyebrows or studied the painting across the room etc...

And the smoking! It seemed after every paragraph our characters had to take a smoking break and we get to read about it from the pulling the cigarette from the package to the lighting to the exhaling to the flinging the butt over the rails.

If what you're describing does not propel the plot forward leave it out. At least that is the most valuable thing I received from reading this novel.

This book was written in 1946 so the war was still painfully fresh in people's minds, and the characters, how each are revealed to be a certain type that existed during the war is interesting. Some are desperate to erase their cowardly acts, others are appalled to find themselves on the losing side after they invested so much in that side and others were just innocent victims that managed to weather the storms of war. I felt Eberhart could have done to develop these characters more rather than bore the reader with minutia.



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A Dark night's Work and Other Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Case of the Phantom Cat

The other night Josh and I were in our front room.  We have two living rooms; the front room has a bay window that faces the street.  This is where I keep my piano and where we watch TV.



I give you a brief description of our house to understand what happened next.  We heard a noise like something falling down.  I ran out of the front room, through the back room past the dining room and into the kitchen.  There used to be a way from the front room directly into the dining room but we made a wall out of bookshelves that now separates the two rooms.

 All that to say that I lost precious seconds getting to the kitchen to find out what the noise was.  I assumed it was Breeya our little geriatric dog who often wanders aimlessly around the house, neither seeing nor hearing nor knowing where she is (sad).

I went through the kitchen to the utility room and out the back door where the motion sensor light was on.  I looked around for Breeya but couldn't find her.  When I returned to the front room, she was there lying under the piano, peacefully sleeping.

That could only mean one thing.

It was the cat!  We have a cat that is sneaking into our house through the doggie door at night.  She is helping herself to Breeya's food dish and pushing things off our kitchen counters for her personal amusement.

I don't know for a fact it is a cat.  It could be a 'possum or a raccoon, but I doubt it.  Either of those animals probably wouldn't be able to tear out of our house with the lightening speed of this animal.  I have not seen it yet.  

But I know you're there, cat, and if you're reading this, know you will be discovered and face the due penalty of your sins.  I'm not sure what that penalty will be, that's between you and God, but know that the wicked do not prosper.

Les Oiseaux  Tristes by Maurice Ravel is playing. The composer is also the performer in this vintage recording. Les Oiseaux Tristes is French for sad birds. I think that this is how my little Hercaloo is feeling because I now have to keep her in the cage when I go out for fear Senor don Gato eats her.



A Dark Night's Work and Other Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A Dark Night's Work and Other Stories are a small collection of short stories by the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell.

Gaskell was close friends with Charlotte Bronte, or at least as close as anyone could get with a recluse in five years, which was how long they knew each other before Bronte died.

Her work does not come near the power of Bronte's but still deserves a place in British and world literature.

Her work can often be dark and suspenseful as is the first and longest story in this anthology. This affected the way I read the other stories, reading them in fearful suspense, waiting for something dreadful to happen to the protagonists who were so vulnerable.

In A Dark Night's Work, a man does something criminal which is witnessed by his man servant and his daughter. They all agree to cover it up to preserve his tenuous standing in his social circles. They all pay a price however that permanently alters their lives.

The next story, Libbie Marsh's Three Eras, is about a poor homeless girl and her relationship with a crippled, lonely boy who she first sees through her window lying in bed next to the window of the house opposite.

In Six Weeks at Heppenheim a British man touring Germany becomes ill and is bedridden in an inn for several weeks in a small German village. While there he gets to know the inmates of the inn and their inner dramas, finding himself drawn in and finally a participant in their lives.

Cumberland Sheep-Shearers is without much plot and is mainly an observation of farm life during sheep-shearing time, although there is a slight story of romance between a man and woman which is hardly referred to but nevertheless makes a strong social statement, a statement that is prevalent in all Gaskell's stories.

The piece de resistance, however, is the last story. What the Grey Woman lacks in length, it more than makes up for in horror and suspense. A young, inexperienced girl is swept off her feet by a French count who carries her away to his remote and isolated chateau in the Swiss mountains. The terrifying discoveries awaiting her there induce her to finally escape with a loyal maid. What follows is a suspenseful chase scene that kept my stomach in knots to the end.

None of Gaskell's stories can be called profound and certainly don't hold a candle to the great's of the 19th century such as Jane Austin, the Bronte sisters, Trollope, or her good friend Thackery. She can rightly be accused of sentimentality at times approaching the maudlin. In Hollywood, she would be a "B" actor. Incidentally, the BBC has created several fine productions of her novels, my favorite being the Cranford series.

However she ably paints the English landscape in a way that reminds one of a Hudson School painting. Perhaps the others made clearer exposes of human character, but Gaskell showed the complicated social strata that afflicted a class conscious society and that by itself makes her books worth reading.

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The Case of the Musical Cow by Erle Stanley Gardner

Josh surprised me this weekend by announcing that we should visit our public library because it was holding a book fair.  He said I could buy one book.  Now in case any of you think "you're husband gives you PERMISSION to buy a book?!?!" you have to understand that my book buying has gotten out of control and has deteriorated into hoarding.  I was not even buying for pleasure but out of compulsion and I wanted to escape from what felt like a bondage.  Please don't laugh, it was serious. I am ashamed at how much money I was spending.

Josh agreed to be my accountability partner.  Every day he asks if I bought a book.  Knowing he's going to ask helps counter that sense of panicky urgency I feel when I come across a book I must, must have.

So off we merrily skipped to the library.  At least I was skipping in my heart since we drove.  Below is the treasure I found.  Price?  Seven dollars.  The Harvard Classics set was five dollars.  The O'Henry biography and Ghost Story anthology were a dollar a piece.

Later we visited Bed, Bath and Beyond because we love looking at the Coffee makers and coffee accoutrements.  Do I really need another set of espresso cups?  No.  But I did buy a bag of Italian espresso.  It makes a great Cappuccino.

I am reading through the Ghost Story collection. Expect a positive review in the future.

I am listening to Molto Moderato from the Suite for Flute and Piano by J. Berger as I write this.  I hope you will enjoy it as you read.

The Case Of The Musical Cow by Erle Stanley Gardner

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I mention writing a positive review about the Ghost Story collection because this is going to be a negative review. I wasn't going to write a review for this book because I didn't like it.  Then I thought that I should write one and present this book as an example of how not to write a novel.

First of all, I was disappointed that even though Erle Stanley Gardner wrote the story, it was not a Perry Mason story. I would not have gotten the book otherwise.

Gardner has mastered the court room scene climax and this book is no exception. I don't think I am spoiling by saying the ending arrives at a satisfying conclusion with a suspenseful courtroom scene where classic Gardner lawyers play a game of wits matching any chess game Kasparov could arrange for the board.

It was everything else that dismally fails.

What makes any story succeed? The believability factor.

I understand, through my own writing, that in order to make a plot work you have to provide the characters with plausible reasons for acting the way they do. This holds true inside any genre, be it science fiction, dystopian. apocalyptical, classic, or fantasy. Whether the story deals with space aliens, zombies, women in petticoats, hobbits, they have to act according to the rules inside that paradigm.

That would make a fascinating dissertation: what makes a plot inside any story reality believable? I think it is universal truths about human nature. Regardless of what planet they are living on or what shape they exist in, there are rules the characters must follow to allow the reader to believe in the storyline.

What makes the story of the Musical Cow unbelievable? The protagonist does things that are unbelievably stupid.

The skinny: Rob Trenton takes a cruise to Europe where he intends to tour for several weeks. On the ship he meets Linda Carroll, a beautiful (naturally!) but distant lady with whom he becomes immediately smitten.

The story actually starts at a Paris cafe where Rob has planted himself in hopes of meeting Linda. He has met every tiresome person he hoped to avoid from the ship, but no Linda. Happily, Linda does pass by his table and joins him.

With her are another couple. The three of them plan on traveling across Europe in Linda's car which she has brought with her on the ship. Linda is rich (naturally!) Linda and the couple ask Rob to join them.

OK, this is not entirely unbelievable but it certainly is not wise to travel with people you don't know. What is their character? Are they drug smugglers? Sociopathic serial killers? Nevertheless, people-really, really stupid people usually on college spring break, have been known to do this.

By the time they get to Switzerland, the couple who have barely entered the stage are called off on a emergency and have to fly home. We never see them again. They were apparently written in to provide Rob a reason to travel with Linda. Rob is no Mr. Ripley.

They arrive in the Alps where they stay in a lodge and meet another American. Tragedy has struck the lodge; the inn keeper's wife has died due to eating poisonous mushrooms. Strangely enough everyone else ate the same mushrooms but did not die. Hmmm....

The other American Merton Ostrander (where did Erle get that name?) immediately attaches himself to Rob and Linda, much to Rob's consternation. When Linda and Rob prepare to leave, Merton insists on joining them, without even saying goodbye to the Innkeeper, even though he's stayed at the lodge for a few months and was like a "member of the family" according to Merton.

It's time to return to the ship but Rob becomes seriously ill, apparently due to food poisoning. Merton says, "so sorry, but we're rushing to the ship, too bad you can't make it, bye!" and hussles Linda off, leaving Rob in a hospital.

Rob is not ready to admit defeat yet, and still ill, staggers to the boat before it leaves port.

Strange things happen on the boat. Another American asks Rob a lot of questions. It becomes obvious that he is a detective and he is looking for any signs of smuggling. Rob finds his room has been searched.

Another strange event: Merton dumps boxes of Cow Bells overboard. He had collected these for a lecture he was going to give back at the University in the States. No explanation is given other than that he has changed his mind. Okey dokey. Strange and barely plausible. Now comes the unbelievable part on which Gardner builds his case, so to speak.

At the port in America, Linda informs Rob that she is going home with friends and if he likes, he can take her car and she'll come back the next day to pick it up. Rob agrees to this.

On the way home, a tire blows out. As Rob changes it, he notices that something is attached to the bottom of the car. He removes it and finds a container containing....da da da DUM!...drugs!!!

And now for the disgustingly unbelievable part that caused me to lose all respect for Rob:

Rob concludes that it is impossible that his lovely Linda could in any way be involved in drug smuggling and he must protect her. What does he do? He drives farther down the highway, stops on the side and buries the drugs. (Linda's car happens to have a shovel.)

While burying the drugs, a police officer pulls up beside him. Rob tells him he had a blow out and just finished changing the tire. He opens his trunk to show the blown out tire. The policeman touches the tire checks Rob's driver's license and leaves. He has to touch the tire because this propels the plot.

Because later at the station the officer has a flash: the tire was cold! That means that he hadn't recently changed the tire. That means he was at the side of the road for a different reason. He and another officer return to the spot and, unsurprisingly, discover the buried drugs. They arrange for policemen to lie in wait for when Rob returns.

Rob doesn't return. He has no plans to return, but the next morning he finds that Linda's car is gone. He drives to her residence in another town (she gave him her address) to find that Linda Carroll does indeed live there but she is an older woman who lives alone.

What does Rob conclude? Why, that there are two Linda Carrolls, of course.

Shortly after leaving Linda's house Rob is kidnapped by a gang of drug traffickers who want their dope. I'll stop there in case anyone out that actually wants to read the story.

Gardner does make everything work out in the end and Rob's time with the drug gang is quite suspenseful. It's just that the premise is so weak. It reminds me of the end of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, the movie version. All of us in the theater groaned together in disgust (yes, it was an audible groan). Stupid has a price and he paid it.

Rob does not pay for his dumb acts, other than being arrested and having to go to court to clear himself on drug and murder charges (the ship detective gets murdered).

Gardner wanted to create a story where the skills of a forensic doctor were needed to prove how Rob could not have killed the detective. That takes place in the courtroom and it is interesting as is the verbal dueling between the lawyers. But Rob did not get what he deserved.

He deserved to go to jail, not because he was guilty of murder, but for being such a dunderhead. Maybe a year or so would have ironed some sense into his sweet, pathetic head.

As for Linda Carroll, Merton Ostrander and the detective, they needed to play larger parts in order for us to fully appreciate who and what they actually are. A fuller character development would have made the story more interesting, but the three of them are merely skeletal figures.

In conclusion, this book serves for me as a cautionary tale and I hope to hone my own writing skills so as to draw the reader in, hold them captive and never make them sneer in disgust at an implausible story development.



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That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

I heard music on the radio from a composer I did not previously know.  His name is Simon Laks and he was a Polish composer who was sent to Birkenau-Auschwitz concentration camp during WWII. While there he became the head of the prisoner's orchestra there.  Here is a link to his Sonata for Violincello and piano the 3rd movement.


Some of you have read so much or listened to so much music, do you feel an excitement when you come across an author or composer you've never read or listened to before?  I know as we age that becomes rarer which makes the excitement all the more acute when it happens.  Please share your personal experience and the music or author you "discovered."







That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


When I first read That Hideous Strength, it was my least favorite of Lewis' Science Fiction trilogy. Now I believe it is my favorite.

Evil forces have gathered for a showdown on Earth. We have seen some of this in the first two books but now the "bent" Eldil and their minions are showing their hand in hopes of destroying Earth.

It is insightful to see how much the evil Eldil hate mankind, because, of course, they hate mankind's Maker.

They are a pragmatic sort, however, and tell whatever lies, power hungry, perverse men are willing to swallow to achieve that end.

Our story starts out with a young couple, Jane and Mark. Jane and Mark are a modern, progressive couple and they have no patience with old fashioned notions of women and men's roles. Jane's ambition is to finish her thesis and Mark's ambition is to join the "inner ring" at the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments or N.I.C.E. for short.

This starts the trouble because Mark is invited to join N.I.C.E. He thinks. They certainly have invited him and have intimated that they want him, but for what? He cannot get a definite answer as to what his occupation would be or that he is even hired. When he demands clarity, he is warned that he will offend the director. Anxious to please, Mark subsides.

Meanwhile, Jane is having some very non progressive, non modern dreams. They are strange and disturbing and it seems they have something to do with an ancient man lying in a tomb.

All is not as it seems, to coin a phrase. It turns out the institute is not interested in Mark but want Jane. Her dreams will tell them the location of this mysterious man. Why do they want him? They believe he possesses power that will help them control the world.

At least that is what the men think. In reality, it is the Eldil who want the man to help them destroy the world. They play on certain men's lust for power to achieve their ultimate goals.

Lewis creates a brilliant expose on human nature and our reality on a metaphysical level.

Each person is a type and Lewis reveals their nature by narrating their thoughts to the reader. We smile and sometimes laugh in acknowledgement because we recognize ourselves and others in the different characters. We also are filled with loathing as we recognize the perversity and arrogance that characterizes so many people in our world.

I especially appreciate his descriptions of the men at N.I.C.E. Each one wants something from the Eldil. One wants superior knowledge and scientific advancement; another seeks supernatural experiences, a third wants freedom to experiment on animals and humans for his personal increase in knowledge and biogenetic engineering. Not one cares how many people they expend to achieve their selfish goals and they see the Eldil as a means to their own ends without considering that they are actually meeting the Eldils' ends.

In the end each of them find themselves, their person, individuality, and finally their soul, absorbed by the Eldil.

Dr. Ransom, the man who traveled to the planets in the first two books, is keeping a group of people safe from N.I.C.E in his house. These are the few that have not either capitulated to N.I.C.E.'s side or been jailed. Jane, at first unwillingly, then later most willingly joins them.

Ransom informs his small group that the scientists and professors at N.I.C.E. do not realize that the Eldil hate them as much as they hate everyone else and as soon as their usefulness is gone, these "intellectual" men will find themselves deserted and finally destroyed.

There are moments of real horror. The Head of the institute turns out to be exactly that; the decapitated head of a criminal who was executed in France. One scientist obsessed with creating life from dead men, like his own Frankenstein, has invented a method to infuse the head with saliva, blood, and oxygen. The Head then speaks and gives orders.

This is scary enough but worse revelations about the Head are around the corner and I won't reveal anything else so as not to spoil it for the reader.

There are also turning points. This happens primarily in Jane and Mark who at first are against Ransom's side and his group in that they dismiss them as antiquated and backwards in their "old fashioned" thinking about morals or believing in a Spiritual world. Both come around as they personally experience undeniable evil.

Mark's conversion is the best part. He transforms from being a self-absorbed toady to seeing N.I.C.E. for what it really is and no longer fears rejection of the "inner circle" or losing his job. Once he becomes fearless, he stops thinking only of himself and the reader sees Mark become more fully a man, more fully human as though the character change fleshes him out to where previously he was merely a thin out line of a person.

I should point out that not all Eldil are evil. As we learn in the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, most Eldil are good. Only the ruling Eldil of planet Earth is "bent" as the good Eldil call it.

And we eventually learn that Earth is not completely deserted by good Eldil. They are also here on Earth. They have traveled from other planets to battle the evil Eldil, something the bent Eldil did not anticipate.

I find the whole story a perfect analogy to the battle going on Earth now between good and evil.

And, as with all of Lewis' work. The reader is never deserted. We are reassured that good and the Author of good conquers evil. And again, we learn to love Lewis' characters as much as Lewis obviously loved people and consequently made lovable reflections of humans in his stories. We love them because we see them around us.

Lewis once said of Nathaniel Hawthorne that "he shows the darkness in men without ever providing light to pierce that darkness" (I am paraphrasing because I wrote it down from memory).

Lewis succeeds in piercing the darkness with his light-suffused stories.



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The Abolition of Britain by Peter Hitchens

 

I have no voice.  The change in weather always does this to me.  I get a cold in my head, it sinks to my chest...up and down and on the way it takes my voice away.  Luckily you can't hear me. I sound like a fog horn.  A fog horn with laryngitis.  I'm just croaking my days away.


 You, however, can listen to the smooth and luxuriant sounds of Jean Sibelius' Symphony Number Five.  It will be a much more aesthetically pleasing experience.




The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana by Peter Hitchens

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Peter Hitchens is in a sense is a prophet. Not the type that predicts the future, but the sort that clearly looks at the world and sees what is right and what is wrong.

In his book, The Abolition of Britain: From Winston Churchill to Princess Diana, he traces how the culture in the UK changed dramatically from a people owning a proud nationalist identity and Christian morals, even if they weren't particularly religious, to what we have today: people who are ashamed to possess anything other than a "global" identity and accepting any sort of social more or amoral code whatever.

He explains how this happened. Mostly through ideologues who made good use of the new medium of Television to change how people think about themselves and others. They did this through sitcoms that provided a "normal" that in the fifties and sixties was not normal and in fact different than most people's lives. However, as people lost contact with their community and spent their free time in front of the TV they developed a sense of community with the characters on the shows they were watching.

Lifestyles that had historically been considered perverse or deviant were now normalized. People can only be shocked once. Then it is accepted. Which means the shows' producers have to come up with even more shocking subject matter, which is then normalized and so on. I would point out certain televisions shows that are popular today as examples of how far we have sunk, but people I know personally watch those shows and far be it from me to offend anyone.

I especially like his observation that TV doesn't really show how people live, because if it did, it would show people sitting around for hours watching television.

He describes how legislation ostensibly designed to help the downtrodden has proliferated the downtrodden population.

Making divorce no fault, even if someone is at fault and forcing the man to financially support the woman, even if it was her fault and allowing her custody of the children regardless of the reason has simply multiplied divorces, and increased the number of women and children living off the state in poverty.

The other tool used by ideologues is education. Discipline and strong lines of right and wrong were dismissed, as was classical training. The rich plethora of classical literature that should rightly be the pride of Britain has been moved aside in favor of popular literature.

This came home to me one day when I met a young woman who had moved back home after teaching literature in various European countries for several years. I asked her if she was eager to begin this fall.

She said that she did not look forward to teaching the required reading list because it was all about college entrance.

"Oh," I said. "That must be limiting. What do you have to teach?"

"Greek and European literature from the last two thousand years. It's all Western culture. It doesn't represent other parts of the world."

"What country's literature would you like to teach?"

"I like Japanese."

I personally like classical Japanese literature so I asked, "Have you read 'Tale of Genji'? Or 'Shirobamba'?

She had never heard of either the oldest novel in the world or the classic story of a young boy's life in pre WWI Japan.

"What do you want to teach then?"

She then listed a number of current best sellers by popular Japanese writers.

"The problem is," she said, "is that the parents at school are hung up over language and sex. I didn't have that objection when I taught in London."

Ah.

All that to say, Hitchens acutely diagnoses England and frankly, the western world's cause of cultural deterioration.

His best point is to expose the "imaginary" Puritan. This is the mythological person that is "shocked and appalled" over the "morally reprehensible" lifestyles of anything non conforming to Victorian cultural norms.

This person, as Hitchens points out, doesn't exist. But the media needs him and her to exist to feel as if what they are doing is "cutting edge" and "revolutionary". After all, you can't be a rebel unless you are rebelling against something. That something disappeared fifty years ago.

Today's ideologues have mastered the art of shaming to perfection. No one is going to publicly admit they think that certain modes of living is wrong or, dare I say, immoral. All sorts of "deplorable" names will be attached to you.


The final thing I admire about Hitchens' book, or at least Hitchens himself is that, as opposed to most authors who only include blurbs of glowing recommendations on the flyleafs, Hitchens includes people's remarks that obviously don't agree with him. Here are a few:

"Hitchens can do what he does best: provoke."

"Some passages are almost laughable in their old fogeyness while others are just plain offensive."

And my favorite:

"He stands like a latter-day King Canute, trying to turn back a tide of progress."

I have over simplified all that Hitchens has to say. He says much more. Such as how such a development took place in the first place without any kind of fight back from Traditionalists. The reason being that tradition is not a good reason for preserving anything, only immutable design and purpose of life that has always existed since the dawn of time stands the test. You cannot have a moral code without admitting that Someone created that code in the first place. And if this is true, society will flourish under that code and it will destruct if it deviates from it.

His writing style is fluid and I personally consider this a perspicacious declaration of where society is and how it got there, even if he was only talking of Britain.



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Anatomy of a Ponzi: Scams Past and Present by Colleen Cross

I am a huge fan of Paul Hindemith.  Not everyone is, I know.  I accept that.  But I have also learned not to apologize when I tell people I'm performing a work by Hindemith.  Everyone assumes that because the piano part is a beast to play that I must hate playing it.  No, I love playing everything by Hindemith.  I, in fact, know what I am getting into when I decide to learn a Hindemith piece.  Music that requires several hours of practice is what I signed up for when I became a professional musician.

The piece I am listening to now is Symphonic Metamorphosis.

Anatomy of a Ponzi: Scams Past and Present by Colleen Cross

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


" My game was simple. It was the old game of robbing Peter to pay Paul." -Charles Ponzi


In anatomy of a Ponzi, Colleen Cross endeavors to expose the world of investment scams to protect future victims and also hopefully create laws that provide more than a slap on the wrist to scammers.

The first section of the book is a general overview of the sort of mind that creates Ponzi scams. They share ten characteristics with psychopaths. In fact she calls them financial psychopaths:

1. Superficial Charm.
2. Grandiose Self-worth
3. Need for Stimulation, easily bored
4. Pathological liar
5. Manipulative
6. Lack of remorse
7. No emotional depth
8. No empathy for others suffering
9. Parasitic Lifestyle- lives off others money
10. Poor self-control

Hmm...reminds me of a man I once dated...

After giving the general description of Ponzi schemers she gives us the history of several from the past century, starting with the one who gave his name to the fraud, Charles Ponzi.

In 1920, Charles Ponzi discovered that the United States would redeem stamps from around the world at the US rate, even if the stamps were purchased more cheaply in European countries, like Ponzi's home country Italy.

He sold stamps to thousands of people leading them to believe that they could get great returns. He bought the stamps from relatives, then sold them to Americans, assuring them that they could then redeem them with profit.

The problem was that there were no where near enough stamps to accommodate all the thousands that wanted in on the deal. Ponzi did not want his clients to know that so he would pay out the initial investors with the money later investors gave him and hoped nobody would ask for a redemption.

As eventually happens with Ponzi schemes, people want their returns. Often this is provoked by a financial crises that has everybody running to get their money. Of course in a Ponzi scam, there is no money because the scammer was actually spending the money on a lavish lifestyle, giving back just enough to make people believe their investments were making money.

In the end Charles Ponzi defrauded investors of 20 million dollars (225 million in today's dollars).

His prison sentence? 12 years.

Cross devotes several chapters each to other scammers ending with the biggest, Bernie Madoff who defrauded his investors of 65 billion dollars.

Each chapter is a case study of the scammer, his particular investment, how he carried out the scam and his final fate. With the exception of Madoff who got a life sentence because of the publicity, most only got a few years in prison, even though they scammed people out of their life savings.

Ms. Cross also lists the signs of a scam and how they can be avoided. To simplify, if it's too good to be true, it is not true. Any investment that promises unrealistically high returns that over shadow any other investment is probably a scam. She admonishes investors to do their research and provides resources that help to learn the integrity of professional investors and also where to turn if you suspect that you have been the victim of an investment scam.

All of the book was highly informative and if she had stopped with what she knew it would have been a highly instructive book. Unfortunately she felt she had to make her dig against the capital market, pointing out the such scams can only happen where there is free enterprise because countries where governments control business, one will be free of fraud.

Right. Because socialist governments are comprised of people with sterling morals and capitalist governments produce politicians that are greedy goons. Human nature is apparently determined by government structure.

The final mistake Cross made was to predict the next big Ponzi scheme. She asserts that a 100-plus billion dollar Ponzi scam will take place during the next presidential election, on a Monday to be exact, November 14, 2016 to be even more exact in a New York hedge fund. It will be exposed by a rival hedge fund. He will be a highly respected man in his fifties, a lawyer or an accountant. And he'll be driving a Bentley.

Most of her prediction is unimpressive because with the exception of one woman, all the Ponzi scammers in her book meet her description so all she has done is create an amalgamation. The same goes for the type of investment fund.

Ms. Cross took her own gamble and lost. She wrote this book in 2013, and 2016 has come and gone. But hey, it could still happen.

At least I learned a lot about hedge funds, reverse engineering, and how former communist countries are the most vunurable to scams. Ioan Stoica defrauded 4 million Romanians out of 1 billion dollars in 1994 with his Caritas Company, mutual aid scheme. He even had commercials on TV promoting his wonderful "investment". One out of every five Romanians were greedy for high returns on their newly acquired money.

If one doesn't quibble over Ms. Cross' presumption over economic systems or her own fortune telling; if you are interested in the design of a Ponzi scheme and the sort of criminal minds that create them or if you'd like to understand how to avoid them, I would recommend this book.



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Take A Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis

Schubert's Trout Quintet is playing.  You should really wait for the last movement with the piano bubbling all over  the place like a trout swimming through a frothy river.

 My birthday month is August and Josh gave me a generous Amazon gift card.  I kind of went berserk.  These are the complete collections of the museum and cities I visited in Italy a couple of summers ago.  I am so excited to dig into these!!

 Take a Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I hardly know what to say about this book. I do not know whether Kingsley Amis is approving of his characters' life choices or trying to come to grips with the abruptly changing moral landscape of England in 1960. Does he really believe the moral paradigm that traditional relationships grounded in Christian principles to be outdated and incapable? Or is he simply calling it as he sees it?

He certainly does not glamorize what he sees as traditional morals' replacement. His characters lead quite dreary lives. But to sum:

Jenny Bunn is a twenty year old girl from the North of England who has traveled south to a town near London to work as a teacher. She lives with Dick and Martha Torkington who rent a room to her and a French girl named Anna.

Jenny is very pretty and she is conscious of that without being particularly concerned, and even if she was unconscious she is constantly reminded of her looks by the wolfish and lustful gazes of every single man she comes into contact with. Even Anna is attracted to her.

Amis' male characters are all lechers who cannot stop themselves from groping, leering, propositioning and otherwise sexually harrassing women. Not that any of the women mind, not even Jenny, who, though a good girl, does not seem to possess any kind of discernment as to the quality of men she should associate with. She doesn't even appear to mind when Anna sexually harasses her, although she makes it clear she's not interested.

Jenny is old-fashioned. She's not particularly religious, but she does believe she should remain a virgin until she's marries because that's how she feels and she's quite firm about it.

Patrick Standish is a young headmaster who teaches at a nearby secondary school and happened to be at the Torkington's when he meets Jenny. He immediately goes about trying to seduce her. Jenny likes Patrick and wants to pursue a relationship with him but makes it clear that they will marry before any sex happens.

Patrick makes it equally clear that marriage is not a goal of his, only sex. And he doesn't have any intention of being monogamous either. He does not hide his opinions from Jenny in either word or deed.

One asks oneself why Jenny would remain interested in someone whose quality of character is laid out so clearly before her. But Jenny seems to live in kind of a somnambulic state as she passively watches her world go by.

Patrick is determined to have her and sleep with her. He gets himself quite worked up to the point where he sleeps with a divorcee while dead drunk (he was dead drunk not she and I'm not quite sure how he accomplished that) and also with an underage girl for whom he "magnanimously" finances an abortion.

As the story progresses we wonder who is going to win? Jenny or Patrick? Jenny never compromises. She gets roofied at a party and Patrick takes advantage of her. Hence he gets what he wants but without her permission.

One then wonders what is going to happen. Is Jenny going to wake up? At first she seems to. She gives Patrick a telling off and asserts she is never going to see him again. I gather that women did not report date rape to the police back then or statutory rape or consider that someone like Patrick is a repulsive sleazeball. Patrick however does not give up and she finally relents.

Her conclusion is that it was unrealistic of her to believe in commitment and marriage and all that. In fact, it was selfish of her to expect more than to be one of Patrick's many amours.

As I read the book, aside from the brilliant and witty writing at which Amis is a master, I wondered if Amis' real point was to show how modern (at the time) life had emptied out all real meaning as regards relationships. That the Church had rendered itself obsolete but had left a moral vacuum into which the young generation had climbed. What was left?

"I don't love you, you don't love me; I am using you but that's all right because you are using me as well and that is the most anyone can expect while they are alive."

If Amis was intending to create a scene of hopelessness and despair, he succeeded.

Luckily, I don't mistake his book for the Gospel.



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