Shouldn’t every day be Mother’s day?

Yes, but for commercial reasons, these holidays that appear on our calendar, whether we like it or not, tend to sucker us in. For better or worse, we all have moms, so who am I to go against the trend? Besides, my mom, who just celebrated her 94^th birthday, deserves to be celebrated every day. The photo was taken at her 92^nd birthday party.

When I was about ten, I had wanted to do something (I can’t remember what, but that isn’t important) that my mother vetoed. I asked her why she didn’t want me to do it to which she replied that if I had a good reason why she should let me, she would then agree to that activity. Her decision taught me to think things through to their possible consequences, to take responsibility for my decisions, and to lay out reason arguments. I also got to do a lot more things than if I had to rely on my mother’s judgment instead of my own.

Thanks mom.

Review: Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me by Peter Boody

Thomas Jefferson, Rachel & Me
Peter Boody
330 pages

Jack Arrowsmith, the me in the book’s title, and Rachel Carter, Jack’s dead son’s girlfriend, meet the ghost of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello. When Jack and Rachel engage Jefferson, he becomes a solid, breathing man who convinces them to take him away from Monticello. Thus ensues a sometimes-delightful tale of past and present that intertwines Jack’s grief over the loss of his wife from illness and his son from an automobile accident with Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence and his relationship to the Hemings family and slaves in general.

“Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.”—Mark Twain

By implication, the novel’s title suggested the most important character would be Jefferson, then Rachel, and lastly, Jack. However, I read more about Jack and his coping with loss than about Jefferson. Rachel, who should have been an important character, was little more than a cipher—her presence for me was more like a _deus ex machina_ enabling the Hemings discussion rather than a fully fleshed character. I don’t know if the reason for this was because the story was told from Jack’s point of view in first person, but for long stretches of the book, we are told about Jefferson’s activity after the fact. As a result, I thought the book was about the narrator instead of Jefferson. I never got close to Jefferson and didn’t witness him adapting to his new situation or grow as a person. Towards the end, it was hard to suspend the disbelief that I had willing done at the start. In addition, the book seemed to be a venue for Boody to express his political views. I found some scenes to be particularly ham-handed.

Despite the drawbacks this book has as a novel for me, I found it worth reading for the historical aspects regarding slavery and Jefferson’s relationship with the Hemings family.

Notes: I did come across some typos and the occasional clunky sentence. They were few and not sufficient to harm the reading experience. I read the Nook edition.

LOYALTY BINDS ME is a ForeWord Book of the Year Award finalist

I recently received an email from ForeWord Reviews, that my second novel about Richard III in the 21st-century, Loyalty Binds Me, is a finalist in the Historical Fiction category for their Book of the Year Awards (BOTYA). To celebrate this exciting development, I have discounted the ebook edition to $0.99 (was $2.99). It's currently available for that price at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes, and Barnes and Noble.

Klein Bottles and The Cuckoo’s Egg

Ever since I learned about Klein Bottles way back in college, I wanted one. “What is a Klein bottle?” you ask. It is a non-orientable, boundary-free object with but a single surface. It only took me a few decades, but now I finally have a three dimensional representation of a four dimensional object, which I purchased from Acme Klein Bottle. This site also has a comprehensive description of a Klein Bottle.

See this YouTube video for an excellent visual construction of a Klein Bottle.

Cliff Stoll, chief cook and Klein Bottle washer at Acme, is also the author of The Cuckoo’s Egg, a quirky tale of computer hacking and espionage. When the grant money ran out, Stoll, an astronomer at the Keck Observatory at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBL) suddenly had a choice—collect unemployment or develop programs in LBL’s basement for the astronomers who still had grants. He chose to program. One task Stoll was assigned had nothing to do with astronomy, but rather to keep track of computer usage. In other words, he had to work on the accounting software. He soon stumbled upon a 75¢ accounting error assigned to a user who didn’t have a valid accounting address. His investigation of this error drew him into an Alice in Wonderland like rabbit hole that soon involved many three-letter agencies, Tymnet, and the German post office. It nearly ate up a year of his life. The hackers were finally caught and thanks to Stoll’s diligence and superb record keeping, the hackers were could be prosecuted.

Because the computers at Berkeley were not isolated, but networked to other scientific and military computers, the hacker could potentially threaten our national security. Stoll skillfully draws us into his world of trying to find the hacker, get the proper authorities involved, with varying degrees of success, and prevent the hacker from getting sensitive information. Through the story, I was able to feel Stoll’s frustrations in dealing with the bureaucracies, the thrill of trapping the hackers, and the tedium of setting up traps.

Despite that this was first published in 1989, the damage a hacker can do to any networked computer and the need for secure passwords described in “The Cuckoo’s Egg” is as valid today as it was then. Most of us don’t have military secrets on our personal computers (at least I hope we don’t), but we all do have some private information that we wouldn’t want compromised. Even though I’m a reasonably experienced computer user, this book reinforced what I knew about the need for my own security as well as informed me on certain issues that I had not given any thought, and it did so in an interesting and humorous manner. Even though there were no high-speed chases, no explosions or fires (well one, sort of, but I’ll leave that for the reader to discover), this was a thrilling page-turner. Recommended.

Blog Interview at Big Al's Books and Pals

Books and Pals has started a new feature where he interviews authors whose books he's reviewed on the weekend. I'm tickled to share his interview with me on his blog here. You'll also get to see a full length photo of me in a copy of a mid-15th-century dress.

You can also see his review of my books: This Time and Loyalty Binds Me.

Review: Tales of a Texas Boy: Large Print by Marva Dasef

Tales of a Texas Boy: Large Print by Marva Dasef is a delightful collection of vignettes about a boy growing up on a farm in Texas during the great depression. While each chapter can be read separately as its own short story, they come together to give the reader a picture of family and community on a small farm in West Texas. Despite the hard times, the stories are all uplifting, some poignant and some laugh-out-loud funny.

The affection and warmth the author has for her characters illuminates every story. Even though the tales are fiction, I think the book’s dedication says it all: “Dedicated to my father, the real Little Eddie.” I heartily recommend this book.

Note: I read the Kindle edition.

When a word won't do

One of my favorite passages from This Time, my first book about Richard III in the 21st-century, came about because I couldn't use the word sympathy. Early in the novel, Richard observed what we would call a sympathetic expression from Katarina, a linguist who was part of the team helping Richard adjust to this century. Being a man of the late 15th-century, he spoke what is now called Early Modern English. According to The Oxford Essential Dictionary of Word Histories, sympathy did not come into use until the late 16th-century, and the adjective, sympathetic, until the mid 17th-century. The following short paragraph is the result.

Katarina’s pupils grew large and her lips parted slightly. While Richard would not describe her expression as one of pity, the word that came to mind was in his Latin vocabulary—misericors—caring heart.