Hape Kerkeling
The author is a German TV comedian but not a believer. An odd candidate for a religious pilgrimage, perhaps, but he’s a good observer and an entertaining writer. Still, without the dimension of faith – or even a real sympathy for it – the book is a little weak.
This is the debut novel of a new fighting sail series. Its hero, Richard Cutler, starts as a midshipman on a ship commanded by John Paul Jones. Family connections with England complicate things and add interest to the story, which takes place at sea and in North America, England, and France.
“A Matter of Honor” is reminiscent of Kenneth Roberts’ novels and I enjoyed reading it. I did think the last quarter of the book was a little rushed; perhaps the story after the famous fight between HMS Serapis and Jones’ Bonhomme Richard would have been better left to a sequel.
“A Man in Full” slices like a road cut through the strata of America. Wolfe’s “hero” is Charlie Croker, a real estate developer on the verge of losing everything. The cast also includes bankers, wives, ex-wives, and an escaped convict who reads Stoic philosophy; not to mention a few dozen other characters. This is a big, big book weighing in a 700 pages and is “Dickensian” in quality and quantity. It’s about success and failure, boom and bust, rich and poor. It was a lot of fun to read.
Dewey Lambdin
Alan Lewrie is fights the French and encounters a slave rebellion in the Caribbean. As usual, Lambdin delivers, but I don’t find the the whole Caribbean slave rebellion setting – a set piece of the Fighting Sail genre – all that fascinating.
It’s not that I want to build a boat, it’s just that I love memoirs about boat building. This one is just the kind of boat building book I like: the author doesn’t anything about boat building at the start, knows a bit more at the end, and entertains me through the whole project. “Year of the Boat” is a thoughtful book about starting and completing a project.
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