The Tetris Effect

 I've spent far too much time playing Tetris and related games. Why is such a simple game so addictive that as an undergrad, I'd give my roommate my disc to hide (yes, that's how we played in the early 90s) during finals so I wouldn't get distracted. Dan Ackerman doesn't explain Tetris's appeal (there probably isn't an explanation), but he tells the parallel stories of Soviet Alexey Pajitnov and Dutch-American Henk Rogers, the programmers who created and marketed the program. Pajitnov became fascinated with math games and pentaminos when he was a teenager recovering from knee and ankle injuries and a few years later, using the outdated computers in his Iron Curtain workplace, turned that interest into an addictive computer game. Rogers first encountered computers as a high school student in New York City and, through several detours, ended up as a game publisher in Japan.  When he came across Tetris, no one expected him to be the person to bring legal copies to the West but through a combination of charm, tenacity, and inroads into the Russian Go playing community, he brokered a deal between Pajitnov's bosses and Nintendo. The rest is history - Tetris conquered the world, Pajitnov was able to take credit (and royalties) once the Iron Curtain fell, and Rogers ran the Tetris licensing company until he retired and his daughter took over. 

While the details are interesting, the basic story is pretty much as I expected, with one exception. Researchers are looking at Tetris as a way to fight PTSD. The theory is that if someone who has been exposed to trauma can play Tetris for an hour or so during the critical 24-48 hour memory formation period, it may blunt the severity of the damage. After years of joking that Tetris is good for teaching how to load a dishwasher or fill a freezer, it turns out that it may have a vital role in society.

Prequel: An American Fight Against Facism

A few months ago, I was in an online political discussion. Someone brought up how unified we were during WWII to which I said, "Except for those who used the black market, turned in neighbors, attacked those who didn't support the war..." It didn't go over well. I wonder whether that person has read Prequel? Based on Rachel Maddow's podcast Ultra, Prequel dives into the isolationist fascist movement of the 1930s which culminated in two failed trials. It's an important topic, but I'm not quite sure how I feel about the book. The first 2/3 introduced characters and threads which didn't completely come together in the trial-based final portion. Maddow has an engaging style, but Prequel didn't engage me as well as Bag Man did. Maybe the podcast was better.

The Last White Rose

 In her author's note, Alison Weir says historical records tell us what happened but don't show the conversations or personalities. Weir is both a biographer and novelist and The Last White Rose is the fiction companion to her biography of Elizabeth of York.

We first meet Elizabeth as a 5 year old feeing into sanctuary during the Wars of the Roses. Her father, Edward IV, eventually triumphs and she, her mother, two sisters, and the newborn heir return to their life of luxury. Bessy adores her splendid father, but as she approaches her tenses he sees him age prematurely. She also watches as relations with her favorite uncle, Richard of Gloucester, decline.

When she was 17, the family once gain returns to sanctuary. Edward IV is dead and Richard has taken Edward V hostage before usurping the throne and allegedly killing his two nephews. Bessy finds herself her family's backbone, caring for her sisters and trying to temper the conspiracy-tinged rants of her mother. Here, I think Weir could have shown a better transition from the calm regal queen to the paranoid captive. We don't see the Queen's point of view, so maybe she was a bit suspicious from the start but it's a bit jarring. During this captivity, Bessy still hopes to marry Henry Tudor but willingly accepts the advances of her uncle Richard whose queen is dying of tuberculosis. Simultaneously, she plots with Lord Stanley, Henry's stepfather, to help with Henry's invasion. Richard and Henry meet on Bosworth and Henry becomes Henry VII.

Henry's claim tot he throne was tenuous, but he won his crown on the battlefield so it shouldn't matter. Still, his marriage to the heir of the Yorkist King should, ,in the dowager queen's eyes, make them co-regnants. Henry disagrees and Bessy, more concerned with bearing and supervising the upbringing of their children, doesn't object. What does vex her is Henry's parsimony and (warranted) suspicions. He's challenged by two pretenders and a feeble minded cousin of Bessy's and she can't agree with his imprisonment of her feeble minded relative. She objects, but cannot act.

Still, their marriage is happy and Bessy loves her children...except, perhaps, Arthur. She regrets her inability to bond with him - when he was a premature infant, frail child, or a boy installed in a distant palace. She questions whether he's healthy enough to marry Catherine of Aragon, and henry admits that perhaps he two should live apart after consummating the marriage. That act, which years later led to the Great Matter, most likely never happened and Arthur dies of tuberculosis a few months later. And his mother mourns.

Arthur's death leaves the succession less secure. Elizabeth's prior pregnancy had been difficult, but she and Henry decide to have another child. in giving birth to her seventh child, a girl named Katherine who died soon after, Elizabeth sealed her fate. As she hemorrhages and dies, she sees the faces of her loved ones who died before her. Weir uses this trope in most of her novels and it's effective if wearing a bit thin. Other than that, The Last White Rose effectively fleshes out the frame of Elizabeth of York

Katherine Howard: The Tragic Story of Henry VIII's Fifth Queen

 Katherine Howard died before she left her teens and lived in an era where even important women left little record. She wasn't an intellectual like her cousin Anne Boleyn, her successor katherine Parr, or Henry's first wife Catherine of Aragon. She didn't bear an heir like Jane Seymour or gracefully give way like Anne of Cleaves. All she did was make the obese, failing, aging Henry feel y young and virile and then be executed for treason. 

Josephine Wilkinson provides a bit of background. Katherine's father was a bit of a ne'er do well (or failure) and when her mother died, Katherine was sent to live with relatives and generally neglected. She technically received a proper education in household management and embroidery and was literate, but was also left to the predation of older men.

Her descent from the Duke of Norfolk got her a position as a Maid of Honor to Anne of Cleaves. Her beauty attracted Henry's eye. He didn't know she'd ben molested - could her inability to conceive be due to damage or infection from one of her predators? (Personally, I think the problem was with Henry since Katherine Parr also didn't conceive during their marriage. By this point, Henry likely had type 2 diabetes and/or congestive heart failure, either of which would have impacted his fertility.)

Would producing a Duke of York have saved Katherine? Maybe, but her friendship with Thomas Culpepper (whether consummated or not) led court factions to inspect her earlier encounters. That would have cast doubt on the parentage of any child she bore. Katherine Howard was doomed from the start.

Mr. Churchill's Secretary

I love used books. Besides seeing how cover art and typefaces have changed over the years, they're a good way to find new authors and series. They're cheaper so I'm likely to take a chance, and sometimes I start a series that already has several installments. I took a chance on Susan Elia MacNeal and bought the first two books in her Maggie Hope series. The chance paid off - Mr. Churchill's Secretary was a fun, fast-paced read.

Mathematician Maggie Hope first traveled to London to sell her grandmother's house so she could pay her graduate tuition at MIT. Unfortunately, the house was a decaying Victorian pile so she stayed in London, fixing up the house and supporting herself through tutoring and renting rooms to friends. Once Britain entered WWII, she realized she wanted to stay. 

A few months into the war, Maggie's friend David calls her. David is an intelligence analyst (a job Maggie interviewed for but did not get because they hire men from the 'right' schools, not women with mathematical abilities). One of Churchill's typists has been murdered and they need a replacement. Maggie agrees to take the job and between taking dictation and typing speeches finds a hidden German code which links Maggie's story to the subplot involving a German sleeper agent who's in communication with a radical Irish separatist. These threads also connect to Maggie's search for information about her parents who died when she was a toddler. The last third of the book is a series of action scenes, revealed identities, and last minute rescues. While exciting, it did feel like the book could have ended multiple times. This, and the level of exposition needed to introduce a dozen characters (possibly necessary for a first book but still distracting) bring the book down a bit, but I enjoyed it and am looking forward to the next installment.

The Land Beyond the Sea

I love Sharon Kay Penman's sprawling novels which combine medieval politics with the love stories between intelligent and strong willed characters. She was meticulous in her research, but the dearth of personal history (and for women, even royal women, sparse records in general) gave her the freedom to create complex and believable personal interactions.

The Land Beyond the Sea refers to Jerusalem in the late 12th Century. The novel opens with Almaric rejecting his wife Agnes in order to succeed his brother as King of Jerusalem and barring her from contact with their two children. Almaric's reign is short and he's soon succeeded by his 13-year-old son Baldwin, known as the Leper King.

Today, leprosy is a treatable bacterial infection but 900 years ago, it was a certain death, so we know Baldwin's life will be short (he died at age 24) and Penman doesn't shy away from showing his physical decline. Intelligent and strong willed, he learns to fight left handed (his right arm experiencing the earliest nerve damage) and control horses with his legs alone and he surrounds himself with good advisors. Still, he knows that as he becomes more infirm his kingdom will dissolve into chaos. He's right, and I found the hundred or so pages after Baldwin's death to be less compelling than the story of his reign. Penman shifts focus to his stepmother Maria and her second husband Balian (the main romance in the novel) and her daughter/Baldwin's half-sister Isabella and their attempts to stabilize the kingdom. Without Baldwin there's no heart and Penman probably should have ended the book with his funeral.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law

 I love Mary Roach's books. She combines scientific reporting and respect for researchers and technicians with the sensibilities of the best 5th grade gross out humor. Fuzz:When Nature Breaks the Law covers killer trees, rampaging elephants, marauding bears (committing both property and personal crimes), thieving monkeys, Easter-disrupting gulls, and other wildlife disruptors. Always funny, Roach doesn't have quite as much room for humor with her non-human subjects (and to be honest, I'm not particularly interested in wildlife). Still, I laughed while I learned - or rather, laughed while my "stay away from wild things" attitude was confirmed.

The Dark Heart of Venice

 Looking back over my reviews, I see that I've been reading Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily books since 2010, and that they've been enjoyable but a bit uneven throughout the series. The Dark Heart of Florence is one of the lesser series entries - entertaining, but the main mystery is a bit obvious. It opens with Emily overhearing one of her husband Colin's fellow operatives suggesting that he and Emily go to Florence both so he can investigate a crime and to get away from an unknown threat. Once ensconced in his daughter's villa (inherited from her mother, another spy and Colin's long-ago lover), they find a dead body. Emily and her friend Cecile (a French woman of a certain age and with an interest in attractive, intelligent men) investigate both this crime and an apparent cypher written on the walls of the villa. As she's done with most of her books, Alexander also tells a story set further in the past - here, a woman who lived in the villa in the late Fifteenth Century. All three threads come together in a somewhat obvious and slightly forced conclusion. Enjoyable but not particularly memorable, The Dark Heart of Venus is worth reading for the atmosphere and for Cecile, but otherwise mediocre.

Lady in the Lake

Laura Lippman is a master at creating compelling but not quite likable protagonists and using shifting timelines and POV. Lady in the Lake utilizes these methods, but isn't quite as satisfying as her other novels. One night in 1968, Madeline Schwartz's husband invites a new tennis buddy to dinner - a local TV anchor with whom Madeline had one date in high school. That night inspires Maddy to leave her comfortable life and follow her teenage dream of becoming a reporter. Well, a housewife in her late 30s with no experience or degree isn't going to get a reporting job but she does manage to get hired as a columnist's assistant. From there, she branches out into investigating the murders of a local tween and of a woman whose body was found in a lake a few months earlier. 

On the surface, it's a standard historical mystery but Lippman focuses more on the characters than the mystery which makes for a interesting but somewhat disjointed novel wrapped around an unsatisfying mystery. After every chapter narrated by Maddy we get a chapter narrated by someone with whom she interacted - the columnist, the only woman on the paper's reporting staff, the African American cop with whom she's begun an affair, the woman who would become Tess Monaghan's mother, the murdered woman's young son - and occasional chapters from the dead woman's ghost. While interesting, it never quite flowed. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite up to Lippman's standards.