Where It's One Fight After Another

With Arrow, Sword, and Spear: A History of Warfare in the Ancient World by Alfred S. Bradford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this a very useful look at the history of ancient warfare, and it was reasonably fun to read.

It was a little weird how I got through it, though. I read about half straight through many years ago. (8? 9?) I guess I got busy; I forget. But I put it on the shelf with a bookmark and didn't come back to it until just a bit ago. Then I read the second half, pretty much straight through again. And it's good.

The first half is Egyptians, Assyrians et al, Persians, and Greeks. I guess that's the stuff I find most interesting, the part that's most distant, and the author does a good job not just with the outlines and broad brushstrokes but with the personalities and details. It's kinda surprising how much we know about some things 3000 years ago. In part, the book deals with evolving technology, like chariots and elephants and compound bows, but it's also about evolving systems--fighting systems, economic systems, government and army management systems. I found it all interesting and entertaining as presented.

The second half is India and China and then Rome, which gets the most time. That last bit remains less interesting to me. I'm not sure why. But he handles it well, and I learned a bunch.

One thing the author gets right for me is the level of information he uses, the scope and scale of his approach. I didn't want to read a textbook or The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire (it's not that deep), but I also don't want a wikipedia entry. The space between is still pretty big. Some books like this I've found to be aimed at a reader who is nearer an expert than a novice, and for most of us those are too dense to be interesting or comprehensible. When I'm first looking at a topic I don't know much about (say, desert fauna, or the physics of space flight), I've often found that books on the topic for young people is at the right level of comprehension--tuned toward entertainment, with clear descriptions, mostly everyday language, and lots of clarifying explanations. Now, this book isn't quite aimed at that demographic, and it presupposes a little knowledge of the world, but it has a similar scope, aimed at helping a non-scholar make sense of a pretty broad topic.

I wouldn't say this book is for casual readers. However, people interested in this topic and other motivated readers (authors, for example, who wanna get a battle scene right) would probably find this enjoyable and pretty readable.

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Where My Review Doesn't Match the Stars

The Mountain Poems of Meng Hao-Jan by Meng Hao-jan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Please pardon my rant. I have some opinions about 1300-year-old poetry. :)]

The 4 stars are for the poems. (I wonder if it would be a 5 under different circumstances.)

3 for the translation. Barely.

I'm sure the translator is a lovely human, but I struggle to enjoy anything he's translated, at least out of the three books of his I've read so far. (Fool me three times...) One of those was an award-winning translation, so I'm likely an outlier--lots of people obviously thought it was awesome when I didn't. But I bet you money I could identify his translation of a random poem among a dozen others, and not because I love it. (I wouldn't even have to read it, tbh. A glance would serve. He always splits his 8-line poems into 4 pairs of lines. And they're almost always of near-equal length, even if he has to rearrange line breaks to do it.)

Grrr. I object.

(I am perfectly serious, though less impassioned than it might appear. It's fine. I'm fine.)

I like the tone and imagery of these poems. I like the topics. I appreciate the mountain and river locations found in them and the emotions they conjure. There are chunks of the poems here and there I love, and a couple poems work for me from start to finish.

Most don't, however, and that's what I always find with this translator. More than with any other translator of this kind of poetry, I find myself at the end of a poem, realizing I got nothing from any of the lines. I feel like I'm waiting for the verb that never arrives. ("The blue-lotus roof standing beside a pond,/ White-horse Creek tumbling through forests,// and my old friend some strange thing now." Wait what? Reread.)

I get it, the way Chinese poetry is elliptical and evocative, not necessarily grammatical or including complete thoughts. I'm used to that. But he removes most of the cues that a reader uses to parse Chinese poetry into meaningful chunks. He separates what should (IMO) be connected and connects what should (IMO) be kept separate.

Here, in a poem about oranges:

Clambering into branches, she plucks
treasures, opening hidden depths to view,

and touched at how they grow in pairs,
reflections, we feel this mind we share.

I feel like he could have helped us out a little more. I put a pause at the end of the line, after "she plucks." Oops. Nope. "She plucks *treasures*." Okay. Then she is touched... no. Who is touched? "We" are? Isn't that a dangling modifier? And what is "reflections" doing there, stuck in the middle? She's reflecting? She sees reflections? The poet is reflecting? Or is it more concrete than that? It's a noun all on its own. I don't get it.

There are a few notes in the back for some of the poems, and they help, but not too much.

For those who like their poetry to be like puzzles to work out, little riddles, this is probably a good choice. For those (me, I'm talking about) who like to read poetry and connect with the poet's thoughts without the language fighting back, this is a frustrating collection.

Don't rat me out to the author.

Finish on the positive

I still love many of the lines and several of the poems, and the paperback edition is actually very nice, very beautiful. Maybe I'll reread this in a year or two and take back all my ranting.

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Where Judge Dee Solves the Maze

The Chinese Maze Murders by Robert van Gulik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another entertaining mystery in a successful series.

Just like other titles in the series, the magistrate Judge Dee is faced with three separate mysteries, all coming in at about the same time, and so he is working on them all at once. It's also typical (though not universal) that he's arriving at a new posting, discovering a bunch of messed up stuff left by the previous magistrate. Here, it's a crime syndicate oppressing the people like a land baron in some westerns. Without troops or a regular police force to back him up, Judge Dee has to use some clever trickery to hold off the powerful criminal organization before he can even start to unwind all the knots in the mysteries.

It's interesting to see in this novel that Judge Dee is wondering if he should keep working in his profession, which takes a toll both because of the unending nature of the work as well as the ugliness of it, tracking down murderers and the like. He's considering giving it up, going back where he came from to farm a small plot of land. I wouldn't blame him at all. Because he has to oversee both the questioning, which at that time included whipping and torture, as well as the sentencing, which could be brutal, the reader might wonder if he's brutal himself. It appears not. He does his job, but he doesn't enjoy the cruelty.

His insightful methods are a lot of fun, but his assistants are perhaps even more entertaining. They're kinda rough guys (reformed highwaymen and conmen) who are fiercely loyal to the judge. They risk a lot and show a ton of ingenuity on their own to track down clues and people. Between them, we get the whole Sherlock experience: amazing deductions, clever disguises, danger, and some self-defense with martial arts. Lots of fun, but there could be a bit that triggers people; like many of his books, the crimes here are not just murder but also include elements of SA. FYI.

(That's what mysteries are about, right? Bad guys doing bad stuff, then getting caught by good guys. But such stories are not for everyone, of course.)

As always, good if not great, which is just about as much as you can hope for when you open a book. So far I've enjoyed them all and look forward to reading the stack I just bought.

Recommended for historical mystery fans.

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Where Judge Dee Makes Quick Work of Many Mysteries

Judge Dee at Work: Eight Chinese Detective Stories by Robert van Gulik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of short stories, each one a quick mystery solved by Judge Dee. Most of the Judge Dee books are regular novels, and very engaging, but I enjoyed this collection at least as much as those.

Sometimes you just want a 20-page short story to read, you know?

I like that the MC is very insightful and a little bit of a jerk. He's good at what he does, but he's kinda short with others, and he doesn't mind giving a whole bunch of people their worst day ever while finding the truth. He's no saint. Nor is he infallible. As a result, he feels pretty round, like a regular person who happens to also have a particular set of skills, so when he cuts through the nonsense and solves a tough crime, it doesn't give you any Mary Sue vibes.

Crusty old Judge Dee catches the bad guys and helps the downtrodden, the wrongly accused, and the kinda lost get a second chance, sometimes, (though it might come with a bit of a sermon--LOL) which is all you want from a collection like this. And just a touch of the risqué, actually, though it's not terribly shocking stuff. It is 60+ years old, after all.

Good fun. Recommended for mystery readers.

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Where Judge Dee Gets Stuck in a Monastery

The Haunted Monastery by Robert van Gulik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another entertaining book in a pretty fun series.

This one has the best setting--a long night at a rambling old Taoist monastery in the mountains, wagon wheel broken, rained in, trapped with a variety of guests to the place, with a lots of strange things happening. It was more of a cozy mystery than other titles I've read so far, though there was real danger, lots of hidden rooms, and plenty of action.

And there are some salacious bits. I'm not sure why I find that surprising. They're fine, though, nothing extraordinary, and all makes sense with the plot.

I also appreciate that it's a shorter novel, as so many used to be. Probably 60K-65K words total. Enough to finish in a few days reading at bedtime. (I still manage to get two or three characters mixed up.)

The original reason I ever looked up these books was the movies I saw on cable. There are some high budget Judge Dee movies (out of Hong Kong, I think) and they made me wonder. The movies are probably more fun than the books, with lots of supernatural stuff, but these are good, too.

Recommended for historical mystery buffs.

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Where Judge Dee Faces the White Lotus Society

The Chinese Lake Murders by Robert van Gulik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very clever murder mystery, and I enjoyed it. Judge Dee is a great character: hardworking, a bit crusty, severe at times, demanding, and occasionally anxious, but fair, compassionate, brilliant, and deeply insightful. It's easy to root for him. His assistants, including two who had once been bandits in the woods, are also likable and composed of positive and negative traits. In this story, the judge takes on a new servant, Tao Gan, a conman that he saves from a bad beating but finds full of useful qualities. It's fun to watch these varied personalities work through an investigation at all different levels, from documents and witness interviews to stake-outs and fights.

Most of this story relates to the investigation into the murder of a young woman, an entertainer, who is killed while onboard a "flower boat," something like a floating brothel which featured dancers and catering. But the mystery is expanded because, just before her murder, she tries to communicate a warning to Judge Dee. Something big is being plotted in the city where he was so recently posted. Another murder and a missing body become connected, and the clues pile up in a confusing way. (Not just for me--Judge Dee was kinda stumped, even.)

I coulda used a little support to keep characters straight. By the end, I was mixing up three or four of them who were all introduced at the initial party on the boat, though that's probably not really the author's fault. The names might contribute to that confusion a little, but I often have the same problem when I read Agatha Christie or others, so... that's just me. I guess I need to make drawings or a spreadsheet or something. :)

Also, I've got to doublecheck the actual order of these stories. I got bad intel on that somehow. This is book 5, and I thought it was book 2. But, it doesn't matter much. This is lots of fun.

Secret rooms. Secret societies. Good action. A bit of sexiness (and even a little sordid, in spots). A tad violent. And still cerebral in many ways. 4/5 stars.

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Buddhist Monk Poets of China

The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China by Red Pine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There are many layers to the poems in this book, more than I can appreciate with my current level of understanding, but even an examination only about two layers deep reveals a largely satisfying book. It's not entirely even, but I still found it mostly enjoyable.

Since these poems are written by buddhist monks, they naturally concern aspects of buddhist thought, and I have the most cursory understanding of such things. Simple phrases that I think I understand are explained in the notes to be significant in ways I wouldn't have thought. So that's the stuff I can't appreciate too much. It's like the grown-up jokes in the children's cartoons--just for those who understand.

What I love are the lines and poems about the wind in the trees and the clouds on the mountains, that kind of stuff. As monks, living mostly in mountain monasteries, they produce that sort of imagery a bunch. That's a level that works for me. And that imagery often corresponds to thoughts, dreams, reflections, and emotional states that also are perfectly comprehensible to anyone. That's my favorite.

Here's an example, from the poet Chia Tao, translated by Red Pine (one of the editors):

LATE IN THE DAY, GAZING OUT FROM A RIVER PAVILION

Water to the horizon
veils the base of clouds;
mountain mist
blurs the far village.

Returning to nest, birds
make tracks in the sand;
passing on the river, a boat
leaves no trace on the waves.

I gaze at the water
and know its gentle nature;
watch the mountains
until my spirit tires.

Though not yet ready
to leave off musing,
dusk falls,
and I return by horse.

It's not all lessons in zen. There is talk of war, loss, discouragement, and loneliness, but also joy and friendship and good times and drinking. These poets did their best to shake off the world, but all of them remain aware of it to one degree or another. These are normal people, recognizable in their emotional lives and hopes and dreams despite living, most of them, an ascetic life. There's plenty to connect to.

A number of different translators produced this work, and while they might all do a good job in their way, I receive them very differently. There are a few translators I don't much enjoy here, but there are others that I love. There are other books of poetry I enjoyed more (overall) than this one that I gave the same 4 stars to, but there's a short 5-star book inside this, and that influenced by ranking. :)

This is probably a better fit for those with a greater knowledge of and appreciation for buddhist teachings, but those who enjoy Tang Dynasty poetry--or later--will probably find their own 5-star selections from the book. So, this is recommended for those readers.

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Where the Yuan Brothers Do Not Disappoint

Pilgrim of the Clouds by Hung-Tao Yuan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this slim book of Ming poetry (and prose) by the Yuan brothers--Yuan Hung-tao, Yuan Chung-tao and Yuan Tsung-tao. Although I was initially disappointed to see how much of the book was prose, since that wasn't the reason I bought the book, I found that the prose parts were surprisingly entertaining and informative.

One of the things I like about poetry, and Chinese poetry in particular, is how the reader can so often say, "I feel like that too!" or "That's a lot like me," despite the huge distance between us in time, space, and culture. That is still present in the poetry found here, which I liked, but it's found even more in the short essays. Like so much Chinese poetry of any dynasty, this collection demonstrates the customary strong Romantic (-ish) interest in natural places and man's connection to them, but this is more Wordsworthian even than that; it emphasizes not only nature but common people, their interests, and everyday lives: noisy pilgrims and tourists at monasteries; beggars; popular ghost stories; crickets and how to raise them; popular trails and historical sites; and much more. There's a gritty realness to much of the prose pieces that I find appealing.

All in all, this book offers an interesting look into the lives of Ming Dynasty folk. Of course, we still mostly get insights into the scholarly class, the exact kind of people who are able to write poetry and prose for us to read hundreds of years later, but there is a much better share of other people her than is usually the case, along with window into the Cedar Points and Colonial Williamsburgs of the Ming Dynasty--the mountains, monasteries, caves, historic sites, and other travel destinations that drew people out of their homes onto boats and trails in that era. I was surprised by how familiar it felt, how modern and middle class. It was an education.

Worth looking into, if you have any interest in the time and place. I woulda liked it to be twice as long.

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Where Du Fu Socks You in the Gut

Du Fu: A Life in Poetry by Du Fu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When evaluating the impact of Tang era Chinese poetry in translation, it's hard for me to separate the poet and his poetry from the translator and his contribution. I do have an opinion of sorts (which I will dare to supply), but speaking first of my holistic take, I have to say that I found the collection as emotionally affecting as it is artistic, and I recommend it to any readers of poetry.

This collection is subtitled "A Life in Poetry," and it succeeds on that level, as a sort of biography. The poetry is organized according to the distinct periods in the author's life, and that is augmented with general biographical information about his career, his moves, and his family. This works well together, as the poet inserts himself in much of his poetry; the political situation, his family life, his career, and his circumstances in general are prominent in these verses. Unusually for his time (as I am informed) he writes about his wife and children and their lives, reflecting on the way his success and failures, his traveling, his uncertain health, his drinking, and his ambition impact his family.

Returning from a long posting away from home, he writes:

...thinking ahead to my wife
trying to cope with this weather

desperate to be with my family
I arrive at last to learn

my little son has died
probably from sheer hunger

and I stand and weep in the street
the neighbors crowd round me, weeping

my shame overwhelms me, a father
who couldn't feed his family...

He often writes about his friends visiting, drinking wine, and discussing poetry, and he writes about his hikes along the rivers, visiting monasteries, and seeking the quiet of the wilderness. All of this is normal for the time and expected. But then he mentions a sister who he has not seen in years, and writes about brothers who he learns have survived a breakout of war far away, and then he's back to his wife and children, revealing their sorrows after their rising fortunes have fallen again:

Well, now I'm coming home
from troubles of my own

and with my hair gone white
I wonder if they'll know me

here's my wife at last
wearing a much-patched dress

crying to see me here
sighing like wind in the pine trees

sobbing uncontrollably
like any tumbling brook

and here's my boy, all pale,
the jewel that crowns my life

he turns his back to me
ashamed of his own weeping

I see his dirty feet
he has no shoes or socks

and there are my two daughters
their clothes all patched as well

too small for them, with images
all crazy and mismatched

a dragon and a phoenix
turned upside down for mending...

The pictures he paints of good times and bad times--of a life more fortunate than most but still filled with grief and difficulty--is so human that the distance between us and him is erased. We follow his career ups and downs and watch him as he grows old, losing friends, seeing too many wars, living long enough to learn that everything good eventually is taken away, and our participation in that life is heartbreaking and comforting at once.

Du Fu shows a tendency toward liberal thought as he speaks up for the poor and their lot and describes the cruelty of war. He opposes the excess of the court, and he is so uncomfortably aware of his privileged state, even when passing through periods of poverty, that he connects more with the peasants in the country than the scholars and officials of his own class. A lot of his criticisms (surprising takes in a Confucianist society) could still be leveled at institutions today, which gives his poetry additional relevance.

As far as the translation, and I speak as an absolute amateur in every way, it is, IMO, good enough. I mean no criticism by this, or not much. If the language isn't exciting, it also doesn't go too far. I might have liked it more if reworked with a little more poetic license, but no doubt that would bother other readers, so--good enough. Comparing poems here with those found in another collection, I'd have to say that they are simpler here, with plainer language, and I was a little disappointed.

David Young's translation of "Song of the War Carts" in this volume:
have you seen how the bones from the past
lie bleached and uncollected near Black Lake?

the new ghosts moan, the old ghosts moan--
we hear them at night, hear them in the rain.

That's pretty awesome, but here are the same verses in a translation by Peter Harris:

Haven't you seen
By the shores of Kokonor Lake,
The white bones from of old
that no one's collected?
The new ghosts, they complain
and the old ghosts sob,
Gibbering in the wet rain
under a dull sky?

I find the second more compelling, I'll admit. But perhaps that translator's taken more license with the text. I'm not sure. Still, to repeat myself--the translation here is good enough, and maybe that's the best we can hope for. The poet shines through, 1200 years on. His life, his thoughts, his concerns and fears and beliefs, are a gift to us, presented in clear language, with enough contextual aids to make sense of it where it might be difficult. This allows us to make a human connection, which is the art Du Fu excelled at.

Recommended.



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Where I Learn How Horribly Awesome the Mongols were 800 Years Ago

The March of the Barbarians by Harold Lamb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is another old book I got as a castoff and finally got around to reading. My opinion--it's really good.

You know, with caveats.

It's from 1940, which makes it a bit dated. That shouldn't matter much, obviously, with the topic being a pretty distant past, but some stuff comes through from the time of the writing that isn't current. There's a lot of talk--could be metaphor but doesn't feel like it--about what this people or that people is best at or most fit for, in the sense of racial proclivities. Russians are like this, Mongols are like that, Persians do this... It's not to the same extent as, say, 19th Century British historians, but it's noticeable. Also, 1940s misogyny shows up here and there. When the Oyrat tribe goes against Ogadai, he takes many of their women as his wives, gives others to his officials, gives others to "keepers of prostitutes," and lets his guards take still more. And here is the conclusion of that incident: "The Oyrat men had attmpted to disobey the Khakhan, and they had learned their lesson..." Yes, clearly the men suffered. [Rolling my eyes.]

However, having said that, this book is less culturally chauvinistic than I expected in an 80-year-old history book. He often describes Europe of the 13th and 14th Centuries as a backwater, an unimportant peninsula at the end of the continent, a land of barbarians on the fringes of enlightened civilization. These descriptions have merit, and seem more modern in tone than I expected from a book written in 1940. (Makes me wonder if the author signed off on the title of his book. Or maybe it's ironic.)

As to the rest of the work, I found it a very thorough, readable, clear history of the Mongols and their allies, the Turks and Tatars and others. He went to a lot of primary sources for his information, much of which was difficult to come by at the time. The author, IMO, treated the individuals and the cultures in an objective way, describing Mongol brutality without sugarcoating it and their enlightenment, such as their religious tolerance, without stinting. In the afterward, he states: "I have only tried to draw the men themselves, as they existed against the background of their time, as it was then." This had to be quite progressive for 1940; bearing in mind the caveats mentioned above, the history is reasonably modern even in 2019.

There are many histories of the Mongols. I have several, actually, all of them newer than this one. And no doubt, they have information missing here. But this book doesn't deserve to be overlooked. I enjoyed it, finding it very readable, and am not reluctant to recommend it if you find it on the shelves somewhere. Well worth picking up.

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Where the Main Character Is Terrifying. But Good.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book. I planned to like it more, but it was still good, and most people who think this sounds like a good book are likely to find out they're right.

As a reader, I liked the setting and themes and the fact that it was written from an "own voices" perspectives. That lends the action some weight, and the real events in our timeline are echoed in this secondary world is very effective. It still reads like fantasy, but it has the power of real life behind it.

The characters are interesting and sympathetic, most of the time, but I didn't love the meandering plot they lived through. I thought at first it was a sort of Harry Potter outsider-at-school story: many fellow students are rounded out, the setting is fully developed, conflicts are established, and we are set up for continued action at the school. But that was just the first third or so. When we jumped into the next part of the story, it felt like the previous section was unnecessary (making the early sections at home even less relevant), and almost everything that happened there was redundant in the end. The student rivalries that gave the first part of the book its energy become swallowed up by the greater events going on outside.

Maybe that was a thematic choice. I dunno. Showing how school isn't quite real life yet... Maybe.

The last half is the most entertaining, and especially the last chapters. I read that with the most pleasure. I have seen many glowing reviews of the next book, so I hope to find the action I enjoyed most in book 1 rolls right into book 2.

Outside of entertainment, the book is important because of its handling of themes regarding race, colonialism, empire, prejudice, and all the ills attendant on them. Rin is underestimated because she's a dark-skinned peasant from the south; the light-skinned children of government officials are privileged and condescending; natives of Speer are considered dangerous and less human; and the people of Nikara and the people of Mugen despise each other equally, each seeing the other as beneath contempt.

Nothing is tidy here; no heroes, really; just problematic characters trying to figure out what it means to human.

Recommended.

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