February's Reading

Wedding Season--This book delivered what I've come to expect from Katie Fforde: rural English setting, a protagonist focused on a traditionally feminine trade, some romance. I preferred other books by this author, but I'm not sure if that's because I'm tired of the pattern or the quality slipped.

Operation Mincemeat--I really enjoyed this account of trickery during World War II. It tells the story of a successful scheme to convince the Nazis that the Allies were not going to attack Sicily from North Africa. The British fooled the Nazis by placing fake documents on a dead body off the coast of Spain.

In this book I (briefly) met the inspiration for Q of James Bond fame (did you know Ian Flemming was in British intelligence during WWII?):

[Charles] Fraser-Smith [of "Q"-Branch] possessed a wildly ingenious but supremely practical mind. He invented garlic-flavored chocolate to be consumed by agents parachuting into France in order that their breath should smell appropriately Gallic as soon as they landed; he made shoelaces containing a vicious steel garrote; he created a compass hidden in a button that unscrewed clockwise, based on the impeccable theory that the "unswerving logic of the German mind" would never guess that something might unscrew the wrong way. 112, 114

I found the conclusion stirring:

But [wars] are also won by feats of imagination. Amateur, unpublished novelists, the framers of Operation Mincemeat, dreamed up the most unlikely concatenation of events, rendered them believable, and sent them off to war, changing reality through lateral thinking and proving that it is possible to win a battle fought in the mind, from behind a desk, and from beyond the grave. Operation Mincemeat was pure make-believe, and it made Hitler believe something that changed the course of history. 295-296

I definitely recommend this book. There are fascinating bits all the way through.

Water Witches--My Pilates teacher passed this to me. It's a novel about dousers and the ski industry in Vermont. I found it an enjoyable but unmemorable read.

The Imperfectionists--I read this one for book group. Every chapter is told from the perspective of a different person affiliated with an international English-language newspaper. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my favorite chapter was one about the corrections editor. He rants about the use "literally" and his chapter is one of the happiest.

* literally: This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as "literally" did not happen at all. As in, "He literally jumped out of his skin." No, he did not. Though if he literally had, I'd suggest raising the element and proposing the piece for page one. Inserting "literally" willy-nilly reinforces the notion that breathless nitwits lurk within this newsroom. Eliminate on sight--the usage, not the nitwits. The nitwits are to be captured and placed in the cages I have set up in the subbasement. See also: Excessive Dashes; Exclamation Points; and Nitwits. 84-85

Room--The best book of the year so far, and I'll be surprised if it doesn't end up in the top five come New Year's Eve. Like The Poisonwood Bible, this book gave me a new view on life and parenting that will return to mind again and again in the years ahead. I almost didn't read it because the subject matter seemed so disturbing, but I'm very glad I did. Haunting, horrible, and hopeful.