Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony by Lee Miller

This book purports to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony. I think it offers a fairly plausible solution--but I am by no means convinced that it is the only solution. Miller asserts that conspirators in England who wanted to hurt Sir Walter Raleigh made sure that the colonization mission would be unsuccessful, that while some colonists went to Croatan, the majority were enslaved in the interior of what is now North Carolina, and that Roanoke was a dangerous place to stay because of two previous English expeditions which had mistreated the Native Americans. I think Miller's approach was useful--I appreciate that she considers the bigger picture, and not just the colonists themselves. She hasn't convinced me that her solution is entirely correct. The style of the book is a little odd: it's neither quite scholarly (there are lots of footnotes, but it seems more colloquial than most monographs), nor written for popular consumption. Still, I think this book broadened my knowledge of what happened in North America in the sixteenth century, and it gave me a lot to think about--all in a very enjoyable package.

Mercy Kill by Aaron Allston

This book features a return of the Wraith Squadron with many familiar characters and some new (or almost-new) ones as well. The story has a nice balance of spying adventure with some character growth--the scars of the Yuhzohng Vong war are obviously still healing slowly. The audio was particularly nice because there were a lot of sound effects and music to go along with the reading. Basically a very nice adventure that can stand on its own.

Scourge by Jeff Grubb

This book is about characters who are on the margins of the Star Wars universe--a Jedi archivist who enters field service when his former apprentice is killed, some smugglers, and a Hutt crime syndicate. I enjoyed the story, which included a fair amount of double-crossing and some action, and I liked the new characters, but it's no Zahn novel either.

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

In this book Hannah Arendt looks at the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th Century as embodied by the two most prominent instances of it: Nazi Germany and the USSR under Stalin. Arendt traces this rise first through anti-Semitism, which began in the 19th Century, and then through imperialism to totalitarianism itself. This book is dense, comprehensive, and well argued. In addition to a lot of historical evidence, Arendt demonstrates why totalitarianism is so dangerous, and how the Nazis and Stalinist Russia used prison camps, secret police, propaganda, and conspiracy theories to dehumanize their populations.

Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

This book centers around three editors for a vanity press in Milan. When the press decides to start publishing a series on the occult, the editors, up to their ears in conspiracy theories, decide to create their own version of the Plan, by which the Templars secretly went into hiding in the fourteenth century, and which they were supposed to use to return to power in 1944. But as the conspirators cook up the Plan, they realize that others are taking their game very seriously. Part of this book is a fun conspiracy story--it puts together an almost-plausible narrative that links the Templars with other mysterious groups through the ages (and has a ton of literary and cultural in-jokes, to book). What separates this book from something like The Da Vinci Code, though, is that the other part of the book is so moving. Belpo and Causabon, in particular, are well-developed characters, and the reader comes to understand that their manic devotion to finding the truth behind these conspiracy theories (which in the book are lined up like a house of cards) is about a lack of meaning in their day-to-day lives (which they only realize too late) rather than from any value inherent in the theories. I really enjoyed this story.

The President's Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth

In this book we get to see what an outlier Nathaniel Cade really is: he's a vampire, but he's not on the Other Side (which has apparently infiltrated not only the CIA and a shady contractor, Archers/Andrew, but also Yale as well). There's a retrovirus here which remakes humans into snakeheads (lots of almost-plausible-sounding science)--it basically works like a zombie plague might--but it's getting better at making scarier snakeheads at every outbreak, which would imply human involvement and development. There's a lot of blood, a lot of guts, and a lot of backstabbing in this story--but the mystery is well done, and it does a nice job developing the relationship between Cade and his liaison to the President, Zach Barrows as well. I also enjoyed the development and hints about many popular conspiracy theories (especially the Kennedy assassination).

11/22/1963: A Novel by Stephen King

This book uses time travel to explore the consequences of changing history--specifically the Kennedy assassination. While the ability to time travel is never really explained, most of the rules are quite clear and kept up by the story. The characters who time travel are (or become) well aware of the consequences of this ability and the story does a great job looking at the consequences of what-ifs and finally highlights the inability of the human mind to figure it all out. It's a great story--good for the beach.

The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco

This book has an extremely unpleasant main character with a split personality. When the book opens he's trying to determine his identity, which he can barely remember, and whose stability is compromised by garments and accoutrements that seem to belong to two lives rather than one. As the book goes on, the main character, Simonini, his alter ego, the Abbé Della Piccola, and the narrator work together to reconstruct Simonini's activities. Despite the main character's reprehensible views, the book is fascinating, as it ties together a wide range of nineteenth century conspiracy theories (from the Paris Commune to the Dreyfus Affair). It also reflects on the nature of forgery and on the difference between fabula and syuzhet--the latter in an afterword that traces the structure of the plot. Despite the complexities of the plot and theme, this book was easy to slip into and enjoyable to read.