Doug Cornelius .com

I was school-age when the Blizzard of ’78 unleashed its fury on New England. It was an historically powerful storm, bringing hurricane force winds and three feet of snow. The blizzard raged for a day and half when it stalled off the coast.

For most kids this was a wonderful time. Our street was unplowed for a week until a front end loader finally managed to clear the snow. School was closed for weeks. Huge drifts of snow made for great sledding.

But for many, the Blizzard brought destruction and death. Michael Tougias tells one of those stories in Ten Hours Until Dawn.

The most devastation from the Blizzard fell on the coast. The high winds and length of the storm lead to huge waves and violent seas. The tanker Global Hope was trying to ride out the storm under anchor in Salem Sound. The ship’s anchor started dragging, the ship began floundering on the shoals and the captain sent out a mayday.

The ninety-five foot Coast Guard cutter Cape George from Boston and the 210 foot Decisive from Provincetown fired up their engines and made way to the incident. Closer by, the Coast Guard sent a forty-one foot utility boat and a forty-four foot motor lifeboat from Gloucester Harbor. They set out into violent waters churned by the blizzard. The two smaller boats took a beating as soon as they passed the breakwater in Gloucester Harbor.

Also hearing the call was Frank Quirk. He sat back waiting for the Coast Guard to do their job. Using his forty-nine foot Can Do, Quirk delivered pilots to incoming cargo ships. He was also a diver and had participated in rescue attempts. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the coastal waters.

When the smaller boats got in trouble, Quirk fired up the engines and gathered a few friends. They headed out into the beast of storm slamming against the New England coast.

The obvious comparison for this book is Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. Both books involved boats that left Gloucester Harbor and got caught in the teeth of a vicious storm. Junger crafted a story around the issues confronting swordfisherman, but had little information about what actually happened. The Andrea Gail and her crew were never heard from again.

Ten Hours Until Dawn recreates the Can Do‘s battle with storm. Tougias had copies of radio transmissions to help him structure the story. He was also able to interview the participants and spectators to the events that took place in Salem Sound during the Blizzard of ’78. It’s a compelling story.

You can tell by looking the cover of Impact that a meteoroid strikes off the coast of Maine. Except it’s not a meteoroid and there is a corresponding crater on the other side of the planet in the mountains of Cambodia. Something strange has just happened and the world is in peril.

The heroine is a college drop-out who studied astronomy living back home with her lobsterman father. The hero is a super-spy contracted to investigate the crater in Cambodia. They eventually come together and try to save the world.

It was an intriguing page turner, even though I found elements a bit frustrating.

But I had an even more frustrating experience when I bought the book.

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One of the most controversial things about the Kindle is pricing. If you’re traveling and want to bring a few books to read, then the Kindle is fantastic (except having to shut it off when the plane is landing and taking off). Otherwise, it’s an inferior product.

I agree with this quote about books from Free by Chris Anderson (Editor of Wired magazine and GeekDad Editor Emeritus):

“For all their cost disadvantages, dead trees smeared into sheets still have excellent battery life, screen resolution, and portability, to say nothing about looking lovely on shelves.”

I was confronted with conundrum of paying $12.99 for the inferior Kindle edition of Impact or $10.14 for a new hardcover from Amazon. Sure, you need to add in shipping costs to the price. (Or I could wait for a bigger order and save the shipping costs.)

At a minimum, you need to get a cost savings on the Kindle edition to amortize the cost of the Kindle device.

</Rant>

I became interested in the book after reading Alan Cheuse’e review of Sci-Fi Novels to Keep You Awake at Night. I had already read the other book in the review, Sleepless, and really enjoyed that.

I found the characters to be a bit too dimensional. I expected that and can accept that in a thriller. The main story is really unique, but offset by some plot elements that are cliched and expected.

Even with its flaws, I stayed up late a few nights in a row because I was enjoying the story and wanted to see where it went.

My house is a football house, but mostly an AFC football house. I’m a long time Patriots fan and Mrs. Doug bleeds KC Chiefs red. With a little knowledge of football history you would know that the AFC is comprised mostly of the teams from the upstart American Football League that played its games in the 1960s.

Ken Rappoport weaves stories told by the players, owners, and coaches from the days of the American Football League in The Little League That Could: A History of the American Football League

It all began when Lamar Hunt watched the 1958 NFL title game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts. He believed that football was the best sport for television and that it would become big because of television.

He wanted in.

He tried convincing the NFL to grant him an expansion franchise. He tried buying the Cardinals (then located in Chicago). Neither route to NFL ownership worked.

Unable to get in, he decided to start his own league. He first teamed up with Bud Adams who he had met while Adams was also trying, unsuccessfully, to buy the Cardinals. The other big money owner was Barron Hilton, scion of the hotel family (and eventually grandfather to Paris). Those three brought along five other franchises, including the underfunded Billy Sullivan and my beloved Boston Patriots.

I was expecting the book to be an encyclopedia retelling of the history of the AFL. It’s not. It’s told by the participants in the league. I had the feeling that I was sitting in a bar with these great personalities telling me their stories of glory from the American Football League. Rappoport does a great job capturing those stories and weaving them together into a coherent narrative.

The AFL survived the battle with the NFL because it was putting good football on the field and on television. They were successfully recruiting players away and driving up the cost of player contracts. The NFL underestimated the AFL and let quality players go to the little league, assuming it would collapse and the players would come back to the NFL. After initially underestimating the AFL, the NFL owners gave up the battle and agreed to merge the leagues.

The book is a great combination of the business side of the game and the playing side of the game. There are some great stories in the book. If you’re a football fan or a sports history buff you will enjoy reading this book.

The publisher was kind enough to send me a copy of the book to review. If you buy the book by clicking through this review, my local PTO gets a kickback from Amazon.

Mix together the scientific exploration of wave theory, climate change, maritime disaster, and surfing. Layer it solid story-telling and great prose. Add a dash of big wave surfer Laird Hamilton. On second thought, add a big cupful of Mr. Hamilton. The result is Susan Casey’s The Wave: In the Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean.

For centuries, mariners have told tales of gargantuan waves. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories as exaggerations. Waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. In February 2000, the British research vessel, Discovery was trapped in maelstrom and battered by mammoth waves in the North Sea. They managed to survive and came back with scientific proof that 100+ foot waves are out there.

Unfortunately, most sailors who encounter these beasts are in no position to measure them accurately and their boats are unlikely to survive them.

As scientists try to understand them, big wave surfers are trying to ride the ones that make it to shore. The focus of the book is the tribe of surfers looking for big perfect waves. As the waves get that big, its not just about riding the waves, but surviving their incredible power. Laird Hamilton is the star of this crew and the surfing stories revolve around him.

The world’s oceans absorb the vast majority of the heat added to the climate system. After all, oceans cover most of the Earth’s surface. More heat, means more energy and bigger waves. The hundred-year wave height in the Pacific Northwest measured 33 feet in 1996. Now, it’s 46 feet; maybe even higher.

Ms. Casey paints an interesting juxtaposition between the mariners looking to weather reports to avoid big waves and the surfers looking to find the waves. Scientists try to understand the intricate complexities of wave systems and the surfers who can feel them. In the end, playing in the waves sounds a lot more fun than leaning over a laptop trying to understand them.

The publisher was nice enough to send me a preview a copy. If you have an interest in oceans, waves, or surfing, The Wave would be a great book for you to read.

The Wave comes ashore and goes on sale September 14.

Niall Ferguson had the unfortunate luck of writing The Ascent of Money just before the unveiling of the 2008′s Great Panic. At the time he finished writing the book in May 2008, only $318 billion of write-downs had been acknowledged.

I was interested in the book because of its focus on the development of our financial institutions. If we want to understand the present and hope to have some insight to the future, then we need to understand the past.

Ferguson does a great job of shedding light on the origins of finance. If you have an interest in finance, then you need to understand the history of finance. The Ascent of Money is worth the time spent reading it.

Read more of my take on this book over at Compliance Building: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World

I always look forward to the arrival of this book. It is full of learning, tragedy, sadness, and bits of humor.

I’ve been a member of the American Alpine Club since 2003, so this is the eighth edition I have read. Each edition takes the reader through the climbing accidents of the previous year. This 2010 edition is the sixty-third issue of Accidents In North American Mountaineering and details the reported accidents and many narratives for incidents in calendar year 2009.

This year there seemed to be an uptick in rappelling errors with several reports of climbers failing to tie safety knots in the end of the ropes and falling off the end. There is also a continued emphasis on the need to wear a helmet. Jed Williamson often points out in the narrative that a helmet would have prevent more serious injury.

I found two stories of obtuse climbers to be particularly entertaining. That means nobody was hurt or injured, even though there was danger involved.

In the first, a female Lithuanian climber seemed to think she was on the streets of Manhattan and could just call for a ride to get her out. She failed to realize that she was on Denali’s West Buttress. It’s not easy to get someone from high camp at 14,200 feet back to town. She refused help to descend and insisted on air evacuation.

Her complaint was a minor foot injury caused by poorly fitting boots. The rescue rangers felt she could have walked down under her own power, but refused.

She was cited under 36 C.F.R. 2.32(a)(3) Interfering with Agency Function which carries a sentence of up to six months in jail and a $5000 fine. She left the country before her court date.

The second incident was just the opposite. A climber had been scrambling near Merced Lake in Yosemite and got into a bad position. He used his cellphone to call for help, saying he was in no immediate danger, but was unable to ascend or descend from his current position.

When the rescue personnel flew by his position, they were shocked to see that he was standing on a minuscule ledge, clinging to nearly vertical rock about 800 feet above the valley floor.

This book is a must read if you have any interest in climbing or mountaineering.

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy comes to a grinding halt with the The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. I really enjoyed the cold, dark, Swedish landscape in the first book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The series then turned into an action thriller with The Girl Who Played with Fire. This third book comes across as police and courtroom procedural.

I’m not going to say too much about the book because it would be a spoiler for this book, as well as for the first two books. The character of Lisbeth Salander is fascinating and the highlight of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The rest of the characters are fairly cardboard if not caricatures.

If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo then you liked the characters. That book has a clear ending and you can move on with your literary life. If you wonder what happens next with these characters then you will want to read The Girl Who Played with Fire. If you read that book you know that it does not have a clear ending. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is the second half. And it’s the boring half.

The book is largely focused on a trial and investigation leading up to the trial. It comes across as a boring episode of Law Order with Swedish names.

A disappointing third chapter of the trilogy.

Roger Smith has written a gritty, violent thriller full of deeply-flawed people trapped in bad luck and the violence of Cape Town, South Africa.

Some books slowly weave a tapestry of ideas. Mixed Blood is not one of those books. It’s rapid roller coaster with scenes quickly moving through the ups and downs of his cast of characters. The background and flaws of the characters are fired with the staccato of a machine gun into the narrative.

You probably won’t like any of the characters. Most of them are bad people. Jack Burn is bad gambler willing to kill. Benny is gang member who places little value on human life. “Gatsby” Barnard is evil cop, ruling the streets with violence.

Even not liking the characters, you do care what happens to them. They are flawed, but incredibly human. Several are either fighting for survival or for a chance at a new life. Will they find redemption or death of both? You will keep turning the pages to find out.

There is lots of death and violence in the book. It’s gripping, but not for the faint of heart. If it sounds good, you can read the first chapter of Mixed Blood (.pdf) on line and see if you like it.

Mixed Blood is Roger Smith’s debut thriller. I read his second, Wake Up Dead, back in January. The publisher was nice enough to send me this copy.

This marks book number 29 on the books I’ve read so far in 2010 on my quest for 52; a book a week.

If you liked The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, then you should like this book. Mikael Blomkvist, the intrepid reporter is back.

This time the book is much more focused on the mysterious Lisbeth Salander, the Pippi Longstocking-ish investigator. She is the one who is in trouble as we find out more about her mysterious background.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millenium trilogy was very cerebral. The Girl Who Played with Fire is action-packed. I have to admit that I was drawn into the story and rabidly consumed the book to see where the story was going.

After reading it and reflecting back, I’m disappointed. The bad guys are cartoonish, reminding me of James Bond villains. Salander is a very interesting character, but seems to have superhero powers. The cops are inept caricatures. Every other character is very flat.

The narrative was compelling and I was intent on finding out what happened to Salander. Maybe that’s enough. I just wish there was more.

That being said, I’m still looking forward to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest when it comes out next week.

Imagine if the recent Great Panic financial crisis of 2008 was accompanied by a realization that an illness had spread across the population. On top of the subprime meltdown, a devastating illness has left a huge portion of the population unable to sleep. It takes about a year of zombie-like existence for the sleepless to die. The world has fallen into chaos, isolation and martial law. Sleepless is set in this post-apocalyptic Los Angeles.

The two protagonists in Sleepless are Park, an undercover cop, and Japser, a “fixer.” Park is trying to uncover an illegal trade in DR33M3R, a drug that eases the suffering of those with the sleepless disorder. Park’s wife has contracted the disease and the health of their infant daughter is unknown.

Jasper is cold-blooded, methodical killer. His life is strictly ordered. The opposite of chaos. He moves tangentially in the book to Park, but you know they will somehow meet. And that the meeting will not be over milk and cookies.

I’m not a big fan of using multiple protagonists to tell a story. It’s hard for the author to portray the different viewpoints and even harder for the reader to figure out whose eye they are looking through. Sleepless suffers from a little of that at the beginning, but the differences between the protagonists become greater and more apparent as the book progresses.

The book is not light and fluffy. It’s dark. Not as spine-tingling dark as The Road. (That book gave me a physical reaction of dread when I read it.)

Huston tells a compelling, scary, intriguing and gut-wrenching story that will keep you up late into the night reading it.

So far in my goal of 52 books for the year, Sleepless is number 24 on the books I’ve read in 2010.