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Books read, May
Jul. 10th, 2024 09:56 pmLast week I got flu, or something similar; I became increasingly irked by everyone else in my zoom meeting Tuesday afternoon and then realised I was feverish and shivering. I spent much of the next two days in bed, having feverish not-quite-dreams and intermittently staggering out to order takeaways or take the kids places (they remained remarkably healthy and were surprisingly helpful). At one point I found my pulse oximeter, which said I had a heart rate of 120ish and oxygen sats of 90 (I managed to get them up to 94% with a brisk coughing fit), so at least I felt vindicated that I was actually unwell (and, persistently, COVID negative). Friday I had finally had some actual sleep but had to do five hours of interviews, after which I was totally wiped out again. This week I feel a lot better but still fell asleep at 9.30 last night.
Anyway. Still catching up on books; one very good new-to-me book, one good re-read.
Level Up, Cathy Yardley. Tessa Rodriguez is a sound tech at a gaming company who wants to make the jump to video game engineer, but is facing an uphill battle to break into the boys’ club environment. With the encouragement of her friends, she decides to make a fandom video game for a TV series to get noticed; but she also needs the help of her roommate Adam, who has recently been dumped by his ambitious girlfriend and has begun to see Tessa in a new light. I didn’t like this nearly as much as her last one; everyone feels too much like a teenager, and the game design bits (and the amount of work put in by other people!) didn’t work for me. I would read another by this author because I liked her other one but I'd aim for characters over 30 next time.
Crushed Ice, Ashlyn Kane & Morgan James. Liam gets a try out as a defenseman for the Miami Caimans, hoping to break into the league; veteran Russ takes him under his wing. I am not wild about mentor/mentee relationships or age gap where the younger person feels like a teenager and so very little of this stuck for me.
The Magpie Lord, KJ Charles, re-read. Yes, again.
Will and Patrick Wake Up Married, Leta Blake. This is part 1 of a series and novella length. Top neurosurgeon Patrick and mafia boss heir Will hit it off in Vegas and have a drunken wedding. Patrick subsequently loses his job (I do not feel this would be considered a constructive dismissal) but fortunately Will runs a charitable foundation in a town called Healing (a touch on the nose) and has been looking for a surgeon, but unfortunately Will’s trust fund depends on him not getting divorced, so the two of them head off to Healing to pretend to be married while they try to find a way out of it etc etc. Overly contrived, I’ve never liked mafia stuff, and both characters are irritating, so I haven’t bothered with the next ones.
The Last Secret Agent, Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson. Pippa was born in South Africa (just – her mother gave birth on the jetty as they were getting off the boat) in 1921 and had a peripatetic childhood, punctuated by loss; her father, a doctor, was killed when Pippa was a baby, her mother died a few years later, and she was raised by a series of relatives before ending up in a finishing school in Paris run by her godmother in 1937. After war broke out, Pippa was sent over to the UK, working for the Admiralty first and then the WAAF as a balloon operator. And when her godparents in Paris died – her godfather after being arrested for speaking out against the Vichy regime, her godmother suiciding after being ordered to open her school to the wives of German officers – she joined SOE. On the 2nd May, 1944, she was dropped into Normandy as a wireless operator.
The average life of a wireless operator in Occupied France was six weeks. Pippa lasted far longer, eventually making her way to recently liberated Paris in October of 1944, and England shortly after that. She left England for Africa, married, never told her husband or children about her war work, divorced, moved to New Zealand – where, in the early 2000s, her children found something about her on the internet, and she finally spoke. She died last year at 102, the last SOE agent of all of F section.
I hadn’t realised Jude Dobson had gotten into military historical nonfiction – she used to be a TV presenter– and she does a very good job. Pippa’s time in France is tense, well-detailed, and compelling. She gets across Pippa’s voice, as well as the tensions within and between the resistance groups and the SOE, and the broader context of the war. Pippa’s original cover – as an older secretary who likes birdwatching – is switched out for a 14 year old girl selling goats milk soap, much better for someone frequently cycling from place to place and likely to have contributed significantly to her survival; she conceals her silk codes in a shoelace she uses to tie her hair. She is part of the Scientist circuit, run by Claude de Baissac, who is a volatile bully (I acknowledge this is Pippa’s version of events) with dangerously big dreams and she is careful to conceal much of her work from him, as well as the numbers and locations of her hidden wireless sets. Pippa is at constant risk; of discovery, betrayal, sexual assault (from her own side as well as the Germans). She is ferociously independent, mentally flexible, and determined; and, above all, lucky. I liked this much more than the other SOE agent memoir I read (but not as much as Leo Marks' memoir; that is, however, a very high bar).
Anyway. Still catching up on books; one very good new-to-me book, one good re-read.
Level Up, Cathy Yardley. Tessa Rodriguez is a sound tech at a gaming company who wants to make the jump to video game engineer, but is facing an uphill battle to break into the boys’ club environment. With the encouragement of her friends, she decides to make a fandom video game for a TV series to get noticed; but she also needs the help of her roommate Adam, who has recently been dumped by his ambitious girlfriend and has begun to see Tessa in a new light. I didn’t like this nearly as much as her last one; everyone feels too much like a teenager, and the game design bits (and the amount of work put in by other people!) didn’t work for me. I would read another by this author because I liked her other one but I'd aim for characters over 30 next time.
Crushed Ice, Ashlyn Kane & Morgan James. Liam gets a try out as a defenseman for the Miami Caimans, hoping to break into the league; veteran Russ takes him under his wing. I am not wild about mentor/mentee relationships or age gap where the younger person feels like a teenager and so very little of this stuck for me.
The Magpie Lord, KJ Charles, re-read. Yes, again.
Will and Patrick Wake Up Married, Leta Blake. This is part 1 of a series and novella length. Top neurosurgeon Patrick and mafia boss heir Will hit it off in Vegas and have a drunken wedding. Patrick subsequently loses his job (I do not feel this would be considered a constructive dismissal) but fortunately Will runs a charitable foundation in a town called Healing (a touch on the nose) and has been looking for a surgeon, but unfortunately Will’s trust fund depends on him not getting divorced, so the two of them head off to Healing to pretend to be married while they try to find a way out of it etc etc. Overly contrived, I’ve never liked mafia stuff, and both characters are irritating, so I haven’t bothered with the next ones.
The Last Secret Agent, Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson. Pippa was born in South Africa (just – her mother gave birth on the jetty as they were getting off the boat) in 1921 and had a peripatetic childhood, punctuated by loss; her father, a doctor, was killed when Pippa was a baby, her mother died a few years later, and she was raised by a series of relatives before ending up in a finishing school in Paris run by her godmother in 1937. After war broke out, Pippa was sent over to the UK, working for the Admiralty first and then the WAAF as a balloon operator. And when her godparents in Paris died – her godfather after being arrested for speaking out against the Vichy regime, her godmother suiciding after being ordered to open her school to the wives of German officers – she joined SOE. On the 2nd May, 1944, she was dropped into Normandy as a wireless operator.
The average life of a wireless operator in Occupied France was six weeks. Pippa lasted far longer, eventually making her way to recently liberated Paris in October of 1944, and England shortly after that. She left England for Africa, married, never told her husband or children about her war work, divorced, moved to New Zealand – where, in the early 2000s, her children found something about her on the internet, and she finally spoke. She died last year at 102, the last SOE agent of all of F section.
I hadn’t realised Jude Dobson had gotten into military historical nonfiction – she used to be a TV presenter– and she does a very good job. Pippa’s time in France is tense, well-detailed, and compelling. She gets across Pippa’s voice, as well as the tensions within and between the resistance groups and the SOE, and the broader context of the war. Pippa’s original cover – as an older secretary who likes birdwatching – is switched out for a 14 year old girl selling goats milk soap, much better for someone frequently cycling from place to place and likely to have contributed significantly to her survival; she conceals her silk codes in a shoelace she uses to tie her hair. She is part of the Scientist circuit, run by Claude de Baissac, who is a volatile bully (I acknowledge this is Pippa’s version of events) with dangerously big dreams and she is careful to conceal much of her work from him, as well as the numbers and locations of her hidden wireless sets. Pippa is at constant risk; of discovery, betrayal, sexual assault (from her own side as well as the Germans). She is ferociously independent, mentally flexible, and determined; and, above all, lucky. I liked this much more than the other SOE agent memoir I read (but not as much as Leo Marks' memoir; that is, however, a very high bar).
