Brendan by Morgan Llywelyn

Brendan: The remarkable life and voyage of Brendan of Clonfert by Morgan Llywelyn

Being a student of Irish history, I naturally was drawn to this new book by Morgan Llywelyn. I have read several books by Llywelyn, and I will add that I have loved each of them. She is a tremendous historical story teller. She really brings legends, history and Celtic mythology to life.

This is the story of Saint Brendán the Navigator, whose legendary quest to find the Isle of the Blessed is one of the most remarkable and enduring of early Christian tales. Among Irish saints, Brendán the Navigator is second only to St. Patrick. Llywelyn bases her story on the medieval text “Life of St. Brendan,” and retells it in the form of a personal journal written by an elderly Brendan, as he reflects on his life and his constant wanderlust to travel and explore new worlds. (Just a footnote on Brendan, there is speculation that it was Brendan who actually first discovered North America.)

We follow a restless, headstrong, and curious Brendan, who embarks on dangerous pilgrimages first by land and then several different voyages by sea. He travels with his pet raven, Préachán, who becomes a character in himself through Llyweln's beautiful prose. In fact you mourn with Brendan when he finally has to bury his fine feathered friend.

Llywelyn's narrative is laced with fifth-century Irish history and lore, and climaxes with a fantastic voyage of mythical proportions, when Brendan sets out with 14 other monks in handmade Irish vessel, called a currach, to cross the Western sea in search of the earthy paradise, the "Isle of Blest".

Llywelyn has been referred to as a modern day Bard of Ireland. A few of her other books, well worth picking up and reading include: The Lion of Ireland, The Last Prince of Ireland, her Irish troubles series: 1916, 1921, 1949, 1972 and 1999.

Murder on the Eiffel Tower

Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude by Claude Izner

To be honest with you, I was disappointed in this mystery. For a couple of reasons. First you never really know why the protaganist, Victor Legris, a bookseller, decides to "investigate" a series of murders that take place on or around the Eiffel Tower. Second, in spite of a muddied plot, I guessed who the murderer was without any real clues being left.

The review from Barnes and Noble had this to say about this first in a series of novels with the bookseller, Victor Legris, as the amateur sleuth. "the mystery has its share of problems -- among them: thinly drawn characters and wooden dialogue...." Perhaps the best part is the historical setting, the 1889 Paris World Exposition.

I would avoid this mystery series and focus on the various other mystery series mentioned on this blog, like: Death at La Fenice or any of the Mistress of the Art of Death novels, or Blind Justice. And of course you can never go wrong picking up any of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.

The Shadow Elite by Janine R. Wedel

The Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market by Janine R. Wedel

This title may sound like some conspiracy theory. But contrary to what the title may sound like, this expose was not written by some right or left wing pundit or some "over the edge" conspiracy theorist, who sees a conspiracy behind every major event. This is a scholarly work written by an anthropologist.

Janine R. Wedel is a Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and a fellow at the New America Foundation. Using her expertise in Eastern European communist governments, Wedel has pulled together a shocking expose of those individuals dismantling U.S. democracy from the inside.

I will warn you, it is a slow read and the first chapter might discourage you from reading on. But once you get through the first chapter, where Wedel labels the new breed of U.S. political operators as "flexians," and their personal networks as "flex nets", the rest of the book flows a little easier. She defines "flexians" as lobbyists, government insiders or elected officials that converge into a single network "snaking through official and private organizations, creating a loop that is closed to democratic processes."

Wedel shows how a flexian can gain extraordinary insider knowledge and influence in order to custom-tailor a version of the "truth" benefitting the highest bidder. In this way, they not only "co-opt public policy agendas" but "craft policy with their benefactors' purposes in mind."

Wedel does more than just create descriptive labels, she names names and provides concrete examples of the connections between these flexians and their various organizations. These same influential people seem to reappear time after time in different professional guises, pressing their own agendas in one venue after another.

Wedel charts how this shadow elite, loyal only to their own, challenge both governments’ rules of accountability and business codes of competition to accomplish their own goals. From the Harvard economists who helped privatize post-Soviet Russia and the neoconservatives who have helped privatize American foreign policy (culminating with the debacle that is Iraq) to the many private players who daily make public decisions without public input, these manipulators both grace the front pages and operate behind the scenes. While you will recognize many of the names, it is their actions and how they manipulate events to their advantage that remain in the shadows.