The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the best book I’ve read all year by far. It’s a must-read. It’s a total page-turner almost from the beginning although it takes a few chapters to introduce the key figures and their backstory. This is the true story of a harrowing misadventure of a task force of English ships sent around Cape Horn in 1740 to prey on a Spanish Galleon thought to be laden with treasure. The group becomes separated in the notorious storms in that region. One ship in particular, The Wager, is shipwrecked on the Patagonian shore. Thereafter is a tale – many tales – of death and disease and heroism and bravery and cowardice and resourcefulness and deviousness. It’s a cross between Lord of the Flies and Horatio Hornblower 1 – 11. and Robinson Crusoe. Some survive. Some don’t. I don’t want to spoil it beyond that but the subtitle tells you there’s a lot more: “A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder.”

The book is thoroughly researched with many direct quotes from log books and other original sources, but the book reads like a well-paced novel, not a white paper. There are many truths here and they are not consistent. You can judge the officers and seamen and the entire British navy for yourself after finishing it — or maybe you’ll decide you shouldn’t judge anybody.

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I thought it would be interesting to see who’s trending where of the two leading vice presidential candidates. In case you don’t know who they are, J.D. Vance is the Republican, Donald Trump’s running mate, and Tim Walz is the Democrat running mate of Kamala Harris. This map is from Google Trends and covers the last 30 days. The map colors are misleading because Vance is blue and Walz red, the opposite of the colors normally associated with the two parties.

Since Vance grew up in West Virginia and Ohio, geography explains some of his popularity in those blue-colored “red states.” Walz was less well-known than Vance until recently, which may explain why people all over are now curious about him. As for Arizona, Vance recently visited there, reportedly “to introduce himself to those voters.”

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is as advertised, a fantasy novel for young adults. It’s set in an alternate universe where England is in a weird mix combining gothic and modern elements, but technologically behind the real world by a few decades. I would not normally read something in this genre but a friend has taken a liking to the HBO/MAX series now playing which combines all three of the books in the trilogy His Dark Materials. We’re watching it for the spectacular CGI and production values but it’s hard to follow at times. I got the book to explain some of the fantasy world and characters better. The book was good for that, but I found it juvenile and not particularly well-written. It reads as though the author just started writing and when he came to a block in the story like an unsolvable peril for the main character, Lyra, he just invents some fantastic character or suspension of the laws of physics – an armored bear, a witch, a companion animal/daemon who can change shape to fight, fly, etc., to get past the jam. Since it’s fantasy, anything goes and nothing makes sense. This book, the first in the series, was made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman but it bombed at the box office, so the trilogy wasn’t completed then. HBO picked up the baton and did the whole trilogy from scratch. The book is harmless enough, an easy read, and I suppose would be okay for a twelve-year-old girl, but I can’t recommend it for adults.

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The Internet of Animals: Discovering the Collective Intelligence of Life on Earth by Martin Wikelski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The author is a wildlife biologist and Director of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He and his colleagues have devised the concept of an Internet of Animals as the title calls it, which is essentially a global tracking system for animals both wild and domesticated. They have worked for decades toward this goal and partially implemented it through Project Icarus jointly with Russian scientists. The system consists essentially of three parts: a tagging system to put on animals, a satellite to receive signals from the tags, and a database to record and analyze the information. The satellite was mounted on the ISS and began operation, but the Ukraine War ended the cooperation of the Russians and the program was short-lived. But it has since been restored to life with a new plan to launch a new satellite later this year without the need for Russia or the ISS. Although this is a lifelong dream of the author and his inner circle, I’m not sure the scientific community as a whole, or the general public at all, would consider this quite as lofty an achievement.

Nevertheless, the book is fascinating throughout, at least most of the time. It details the author’s many expeditions and biological discoveries, anecdotes of meeting helpful (or not) local people all over the world, and some often amusing stories. The descriptions of the obstacles involved in fashioning tags and how those have been overcome especially intrigued me. The tags alone are a truly incredible engineering feat but it also has to be combined with a range of protocols for how and where to install them on a wide variety of animals from elephants to dragonflies. You may think it’s impossible to make a small electronic tag that will fit comfortably on a bird and yet be powerful enough to collect and transmit data to a passing satellite, but it has already been done.

The book centers on Icarus, but is more than that. Much of it is about how the author connected with others who have been instrumental in the project, and described their many unrelated clever research triumphs (and not-so-clever failures). The author tends toward the egotistical, but can be self-deprecating such as when he describes how he got a horrible case of poison ivy climbing a tree because he is so bad at plant identification. Anyone who enjoys wildlife stories or field research will enjoy this book.

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Phantom Orbit by David Ignatius
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ivan Volkov is a Russian scientist knowledgeable about satellites. In the 1990s he studies in China with a scientist named Cao Lin. In their discussions they figure out a way to disable a whole satellite guidance system, like the American GPS. Volkov also meets a young woman named Edith Ryan who turns out to be a spotter for the CIA. Sparks fly between them, but ultimately he realizes she’s using him and he returns to Russia. Cao tries to get him to return to China, but the FSB (KGB with a new name) keep him home. Skip ahead to modern day and these three characters’ lives interact once again while the U.S., Russia, and China are on the brink of war in space involving satellites. China is helping Russia in the Ukraine war.

I was hoping for better than this book delivered, but it wasn’t bad. It took almost 200 pages to get to the present day, which is where the suspense kicks in and things get complicated. Be prepared to read about years of personal history on these characters. There was surprisingly good detail on satellites and how they work, which I enjoyed. The spy tradecraft and cold war type action are less than credible in places, but I liked how they brought it right up to the present day, even working in the Ukraine War and oblique references to ex-president Trump. The ending was mostly predictable thus diffusing the suspense. The writing was good enough to keep me reading, but I don’t have a desire to read another of his books.

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Followers of this blog know that I like to find three-word combinations that are linked in the What3Words.com (W3W) website or app in an interesting or amusing way. The shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, however, is not something to joke about. It is a serious reflection of how cavalier or at least accepting Americans have become about violence in general and political violence in particular. But I don’t want to digress into politics or gun control.

I will refrain from treating the matter lightly, but I think it is still poignant to note some ironic word combinations at that site. All of the following W3W combos are real and in or around the rally/shooting site.

The Podium Area

• codes.crucial.fenced
• distracted.hunter.appear
• targets.wonderfully.linked
• targets.porch.aura
• rooftop.mortal.newsprint

That last one seems prophetic. Crooks, the shooter, climbed on the rooftop, proved to be mortal, and made it into newsprint. That seems to be his only motivation.

The shooter’s Rooftop

• speech.apprehend.unusual
• celebrate.schemes.impact
• enabling.investigate.yesterday
• refers.period.botch

These last two refer to the Secret Service failures and the forthcoming investigation, I would say. Conspiracy theorists will no doubt make hay with or without knowledge of these coincidences, and that’s all they are. Still, here are two theoretically ominous combos in the shooter’s area for them:

• conspire.residual.affirms
• conspire.seamstress.refrigerate