Cloak of Summoning by Jonathan Moeller

The 26th book of Nadia.

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The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama

This is not a novel. It is a short-story cycle. It revolves about an apartment building where various people have various problems, and their visits to the hippo figure that children can ride in Hinode Park, and the story people tell of its being able to heal things. Each of them resolves issues, and delicate threads go from one story to the next.

subtitle; The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

from amazon;

If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6.
For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war.
Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets.

a very interesting read. goes into the motivation of gordievsky vs. philby (who will probable haunt MI5 & MI6 as long as those organizations exist) & ames. as well as some of the work gordievsky did for MI6 & what happened to him when the KGB got word of what he was up too.
if you like real life spy stories/thrillers, i recommend this book. i also recommend similar books that macintyer wrote; Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies & Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal.

macintyre also wrote a book about philby, a spy among friends, that's now a tv series. i tried to read it, but it felt very british & i could not make it very far.

On yesterday’s commute home I concluded The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. This is a history novel which focuses on the relationship between Native Americans and the United States, from the initial colonization efforts of Europeans to modern day.

I think the thing this book does best, and I think what it was trying to do, is make indigenous Americans active participants in history. Everyone knows that they were victims of countless atrocities, first at the hand of European invaders and later by the United States government, but they are often reduced to the role of passive victim: people to whom things simply happened. Not so, says Blackhawk. Native Americans were shapers of history as much as anyone else, and he brings their role and influence to the forefront here.

One of the things this pushes back on hard is the idea of inevitability: that what happened to the indigenous people of North America was always going to happen. We can see, throughout this book, so many moments when things could have been different if the right people had chosen differently.

It also is very revealing as to the sources of anti-indigenous violence in the decades before and after the American Revolution. It was in many cases, the settlers who were pushing hardest for violence and dispossession of the native peoples, not the government. Of course, the government agreed in the end, but both the British and later the American government initially wanted more diplomatic relationships with Native American tribes—but the settlers, fueled by bigotry, greed, and fear, lobbied hard for a more severe approach, and in the end, they won.

It’s also an incredibly detailed chronicle of native resistance to colonization and how hard Native Americans have fought for centuries to preserve their cultures and be allowed to simply exist as they wish. The breadth and variety of techniques they have employed to this end are truly remarkable. Knowing more about the modern legal struggles of the tribes is also a useful tool for looking at where to go next.

Some reviews found the book dry; personally, I can’t disagree that it was dry, but I did not find its dryness a problem. It is a historical chronicle, not a novel, and it does its job very well. It is well-researched and a thorough survey. I think it does well balancing covering a large swath of history with many different peoples and conflicts while also digging in a bit to certain specifics. I found it deeply engaging and I think the country would be better off if everyone had a better understanding of this material.

My only complaint is that it does end a little abruptly, but it had to stop somewhere.

Taste of Home Grand Prize Winners
by Catherine Cassidy (Editor)


Today we finished our tenth cookbook of the year. The front matter includes a table of contents and information about contests. The recipe chapters are Appetizers; Salads, Sides & Such; Soups & Stews; Main Dishes (Beef, Poultry, Pork, Seafood & Meatless); Casseroles; Breads & Rolls; Breakfast & Brunch; Cookies, Bars & Candies; Cakes & Pies; and Just Desserts. There is also an index, divided into an ingredient section and an alphabetical list of titles.

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