Books

THE ART OF THE PLAYWRIGHT by William Packard is a competent but formulaic “how to” book detailing the importance of characters having something to strive for, obstacles to overcome and interactions with other characters, all of which is, of course, common to any field of writing. Nothing really struck me as fresh except a discussion of visual symbols, but I admit I might think differently if I was coming to the topic cold.
SOMETHING HAPPENED: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies by Edward D. Berkowitz argues the seventies were the era when the standard solutions dating back to the post-WW II years finally stopped working: Centralized eonomic planning collapsed in the face of stagflation and the oil crisis, respect for our leaders vanished after Watergate, the Cold War tentatively gave way to detente and the struggle for group rights and the backlash against them took precedence over the Good of Society As a Whole (Berkowitz doesn’t consider that a bad thing, though he still paints them as symptoms of Me Decade selfishness). A good political overview, but not so effective on the cultural side; it also lacks the sense of fun Coming Together and Falling Apart had about the era (as someone who lived through the decade, I definitely prefer the latter book).
THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR:Papists, Gentlewomen, Soldiers and Witchfinders in the Birth of Modern Britain by Diane Purkiss presents the war as less a matter of Parliament vs. King (though that was certainly part of it) than Protestant vs. Papist, the “godly” Puritans believing Charles and his Catholic queen were conspiring to reimpose the Pope’s rule on England. The flashpoint was Charles’ efforts to push his reforms of the church onto onto the Presbyterian Scots, which coupled with all-too-familiar atrocity stories of Irish Catholics Brutally Massacring Protestants (and paranoia about a lurking network of Catholic sleeper agents) convinced the “godly” their freedom was at stake, though some Puritans felt turning against God’s chosen monarch was even more ungodly. The war that followed led, of course, to conclusions nobody initially anticipated or wanted such as a kingless England (Charles comes off as a genius at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, even more radical movements such as Levellers, Diggers and women’s rights groups plus infamous witch-hunter Matthew Hopkins launching his career—not to mention, of course, Cromwell’s army eventually taking over and dissolving the Parliament they’d fought to uphold. A good job on a subject I knew of, but not much about.
HARBINGER OF THE STORM: Blood and Obsidian Book II by Aliette de Bodard kicks off with the death of the Aztec Emperor, leaving everyone scheming and grappling for political power despite protagonist Acatl’s (high priest of the Aztec death god) insistence that delaying will allow the Lovecraftian star-demons to descend on the spiritually vulnerable empire. And then, of course, the killings start … A good sophomore volume in this series.
THE WICKER MAN by Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer adapts Shaffer’s 1973 film script in which a Scots bobby finds his investigation into a missing child leads him to a private island whose laird has brought back the old pagan religion—and, the cop suspects, may be including human sacrifice among the traditions. This is much more overtly Christianity vs. the Old Ways than I remember from the movie (but it’s been years since I saw it—and I haven’t seen the remake) and reminiscent of Shaffer’s Sleuth in the way the villain manipulates the protagonist as a pawn in his games.