'The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings' by John Haywood and 'Intermezzo' by Sally Rooney

 The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings, John Haywood (4.0)

This book discusses the Viking Age (roughly 800-1100 AD) with photos and maps. Each of the 7 chapters in this book start with a few pages of an overview of history covering a certain time followed by detailed maps of the Viking adventures. Reading this, I realized how woefully inadequate my knowledge of the Vikings really was! For example, I had not known that they eventually sailed and sacked towns in the Mediterranean, that they fought the Moors in Spain and that they sat a king on the throne in England (though not Scotland). I also found it fascinating that it is felt Vikings have a bad reputation as mainly pillagers as they were the first peoples who sacked monasteries. They were after plunder and the monks had the gold! Not being Christian, they didn’t care or worry. Since monks were the main writers of history, you can only imagine what they thought of the Vikings. I found this type of book to be thorough, albeit a little dry. Given our plans to visit Skye, Orkney, Shetland (which to this day have mostly Nordic based town names) and 3 towns in Norway this summer, this was the perfect introduction to the relics we will be seeing.

Intermezzo, Sally Rooney (3.0)

This story is told in the two protagonists (brothers) voices in alternating chapters. The author did a good job of writing in their very different voices, but unfortunately one of the brothers was quite unlikable and his characteristic disjointed thoughts were difficult to read. The other brother was almost too likable, so I found myself skimming the bad brother’s chapters to get to the good brother’s voice. Maybe I’m getting old, but I also found the sex gratuitous at times and the ‘love’ triangle’s inclusion hard to fathom (dare I say ‘cringe’ and sound a little younger?).  The author did do a good job illustrating a family’s dynamics of dealing with death and tragedy.

'How the World Ran Out of Everything' by Peter S. Gorman; 'Iron Lake' by William Kent Krueger; and 'A Corpse in the Koryo' by James Church

 How the World Ran Out of Everything, Peter S. Godman (3.0)

This is a good book for someone to read who is not already familiar with the pandemic supply chain issues. Given my career and background in Operations and Supply Chain I found myself saying ‘he’s not wrong, but he is biased’. I quickly tired of his rants – yes, many businesses only worry about shareholder value to the detriment of their employees. But he couldn’t find happiness in any solution. Dock workers weren’t paid enough given the dangers they faced, but if the ports added robots to automate the dangerous jobs they were again in the wrong. I do think that any job that is not considered ‘skilled’ will be taken advantage of by businesses and not be given living wages. We can try to legislate this, but there are always so many loopholes and unintended consequences. I believe the solution has more to do with education – the more valuable an employee is, sidelining them is harder. I did like his last chapter where he tried to find a way forward. Sadly, our new administration is not likely to implement any of his suggestions.

 

Iron Lake, William Kent Krueger (3.0)

I appreciated the setting of this novel – northern Minnesota in the winter- as it is very similar to where my parents live. It was written quite a few years ago and some of it didn’t work as well for me these days. The main character is a disgraced sheriff, Cork O’Connor, who is going through a divorce in a small town when a judge is murdered and a boy, who may have been with him, goes missing. Cork is singularly capable of helping find out what happened as he is part Anishinaabe Indian and part Irish. His Indian connections give him access to part of their community. The complications of small-town government, the new Indian casinos and the old issues between both are a bit stereotypical. I also didn’t like the personal aspects (i.e. he could cheat on his wife, but it was a very different story when he found she cheated on him). The reader was supposed to like his story better, but I found it annoying.

 

A Corpse in the Koryo, James Church (3.5)

I found it refreshing to read a book set in North Korea. We have little chance to experience life in a secretive society and this book was both interesting and slightly harder to picture for that reason. The author purports to be a retired agent who is very familiar with the workings of North Korean military and government. The story is the first in a series that follows an investigator in the capital city whose job is to investigate crimes, including murder. His job is always made more complicated by the insertion of the ubiquitous and varied military branches in all he does. While I found it fascinating and plan to read more with this protagonist, for someone brought up in the west and unfamiliar with an extremely strict authoritarian regime some of the happenings were hard to believe. It was due to the combination of seemingly all knowing (one character had moles literally everywhere the protagonist went) and yet lacking resources and downright bumbling (never having enough batteries for their equipment to work).  Overall I found it quite interesting and nice to read a mystery set in a very different environment.