Jack Campbell
Jack Campbell is the pen name of John G. Hemry, a retired U.S. Navy officer. His father (LCDR Jack M. Hemry, USN ret.) is a mustang (an officer who was promoted through the enlisted ranks), so John grew up living everywhere from Pensacola, Florida to San Diego, California, including an especially memorable few year on Midway Island.
John graduated from Lyons High School in Lyons, Kansas in 1974, then attended the U.S. Naval Academy (Class of ’78). His active duty assignments in the U.S. Navy included:
- USS SPRUANCE (DD963) (Navigator, Gunnery Officer)
- Defense Intelligence Ageny (Production Control Officer)
- Navy Anti-Terrorism Alert Center (Watch Officer, Operations Officer)
- Amphibious Squadron Five (Staff Intelligence Officer/N2)
- Navy Operational Intelligence Center (Readiness Division)
- Chief of Naval Operations Staff N3/N5 (Plans, Policy and Operations)
He lives in Maryland with a wife and three kids.
We interviewed him after reviewing Dauntless, the first of the Lost Fleet series.
Freud’s Blind Spot, edited by by Elisa Albert
The relationship between siblings is especially maddening. No one but my sister can recite my diary entry describing my first kiss. Or has the stolen entry hidden away in her files some 15 years after the fact. Only my brother can quote my side of dramatic fights with my mother, all in a mocking tone. My youngest sister still recalls exactly where I hid the stash of cookies and candy in my childhood bedroom.
Conversely, siblings form a bond created by years of shared experiences. I will be among the first my siblings call for help when they need to make hard decisions. I nearly always have someone I can go to a movie or grab drink with. And throughout all the relationships in my life, there are three people who know me nearly as well as I know myself and will always be there for me.
Sleeping it Off in Rapid City, by August Kleinzahler
The first four lines of the first poem in this ‘New and Selected’ edition of August Kleinzahler give a pretty good impression in miniature of his impressive range: “On a 700 foot thick shelf of Cretaceous pink sandstone / Nel mezzo … / Sixth floor turn right at the elevator / “The hotel of the century”. From scientific precision, to a quote from Dante, on to colloquial speech, and finally a corporate slogan, this announces Kleinzahler as a poet whose ears are always open. In his ‘Epistle VIII’, loosely adapted from Horace, he defends the chaos of city-life and the unique music of its mingled sounds: “the birdsong for me, right up there with Bartók and Monk, / is never straight up but part of a mix – footsteps, traffic, fountains, shouts”.
This wide variety of reference points and registers is evident throughout Faber’s new selected edition. The opening piece, the eponymous ‘Sleeping it Off in Rapid City’, is a full-stop free romp through the sights and sounds of the “heart of the heart of America” touching on religion, actors, souvenirs, and fauna. Elsewhere in the collection Kleinzahler turns to the grubby underside, with which he clearly has an affinity. Down-and-outs, winos, and wanderers populate many of the pieces, with the poems adopting their speech-style: “but Green, / he’s not thinking physics at this stage, nuh-uh, / our boy’s only trying to get himself out of bed” (from ‘Green Sees Things in Waves’). However, it is not just contemporary America that serves as grist to Kleinzahler’s poetic mill. One poem is set in Bali, another begins with a line from Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. These poems too adapt their tone to fit the subject. The former recalls at times Pound in his Imagiste/Orientalist mode: “late sun through heavy foliage”, while the latter utilises an archaic turn of phrase: “the chatter / of wrens and grackles was as a fretful orison / to her in her repose”.
Victorian Undead: Sherlock Holmes vs Zombies, by Ian Edington and Davide Fabbri
Seriously, who isn’t fighting zombies these days? While Max Brooks may have written the current authoritative guide to the zombie fighting biz, it seems that Elizabeth Bennet, Ebenezer Scrooge and even Abraham Lincoln each had their own preferred fighting method and it now appears that even Sherlock Holmes threw his [deerstalker?] hat into the proverbial [zombie infested] ring. In Victorian Undead: Sherlock Holmes vs Zombies, Ian Edginton and Davide Fabbri take the world’s most famous consulting detective and his trusty sidekick Doctor Watson on a hilarious and horrific romp through the zombie infested streets of Victorian London. Read more
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
Before there were vampires, zombies, and assorted paranormal beasties, there were pirates, and Stevenson’s now-classic work of pirates, treasure, and parrot toting adventure, contains some of the most famous swashbucklers of them all. Oxford University Press’ newest addition comes with an exemplary introduction, putting the story in the context of the time without revealing all that makes the plot so entrancing, and making Stevenson’s own voice shine through the letters he wrote so vividly to those around him.
Treasure Island, with its dangerous characters, swashbuckling excitement, and exotic locales fits neatly into the long history of adventure literature. But it is a thoroughly unique and original work, and it is in its characters that it finds its centre. All of them, from the terrifying Blind Pew, to the brave (and initially innocent) Jim, to the various scallywags who stalk the pages and scuttle their way across the decks of ships, add layer upon layer to what could be a common, if rollicking, adventure story. But it is the irascible and fascinating Long John Silver, who has leapt off the pages and into history, pushing all of the other characters, and much of the plot, into the role of supporting acts. Read more
Enchantment, by David Morley
David Morley’s poetry collection opens with a sonnet-sequence, written in memory of a friend of his. Although they have the requisite 14 lines Morley’s sonnets depart from tradition in a number of ways with line-lengths of around 15 to 20 syllables, and lacking end-rhymes, but building internal patterning with assonance and half-rhyme. The quality of the writing in these short pieces is particularly striking and they are poems which the poet’s background as a naturalist shows through to good effect. The evocation of, for example, an Alaskan Salmon, is as powerful and fully realised as the faunal observations of Ted Hughes or Alice Oswald, while his specialist knowledge prevents the pieces from slipping into the all-too-easy Romanticism of ‘nature poetry’. This is also true in the poem which follows the sonnet-sequence: ‘The Lucy Poem’. The title alludes to Wordsworth’s famous Lucy poems, but the eponymous subject in this case is not a young girl but rather the 3.2 million year old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton. In content, these opening poems are far from typical of the collection, with the majority of the pieces in the collection concerning the world of Romany gypsies, both their day-to-day experiences and their myths, with the line between the two becoming intriguingly blurred at many points. Read more
Born Wild, by Tony Fitzjohn
Everything about Born Wild‘s cover and title are specifically tuned to draw a direct line from Joy Adamson’s famous series of books about Elsa the lioness beginning with Born Free in 1960. In Born Wild, however, Tony Fitzjohn details his own life in animal conservation in Kenya and Tanzania, beginning as the lion rehabilitation assistant to George Adamson, the cover showing Tony cuddling a lion, possibly one of his favorites, Christian or Freddie.
Fitzjohn begins the book with his bumpy early life, causing trouble across England and South Africa before landing his job as Adamson’s assistant at Kora in the Kenyan bush. He recounts his time there as something of a golden era, daily walks with the lions, leopards, and George, relative peace and solitude on the savanna. As the political situation in Kenya becomes more volatile, Fitzjohn finds himself unwelcomed by the Kenyan government. He moves to Tanzania to restore a nature reserve, Mkomazi, with various setbacks, triumphs, the births of several children, and the purchase of black rhinos along the way.
A second look at The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
Henrietta Lacks made a contribution to science that for many years was completely unacknowledged. Rebecca Skloot attempts to correct this by, not only telling the story of Henrietta and her family, but also highlighting some of the scientific achievements Henrietta’s cells contributed to. It also questions the medical ethics of the time and the dilemmas that tissue donation still present today.
Henrietta Lacks was the child of a poor tobacco farmer and the descendant of slaves. She married her cousin and experienced poverty, racism, abuse, a cheating husband and a seriously handicapped child. At 31, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer and, despite treatment, died within a few months. She was treated at Johns Hopkins hospital, Maryland where Dr George Gey took samples of her tumour, without her permission, as was routine in those days. Gey went on to grow these cells outside the body which was the first time this had been achieved. Henrietta’s cells were essentially immortal. Gey named the cells HeLa and immediately realised their potential for experimentation. The cells were used in treatments for polio, AIDS research, cancer research, gene mapping and some were even sent into space. They are still being used today and over 60,000 articles have been published based on research done on HeLa cells. Read more
Return to Ribblestrop, by Andrew Mulligan
Return to Ribblestrop is more than a return to a beloved setting, more than a story of children protecting what and whom they love, more than a tale filled with laughter and the sheer solid rightness of the love that friendship brings. Andy Mulligan’s Return to Ribblestrop is about the joy that can be found in learning, the power that can be found in trust, and the magic found in second chances and forgiveness, all wrapped in what can only be called a rollicking and often wonderfully funny plot, at a school many children (and adults) would love to attend.
We begin just before the children make their way back to their beloved Ribblestrop Tower. Millie, Sam, Oli, and the rest of the group meet up by accident, literally. There is an accident, and the children find themselves spending the night in a motel that barely deserves the adjective ramshackle. Never a group to merely wait for events to unfold around them, Millie and the boys soon discover an escaped (senile, blind) lion and a pregnant panther, frantically followed by the man still in charge of what appears to be a circus gone terribly wrong.
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The Calling of the Grave, by Simon Beckett
The Calling of the Grave is the fourth novel featuring forensic anthropologist Dr David Hunter, and if you’re unfamiliar with Hunter, or his creator, Simon Beckett, then you’re not alone. Beckett, it seems, has been done an injustice by the British book-buying public up to this point. Happily for him, our continental cousins know this particular good thing when they see it. By early 2010, 4m copies of his first three thrillers had been sold across Europe, sales that allow Beckett to consider the likes of Grisham and Patterson to be his peers.
The novel spans an eight year period, commencing with a search of Dartmoor for the bodies of four murdered girls, through to the events subsequent to their killer’s escape from prison. It also takes the opportunity the flashback provides to flesh out Dr Hunter’s back story, something of an unknown quantity thus far in the series.
Win a limited edition film poster and a copy Alan Ginsberg’s Howl to celebrate the new film [closed]
The film ‘Howl’ about Allen Ginsberg’s most famous poem, the poem that caused huge controversy (resulting in a high-profile obscenity trial) and defined and kickstarted the Beat Generation, is out 25 February, starring James Franco (‘Milk’, ‘127 Hours’).
The story of Ginsberg’s masterful poem and the subsequent obscenity trial that ensued, HOWL weaves together 3 strands of the story: imagined interviews with Ginsberg recounting his inspiration for the poem, the court case that ensued, and the poem itself, animated by graphic novelist and Ginsberg collaborator Eric Drooker.
As well as reviews here on Bookgeeks of Ginsberg’s work, one lucky reader can win a reproduction copy of the original Howl book and a limited edition film poster (click on the poster thumbnail to enlarge it).
To be in with a chance to win, give us the correct answer to the following question:
Q: Which of the following poets is NOT considered to be a member of the Beats, alongside Alan Ginsberg? It is Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas or William S. Burroughs?
No more submissions accepted at this time.Terms and conditions
- Closing date for entries: 8th March 2011.
- Open to residents of the United Kingdom only.
- Entry to the competition is by completion of the above form only. Anyone submitting multiple entries will be disqualified.
- The winners will be selected at random from those correct entries received before the closing date.
- Only the winning entrants will be contacted by Bookgeeks. Our decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
- The winner’s name(s) may be published on the Bookgeeks website after the closing date of the competition.
- The competition is not open to Bookgeeks and their families.
Andrew McGibbon
Ernest Hemingway, Sam Peckinpah, Johnny Cash, Tina Turner, Douglas Adams, Morrissey – all legendary figures whose obsessions, addictions and drives have been well-documented through press interviews, biopics and biographies.
But what were these people really like?
In his new book, I Was Douglas Adams’s Flatmate, Andrew McGibbon talks to a close friend or collaborator of each of these often near-mythical figures. We hear the story of how Johnny Cash became the Man in the Black Suit from his tailor, Manuel; we hear about Les Dawson’s literary aspirations from his joke writer, David Nobbs; Jon Canter, flatmate, recounts the time he spent living with Douglas Adams as he turned from aspiring writer into international star; and in the final chapter, the author tells his own story of his brief spell as the drummer for Morrissey.
Andrew McGibbon is a comedy writer, performer, director and producer who has made comedies for TV and radio starring Harry Shearer, Bob Monkhouse, John Bird, John Sessions, Bill Nighy, Sally Phillips and Fiona Allen. As a drummer he has recorded albums with Morrissey (Viva Hate, Bona Drag, Kill Uncle), Peter Gabriel (Peace Together), My Bloody Valentine (Glider), Bucks Fizz (New Beginnings), Suggs and Chrissie Hynde. His documentary about playwright NF Simpson debuted at the National Film Theatre in May 2008. He lives in London.
We asked him about the writing of the book and his own heroes.
The Passages of Herman Melville, by Jay Parini
The line which best sums up Jay Parini’s excellent book, surprisingly, can be found in the little read acknowledgements. His own words, ‘this is a novel, not a literary biography.’ Readers eager to see Herman Melville’s creative mind prised open will be largely disappointed with The Passages of Herman Melville. At best, the author’s work informs Jay Parini’s narrative with a scattering of details and imagery, dropped like breadcrumbs for the curious. Aside from a brisk involvement with the creation of Moby Dick, Herman Melville as writer, is largely ignored.
Without the necessary constraints of biography, Parini cheerfully jumps timeframes. Repeatedly. There is a simple stylishness to his narrative. Told in first person from the perspective of his wife, Lizzie. Third person when following Melville himself. Parini avoids playing fast and loose with the reality of his subject, but, by playing out Melville’s undoubtedly complex life as novel, rather than straight up biography, he gets to cherry pick the most promising incidents.
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The Lost Fleet: Dauntless, by Jack Campbell
Dauntless is the first volume in the six-book Lost Fleet series, now reissued with a fetching new series of jackets by Titan Books. Sitting firmly in the sub-genre of military science fiction, they tell the story of the human Alliance fleet, which is defeated, demoralised and cut off deep in the home space of its human arch-enemies, the Syndics. What adds spice to the recipe is the fact that the Alliance fleet is, due to freak chance and an accident of seniority, now under the command of Captain John ‘Black Jack’ Geary, a relic from the very beginnings of the war who was discovered in cryogenic suspensions and thawed out by the Alliance Fleet not long before the Alliance Admiral met his end. ‘Black Jack’ is a legend, a hero, a paragon – a fact which makes it possible for him to take over command at all, and which makes constant problems too – his commanders expect him to be the dashing warrior of legend, but like most legends it has lost all but the seed of its connection with reality. The stage is set…
Badly mauled by the Syndics, the fleet manages to escape, but, constrained by the technology they can use to travel faster than light, they are many years and many jumps from Alliance space. Captain Geary has to consolidate his authority whilst taking stock of the state of the fleet, developing a plan to get them home and working within the sometimes-suffocating limitations of his own legend.
Random, by Craig Robertson
Random is the debut novel from Glaswegian journalist Craig Robertson. It follows fifteen months in the life of a brutal serial killer, ‘the Cutter,’ as he dispatches several victims, selected randomly, in a quest to remain untraceable by police.
The tale is told in the first person by the Cutter himself, a refreshing approach, but one that can hamper the narrative. In attempting to capture the essence of the killer’s disordered mind, Robertson uses fragmented sentences and large doses of repetition. In parts the effect is successful, but in the main the result is jarring, and at worst can seem to have been used in lieu of storytelling. This is somewhat disappointing; Robertson shows elsewhere in the book that he has skill as a wordsmith, in opting not to use this throughout he does himself a disservice. Read more
Following the Detectives, by Maxim Jakubowski
Following the Detectives is a compilation of 21 short articles, dealing with fictional sleuths, and more specifically the cities and countries they operate in. The articles are penned by a selection of journalists, critics and crime fiction writers, as something of an homage to the use of place which is often so critical in great crime fiction. For each venue/detective, we are provided with maps, illustrations and accompanying photos, together with useful websites for further study, details of screen adaptations, and occasionally a smattering of suggestions for alternative reading matter.
Unfortunately for the contributors to Following the Detectives, its publication comes around twenty years too late. While presented as a stocking filler for the crime fiction aficionado, there is virtually nothing on offer in the book that cannot be sourced through some basic use of Google, IMDB, Wikipedia and Amazon. Furthermore, in the case of the maps provided, Google Earth or Maps will provide something interactive and far more visually striking. Read more
The Lady’s Slipper, by Deborah Swift
The butterfly effect refers to how one small action can affect the future of everything, how one flutter of a butterfly wing can lead to a natural disaster halfway around the world. Or, in Deborah Swift’s The Lady’s Slipper, how picking one flower can disrupt an entire community.
Set in the eighteenth century England amidst a time of political turmoil, The Lady’s Slipper centers on Alice Ibbetson, an artist who is grieving over the recent loss of her baby sister. She starts to see joy in her life again after stealing a lady slipper, a rare type of orchid, so that she may preserve and study it. The man on whose land she found the orchid, Richard Wheeler, suspects her of the thievery but can prove nothing. Sir Geoffrey Fisk, one of Ibbetson’s art patrons, knows of the flower and starts to harass her to get seeds from the plant so he may grow more and profit from them. In very short time, the plant hiding in Ibbetson’s art room is ruling her life. Read more
The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
The Grand Design is a science book containing eight chapters on mankind’s quest for knowledge regarding our existence and surroundings. Hawking and Mlodinow set out to answer the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. Is the grand design of the universe and everything in it the work of an omnipotent creator? Or can science offer an alternative? Hawking and Mlodinow say that the purpose of their book is to give the answers that are suggested by recent discoveries and theoretical advances. They do this because these discoveries and advances have led us to a new picture of the universe, and our place in it, that is very different from the traditional one. Read more
Player One, by Douglas Coupland
Player One is a typical Douglas Coupland novel that happened to have an atypical genesis. The Massey Lectures are an annual Canadian event during which a noted scholar gives a week-long series of lectures on a political, cultural or philosophical topic. In 2010, that scholar was Douglas Coupland. Coupland’s contribution to the lecture series was the 50,000 word novel Player One, which he divided into five one-hour chunks. He read one hour per day and so Player One is billed as being a real-time novel since the action in the story also takes place over a five-hour period. Caveat emptor: it might well no longer be in real-time when you personally read it, but that’s a risk you’ll have to take.
The Detective Branch, by Andrew Pepper
This is in every sense a no-nonsense novel. If that sounds like faint praise, it isn’t meant to. More that Pepper has taken the garden shears to extraneous frills and fancies and made a straight ahead, rip-roaring, muscular story that brooks no diversions or digressions and is all the better for it.
Pepper’s trick is to transfer what is essentially a 20th century anti-hero into the rookeries and tenements of early Victorian London. By covering the formation of the police force itself, and it’s explicit objective to create order from apparent chaos, Pepper has given us a window into a different world. But as with most history and historical fiction, really it is one recognisable as our own – or at least a mirror to our own.
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The Bookgeeks Interview
Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
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Latest Competition
Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
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