Agent Garbo - the brilliant, eccentric secret agent who tricked Hitler and saved D-Day (Stephan Talty, 2012)

Gift from PJ (as was this book on a closely-related topic).  Much enjoyed both.

As noted in the description of Double Cross - declassified information has given authors some new - and fascinating - material to work from regarding the WWII battle of spies between England and Germany.

Agent Gargo was the Spanish chicken farmer discussed in Double Cross - which focused on five different agents.  This book goes into quite a bit more detail about him.  So this was an excellent pair of books - one provided more of an overview, one went into depth on the key actor.

Hadn't realized Graham Greene worked in Lisbon for M16 (gathering material for books like this).

It seems pretty clear that the British double agents - the most important of which had been code-named "Agent Garbo" - succeeded in their primary goal - heading off the positioning of Nazi forces on Normandy and, more importantly, delaying the sending of Nazi reinforcements to the area in the critical days right after D-Day.  The Calais ruse was believed.

Readable, interesting throughout.

Doesn't look very dangerous, does he?

The First Four Notes - Beethoven's fifth and the the human imagination (Matthew Guerrieri, 2012)

The author came up with the idea of building an entire book around the first four notes of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.  277 pages, plus extensive notes and a detailed index.  Some reviewer made it sound interesting to me.

I'll agree that pretty much everyone recognizes the four-note sequence, that Beethoven was of course a very important figure, etc.  But the author was really straining to connect all sorts of events in political, cultural and musical history to this sequence - which quickly became tiresome to me.

So I blew through this one rather rapidly, and didn't learn much.

Postscript:  watching Diamondbacks play Dodgers for parts of a series on May 6 through May 8 - not sure if this happens regularly at Dodger Stadium - but quite often during these games the stadium sound system was booming out "The First Four Notes."

Buddenbrooks (Thomas Mann, 1901)

After years of reading focused moreso on England and France (not to mention the USA), I'm trying to get a better handle on Germany (and elsewhere in Central Europe).  I continue to find Thomas Mann very compelling.

This is a very different book than the two of his later works that I've had a chance to read (here, and here).  Mann was only 26 when this was published in 1901.  The story "chronicles the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family [the Buddenbrooks] over the course of four generations, incidentally portraying the manner of life and mores of the Hanseatic bourgeoisie in the years from 1835 to 1877.  Mann drew deeply from the history of his own family, the Mann family ob Lubeck, and their milieu."

Interesting to me for a number of reasons:

1.  Mann's world when this was published (1901) was unimaginably different from his world when writing The Magic Mountain (post WWI) or Doctor Faustus (depths of WWII).  Germany was confident, rising.

2.  Interestingly different perspective than all of the French or British novels.  Even if the same 19th century background events - Napoleonic era (here, via memories of the older generation), 1848 revolutions, Franco-Prussian War of 1870, etc.

3.  The earliest generations portrayed - close contact with France, including Napoleonic domination - often spoke French.  Later generations only spoke German - reflecting Germany's ascendance (including unification).

4.  Old Johann - successful, builds large new house.  Next generation Johann - does well, more religious, less inclined to merchant values, doesn't reach old age.  His three children are major characters in the book.  Daughter Tony (Antonie) has some bad luck in well-intentioned marriages (accepting marriage proposals that would assist the family business rather than for romance).  Thomas carries on the family business well (but not as well as prior generations) - perhaps it was not to his natural inclinations - I felt I could identify with Thomas in many respects.  He had a ne'er-do-well brother (Christian).  Faced down some near-riot conditions in '48.  Also died relatively young.  Final generation - Hanno - musically inclined, helpless to conduct the family business, dies as a child.  So that's it for the four generations.

5.  Thomas's wife is an excellent musician, while he has little appreciation . . . she is speaking to him about pop (for want of a better term) music " . . . which, if you met with it in literature, would make you throw down the book with an angry or sarcastic comment.  Easy gratification of each unformed wish, prompt satisfaction before the will is even roused - that is what pretty music is like - and it is like nothing else in the world.  It is mere flabby idealism."  Mann is good at describing music (particularly in Doctor Faustus).

6.  Tony's second husband lives in Munich, where she resides following the marriage (but only for a year or so).  Interesting discussion about how Munich was in many respects a foreign country to folks in northern Germany - different speech patterns, different food, different religion (more Catholic down there).

Long-ish book (600 pages), interesting and worthwhile throughout, I much like Mann's novels.