The Imperial War Museum has a new exhibit on the life and early death of John Kipling to coincide with the new tv movie, My Boy Jack, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Kipling. (It looks like the film is only due on British tv for the time being.) (Hmm, Kim Cattrall plays Carrie Kipling - that's an interesting twist!) The book the film is based on is available in the US however. The authors have put forward a compelling case that the body in Kipling's grave is not John and while they are not asking that he be exhumed (it would serve no real purpose) they do want the name on the grave changed. You can also read excerpts from letters written by John and Rudyard Kipling posted in honor of "Remembrance Day" over at Times Online.

If you're not familiar with John's story, he joined the army at the urging of his father who was a great proponent of British imperialism and a firm believer that war made a boy into a man. John died the first day he saw battle - he was horribly near-sighted and would never have passed a physical without his father's influence. Rudyard Kipling never recovered from John's death and later wrote some of his most famous words while guilt stricken over sending his son to battle:

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

I've often thought that if John had not gone to war and died then Rudyard would likely not have changed his opinion so dramatically about war or written so many anti-war poems later in life. Although the loss of life was great without John Kipling's additional death, it was that intimate connection with sacrifice that changed his father. I wonder if Rudyard would have been able to forgive his son if he had refused to fight. Of course that was not an issue as John wanted to go (he had spent his whole life hearing noble war stories).

Geert Spillebeen's YA novel about John, Kipling's Choice, is still one of the best war novels I've ever read. If you want to know about the Kiplings it's a great place to start. (Here's my Bookslut review.)

This is one of the more impressive pop-ups I've ever seen and a great way to dip into the story of Moby Dick.

Joe Hill has a new book due out from Subterranean Press next year - a collection of the first six issues of his comic Lock and Key.

It's absurd how appealing I find this book. (Maybe I can justify it as educational for the boy?)

I had no idea Arturo Perez-Reverte was a war correspondent for two decades but it certainly explains the motivations behind The Painter of Battles. I want to read it based on this quote from him alone: "One can live with ghosts, they can even be quite friendly. But one cannot live with a nightmare." Doesn't that make you wonder how he has written himself out of the horrors of war?

Plus, whoever designed that cover deserves some sort of award.

Paula Kamen has written a book about her friend Iris Chang. The book's genesis was in the Salon essay Kamen wrote about Chang after her suicide in 2004. She apparently raises some questions in the book about how much Chang might have been negatively affected by her research into her award winning book, The Rape of Nanking.

This was by far one of the most powerful and horrifying history books I have ever read. I don't know what it would do to someone to learn and write about such terrible history - or to be vilified as Chang was for writing it - but I can imagine that it must have contributed to her depression; honestly I don't see how it wouldn't. (My thoughts on Chang after reading her book last year.)

I recently requested a review copy of Alberto Manguel's The Library at Night and the very nice folks at RH Canada wrote back to say they only provide review copies to Canadian reviewers. As it happens I received The Blue Helmet from RH Canada just last year, so I guess they've changed their policy (or more likely the unnamed person who responded to me didn't even think about the internet) but what I'd like is for somebody to explain to me just why in the world they would have such a lame policy. They do know that Canadians can read blogs written by Americans and get recommendations for books, right? This is such an archaic response - such a trapped in print way of looking at reviewing that I just had to shake my head. Bookslut gets hundreds of thousands of monthly readers. Should RH Canada really care if it's someone living in Canada who reviews their books?

Good grief. (The book does sound cool though doesn't it?)

Finally, displaying art made out of American flags that has an anti-war message is definitely political so one wonders why it was ever approved for display in a public library in the first place. (It certainly belongs in a museum or gallery though - it's pretty cool.) But if you do approve it, then pulling it based on one patron's complaint is pretty lame plus stupid. Because then when a ton of other patrons demand the art go back up as planned you suddenly look like the library director who didn't really know what she was doing (not to mention being very indecisive). And when the pro-art people say things like this: "If you cancel a show because a ‘patron’ objects, will you hang the show after all if another ‘patron’ objects to your cancellation? Or are some patrons more patronized than others?", well then it looks like you're against the first amendment and then you are just in trouble honey, big big trouble.

It doesn't help when you say that you had to pull some of the art because, “This is Mr. Bush’s home town.”

Apparently if you live in certain areas of Maine you can not portray the President in a negative light. I wonder if they can speak ill of him. Or vote against him. Or think he is wrong.

Gee Ms. Cate - could you tell us what the proud people of Kennebunk are allowed to think and say, please? Just because you seem to have your finger on the pulse of such things and all......

What a silly mess. (You can see more of Swenson's artwork at his site.)