I blame modern living. No one has salt in their food anymore, no one smokes and electric heating is prevalent. Traditional practices for killing a manananggal include applying salt, garlic, ash, or fire to the lower half, thereby preventing the upper torso from reuniting with it. If it fails to recombine before sunrise, the creature is believed to die.
Halfway through, now. It's absolutely rivetting. Halfway through, page 279, the NVA still haven't reached Saigon, ie it's not just about that very end. Despite all I've seen and read of the Vietnam War, this is chock full of stuff I never knew about - and possibly no wonder as, while Snepp had it published in '77, the CIA had him prosecuted (for what amounts to compromising America's reputation by reporting how it actually comported itself). And it's not just about the fall of Saigon, but the build-up to it from before Watergate, Nixon promising to resume bombing, and Hanoi tentatively sending NVA regiments through the DMZ and slowly realising they can keep going. This is about the evacuation and panic and bravery and stupidity, loyalty and treachery, mobs, ARVN deserters and murderers, city by city, region by region. Nobody appears to have actually disputed his account in nearly 50 years.
This Vietnam thing, is having watched the Ken Burns series for the third time (and finally began to be able to process the weird spellings - Vo Nguyen Giap being 'vow win zaap'. More or less). And I decided to see which of the talking heads had written books - hence Frank Snepp. The first to arrive was Karl Marlentes' 'What It Is Like to Go To War'. I'm uncertain about that one. I'm going to reserve judgement until I've read it again. Marlentes was a Marine; a platoon leader. I suppose you could say he experienced at least the minimum eye opening of a young man intelligent enough to lead men and perceptive enough to write a book about it. The second to arrive was Philip Caputo's 'A Rumor of War'. Caputo was also a Marine leading a platoon; but his account, I found gripping. After his tour, he left the Marines and became a reporter (for the Chicago Tribute and Esquire); initially, as part of a team, winning a Pulitzer for an investigation into election fraud in Chicago; and going back to Vietnam for the fall of Saigon. That's for part two of his memoirs, 'Means of Escape' that arrived today and I've just started. Taken prisoner by Palestinian fedayeen, wounded in Lebanon (according to the blurb 'targeted and hit by sniper fire in Beirut'), trekking across the Kush with Mujahedeen. Seemingly every hotspot prior to his declining to be embedded with the Marines in Iraq because he thought he was too old at 62. His style and his perspicacity convinced me to get 'Means of Escape' and though I've barely begun it I can see it was perspicacious of me (a word I probably got from Lisa Simpson).
A rather thoughtful and eye brow raising essay on the rapid and uncontrolled rise of AI and risks in how it might impact the world. Not written by a scaremongering journalist but by Dario Amodei the CEO of the well regarded and respected AI research company Anthropic. It's available online and I found it a hefty read via the screen of a phone - see The Adolescence of Technology
Read it donkeys years ago at school when I was about 13 and like most books you're told to read at school I never revisited it. Happened to see it in Waterstones and realised I didn't possess a copy, so bought one. Rereading it 45 years later I'm appreciating what a wonderful book it is. The elegy to his mother is beautifully written and particularly moving as she reminded me in a lot of ways of my mother.
