Today was actually colder than yesterday, but it felt warmer because we didn’t have that Ginzu wind that seemed to have something personal against us all on Tuesday.

News is that they’re having an unusually severe winter in China, and that all kinds of people are stranded in railroad stations, since this is a heavy travel period in that country (their New Year is next week). Normally, heartless Occidental that I am, I’m only vaguely concerned about what happens over there, be it never so cataclysmic. But as it happens my Youngest Niece is spending two years teaching in China right now, and she’s taking this holiday time for traveling too. I hope the worst that happens is that she’ll have some interesting traveler’s stories to bring back.

I’m reading Stephen Hunter’s Tapestry of Spies (originally published as The Spanish Gambit) right now. What strikes me most about it is the tremendous difference the lack of a strong hero makes. Tapestry of Spies is a fascinating fictional account of a proxy battle between Russian and English spymasters during the Spanish Civil War. There are sympathetic characters (in fact, most of the characters are sympathetic to some degree, which is a very good thing in a novel), but there’s no character you embrace with all your heart, like Bob Lee Swagger and his father Earl in Hunter’s Swagger series. (There is a “Bob the Nailer” in this book, but he’s a sniper on the Fascist side who never actually appears—at least as far as I’ve read to date.)

Here’s a tip for any writer who wants to write a bestselling series. Give us a big, strong, courageous, admirable hero to adore. I’m not saying he has to be perfect. Bob Lee Swagger, for instance, is a recovering alcoholic, and his social skills are lousy. But I still want to be him, and that keeps me coming back to the books.