11. A Rather Lovely Inheritance

by C. A. Belmond, Rated A

This is a lovely little piece of eye candy. The universal fantasy of a distant, elderly relative leaving a pile of money to a great niece who is a low paid historical researcher. There is a conflict regarding a greedy second cousin who wants to contest for a bigger piece of the pie, and another cousin that is tall, dark and handsome. Naturally that is the love interest.

This was a great fast, light and fluffy read and I highly recommend it as just that

10. Sharpe's Rifles

by Bernard Cornwell, Rated B+

I have been thinking about trying this series for a while and since Melinda mentioned that she had been reading them and obviously enjoying them I thought I'd give them a try.

Trying to find out where this series starts has been something of a challenge as it turns out that Cornell didn't write them in order. I thought I was pretty slick and found a prequel that he had written to the Sharpe's Rifles series but it seems that this is not really the beginning of the beginning of the Sharpe books. Sharpe's Tiger is really the beginning of the beginning and is set in India before Sharpe becomes an officer. Shaun is picking it up from the library for me today.

This "prequel" that I just read is the beginning of Sharpe's adventures in the Peninsula Wars against Napoleon and is set in January 1809 and has the new Lieutenant Sharpe trying to get his small English band away from the victorious French. Sharpe hopes to join the British outpost in Lisbon but is waylaid by a Spanish major of cavalry into helping him pull off a "miracle." The noble Major Vicar means to raise the flag of Spain's patron saint over Santiago de Compositely, now in French hands, as a sign that Spain will not be defeated. The battle scenes are thrilling and realistic and I learned something - a macho is a mule whose vocal chords have been cut so that it can't bray and warn the enemy. The subplots revolve around Sharpe's making the recalcitrant Harper a sergeant, winning the respect of his troops.

It was good enough that I intend to make it a 2007 project to track down and read the rest of the series, where ever and in whatever year they may be set and regardless of when they were written.

9. Reflections of the Past

by Aubrey Howard, Rated B

While poking around on the amazon uk site I discovered that one of my favorite authors Aubrey Howard has a new trilogy out. (1) Reflections of the Past,(2) Distant Images and (3) As the Night Ends that chart the lives and loves of the Goodwill family through the late 1800's to the end of the first world war. So I am treating myself and am ordering one each month. It's not too bad since this trilogy has been out long enough that the books are available from their used book sellers, some of whom ship to the US.

The story beings with Abby Murphy deprived, poor and beautiful being catapulted from a life of misery to one of great richness and a loveless marriage with Noah Goodwill - but love grows and blossoms and the birth of her twin daughters completes her life - albeit the babies have different fathers!

Stay tuned for episode two next month.

8. I Claudius

by, Robert Graves, rated B

The first sentence in this book tells the reader that 1) What the book is about and 2) that it's written in a very engaging, easy to read style:

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for
I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.

In spite of a writing style that was engaging, wry and very readable these imperial Caesar's were a nasty and evil bunch of people. And while I enjoyed the book by the end I was truly sick and tired of them. At some point I will read Claudius the God but for right now I am thankful to be done with them and happy to move on.

7. The Tenent of Wildfell Hall

by Anne Bronte, Rated B

The story of Helen Graham, a headstrong and independent young woman, who marries against the advice of her family. She reminded me very much of my Granddaughter Emily. She is one of those who loves not wisely but too well. (think obsessively) Arthur is a selfish and irresponsible drunk and womanizer. Helen thinks that she can "save" Arthur who under her good influence will turn his life around. Arthur couldn't care less about changing one single thing about himself, and his drinking and adultery right under her nose eventually repels her to the point where she despises him as much as she once loved him. It is only when she sees him attempting to influence her young son to become a chip off the old block, that she realizes her responsibility as a mother to save her son from his father trumps her duty as a wife to stand by her husband. With the help of her brother, she runs away to a Wildfell Hall, a rather Gothic type crumbling mansion in small village. Here she meets Gilbert Markham, who falls in love with her, but realizes that their relationship has no future as long as her husband is alive. Arthur's ultimate death from alcoholism not only frees Helen from an abusive and degrading marriage, it also leaves her free to find happiness with Gilbert.

The blurb on the back of the book calls this the first popular novel to espouse feminism and I guess that in it's day it probably was. You could also say that this book was an ancestor of the 1970/80 style Gothic Romance novel. I found the writing very prosy and Victorian (duh) and thought that Helen was often preachy and sanctimonious to the point where I wanted to start skimming. But overall I really liked it and am surprised that given the popularity of her sisters this novel isn't better known.

6. Dr. Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak, Rated A++

This is going to be a long entry because this book made me think a lot so therefore I have a lot I want to write down.

This an epic story of Dr. Zhivago, his family, friends and acquaintances over the background of Russia's transition from Czarist rule to Bolshevism, passing through the First World War, Revolution and Civil War.

It’s really funny how much my perspective and feelings about this novel have changed since I first read it in 1969 or 1970. Back then I got all caught up in 1) the love story and 2) how much the Russian people suffered. The politics of it all sort of flew right past me. This time I have spent a lot of time thinking about this book and trying to figure out whether I saw the book as a historical novel that focused on the politics of the country at that time or as a story that put the spotlight on how the people of Russia survived them. I seem to remember that Pasternak got into a whole lot of trouble with the Soviets when he published this novel so presumably they saw it as a non flattering look at the politics. But I am going to stand by my original feeling that it is primarily a novel of survival. I sort of saw Yurii as a universal man, caught up in circumstances way beyond his control and trying in his way to point out the absurdities of war. A kind of poet journalist in a way.

And since this is my Journal and I can write anything I want I will stoop to cherry picking bits of Yurii's dialog and mention that some of Yurii's words ring true today:

"Don't they remember their own plans and measures, which long since turned life upside down? What kind of people are they to go on raving with this never cooling feverish ardor year in, year out on nonexistant, long vanished subjects, and to know nothing, to see nothing around them?",

The writing in the book is very lyrical but then Pasternak was primarily a poet so that is not surprising. But he did not do so well in plotting it in places. It bothered me how many coincidences there were in it. Russia is a vast country but yet the main secondary characters (I think I just did an oxymmoron) kept running into each other and crossing Zhivago's path. I really had to stretch a couple of times to shrug them off. But overall, a really marvelous book.

Ride a Painted Pony

by Kathleen Eagle, rated DNF (did not finish)

My problems with this book probably had a lot to do with the fact that my mind was having a hard time disengaging from Dr. Zhavago. However this the third book in a row of hers that I have had problems with. Eagle used to be one of my favorite Romance authors but I think she had moved on to a different style of writing and has left me behind. Oh well......

5. The Magician's Assistant

by Ann Patchett, rated A

For more than twenty years Sabine has loved the magician Parsifal and served as his assistant even though Parcifal is gay When Parsifal's lover dies of aids and he realizes he is also infected with the disease he marries Sabine and puts most of his property in her name so she will be his widow and save on inheritance taxes. Sabine believes her husband has no living relatives and when he dies she is shocked to learn of a trust fund established for a mother and two sisters in Nebraska. When his family contacts her, she invites them to visit and then visits them in Nebraska in order to discover the truth about the man she loved and thought she knew.

I was very surprised at how this book ended. I guess I am just a lot more naive than any woman my age has a right to be. Oh well.

4. Mrs. Palfrey at the Clairmont

by Elizabeth Taylor (DVD) Rated b

Amazon Blurb:
Mrs. Palfrey is recently widowed and decides to move to a small hotel in London to spend her last years as a lady of independence. The Claremont is a crumbling old edifice that serves as a retirement home for a small but fascinating group of tenants. Mrs. Palfrey meets her fellow 'inmates' at dinner, and announces that she has a grandson who will be calling on her at times. Yet despite multiple attempts her grandson Desmond doesn't respond and Mrs. Palfrey realizes she has entered a world of loneliness.

Out on an errand she falls and is befriended by a handsome young busker/writer Ludovic Meyer who nurses her leg wound, makes her tea, and escorts her home. Ludo is a loner and also lonely and when Mrs. Palfrey offers him dinner at the hotel he gladly accepts. But at the hotel the guests presume that Mrs. Palfrey's guest will be her grandson Desmond. Mrs. Palfrey hastily informs Ludo that she has erred and Ludo agrees to pose as her grandson. The guests at the hotel are charmed by Ludo, and Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo grow increasingly bonded - they share many likes and tastes and meld into a beautiful relationship that would be the envy of any grandmother and grandson. Mrs. Palfrey's loneliness is dissipated by Ludo and the effect is vice versa. How the two progress to the end of the film, finding new lives from old ones, forms the immensely touching finale to the film.

My Comments: I watched this over the weekend. I thought it was a very beautiful but bittersweet movie. I loved how the relationship of Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo progressed but the atmosphere of the Clairmont and the
situation of the residents made me very sad.

3. Awakened heart

by Betty Neels, Rated B

I don't know why I like this author's cheesy romances. I just do. I always read them and they are always basically the same. The hero is always a doctor and is Dutch, the heroine is always English and a nurse. He is rich, large and handsome, she is poor, dumpy and plain. It's always a marriage on convenience and they later fall in love sometime between the first and second helpings of dessert. I am exaggerating here but not by much.

The chaste courtship is mainly conducted traveling from one restaurant to another where they order sumptuous meals that the author describes in great detail. All the passion in these books is restricted to food. One can only imagine if she ever wrote a sequel to any of these books how heavy the couple would be.

But I liked it, I will read the next one when it comes out. So there!

2. Home, The Blueprint of our Lives

edited by John Edwards, Rated B+

A coffee-table type book with short essays on Home and what it meant to each of the 60 people who wrote about the homes they grew up in. It includes novelist Isabel Allende, chef Mario Batali, musician John Mellencamp, quarterback Joe Montana and architect Maya Lin to numerous to mention here of lesser-known people from all walks of life. The first-person testimony is very effective

1. My Life in France

Julia Childs - Audio CD, Rated C

I checked this book out on a whim and while it was OK, it was really not my cup of tea. A memoir of that begins when Julia and new husband Paul Child moved to france where he was working at the American Embassy. She became interested in French cooking and enrolled the Cordon Bleu Cooking school and later went on to co-write a French Cookbook aimed at the American market. It drug in parts and had my eyes rolling when she describes in detail how she spent three months obsessively trying to perfect the perfect mayonnaise. But then I, a complete cretin, think the perfect mayonnaise comes in a jar marked Hellmans.