100. Just Jane

By Nancy Moser
Rated 4 Stars

A fictional account of the life of Jane Austen that's woven around what events in her life are known. It's pretty good but its not skillfully enough written to make me forget that it IS fiction.

Still, a pretty good read for what it is.Definately worth carrying home from the library but I wouldn't recommend spending any money on it.

99. Run

By Ann Patchett
Rated 3 1/2 Stars

Ann Patchett is a hit and miss author for me but even when she hits I don't really understand her books. She writes way over my head I guess.

Run is a story about aproximately 24 hours in the life of an X-politician (white). One of his two adopted children (both black) is hit by a car and the story is about how the accident affects all the different characters in the book. While I am enjoying it I have wondered a couple of times why Ann Patchett found it necessary to write this book. I really had to reach once or twice to suspend my disbelief.

98. The House of Lanyon

By Valerie Anand

In Exmoor, England Richard Lanyon always resented the fact that his father was a tenant farmer working for aristocratic affluent Sweetwater clan. Richard wants to be free by owning his land not slaving for someone else to gain the profits of his toil; as the case with his recently deceased dad. Ambitious, he will shape the future through his son.

His goal seems achieved when he arranges for his offspring Peter to marry wealthy Liza Weaver. However, Peter loves Marion Locke and his fiancée loves someone else. Neither are pleased with the arrangement, but both accept the inevitably of their marriage as they understand their duty to family. Meanwhile the widow Richard is attracted to Marion. While his brokenhearted son and equally despondent daughter-in-law struggle together, Richard has a dark secret that fosters a deep guilt that haunts his gut and a fear that if revealed THE HOUSE OF LANYON will topple like a deck of cards.

97. Lord John and the Hand of Devils

By Diana Gabaldon
Rated: 4 Stars


This book contains a short story titled Hellfire and two novellas. Hellfire has finds Lord John swearing vengeance in London for a murdered government official, leading him to a deconsecrated abbey where members of the political elite indulge their basest desires.

The first Novella pits Lord John against a succubus that plagues his Prussian encampment, and combines humor with military strategy and supernatural myth. And the second Novela finds Lord John investigating the cause of a cannon explosion in the English countryside that results in a fellow officer's death.

96. Scarlet

By Stephen Lawhead
Rated 4 1/2 Stars

This is the second book in the King Raven series, told in the first person it's a completely re-imagined tale of the man known as Robin Hood, but told in a totally different way from the story that many of us know. I am enjoying this series very much and I think I probably liked this book even better than I did Hood.

As the story of King raven continues, the stakes are getting higher and the lives of Bran's band become more precarious with every passing day. Will Scarlet is about to be hung after being caught in a failed attempt to kidnap sheriff Richard de Glanville Meanwhile Bran discovers a secret that leads them on a sea voyage to France in a daring attempt to reveal a plot against King William by his brother, Robert. Will his efforts increase the sheriff's determination to destroy King Raven.

95. Beatrix Potter:

1866-1943 : the artist and her world
Rated: 4 1/2 Stars

A companion to the Tate Gallery Exhibition, this is a definitive work on the art of Beatrix Potter. Her life, work, the influences of contemporary artists, and later work as a conservationist are demonstrated with over 450 reproductions of her work.

An excellent biography. I had no idea that BP was also an avid naturalist, conservationist and farmer as well as a writer and illustrator of children's books. I ordered the movie from the library and while it was good naturally the book was much better.

94. A Sailor of Austria:

In which, without really intending to, Otto Prohaska becomes Official War Hero No. 27 of the Habsburg Empire

By John Biggins
Rated 4 1/2 stars

A Sailor of Austria is a great historical novel of WWI, accurately recalling the final days of a little-known European empire. Before I read "Until the Last Salute" last month I had no idea that Austro-Hungary even had a navy, let alone a submarine fleet.

The story is told in a gently sardonic style in which the author conveys the crumbling pretensions of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the utter meaninglessness of its military efforts in this tepid backwater of the War to end all Wars. Part of the allure of the story for me was the very obscurity of the campaign Biggins is describing and his hero and narrator, Otto Prohaska, is a likeable sea-dog, with a healthy cynicism regarding the doddering Empire he serves, but whose loyalty to that same crumbling edifice remains steadfast until it literally falls to pieces around him.

The final scenes aboard his submarine as the Austro-Hungarian flag is taken down for the last time and his crew prepares to break up are among the the most moving in the book. The book has plenty more to recommend it - humour, romance, intrigue, in short a must-read for anyone interested in war and the sea.

93. Ahab's Wife

By Sena Jeter Naslund
Rated: 4 Stars on First Half of book
2 1/2 Stars on Second Half


I really loved the first half of this book. At age 12, Una escapes her religiously obsessed father in rural Kentucky to live with relatives in a lighthouse off New Bedford, Mass. When she is 16 disguised as a boy she runs off to sea aboard a whaler, which sinks after being rammed by its quarry. Una and two young men who love her are the only survivors of a group set adrift in an open boat. This is all high drama, beautifully written and kept me happily turning pages in anticipation of what might come next.

Then comes the second half and it's my opinion the author decided that she wanted to write Great Literature after all and with less skill than confidence started stuffing everything she could think of into poor Una's head. Una's bigamous marriage to Ahab, the loss of her mother and her newborn son in one night, and her life as a rich woman in Nantucket are further developments in a plot that often lacked credibility. Una's skepticism about traditional religion, her ability to slip into and out of marriages with little or no thought, and her advocacy against slavery and women's rights gives her a larger than life personality with a solid 20th Century POV that is entirely out of place in this novel.

Additionally the author clutters up the book by including such real life figures as writer Margaret Fuller and astronomer Maria Mitchell, Frederick Douglas, and the poet Emerson to name a few. By the end of the book I was yawning and forcing myself to finish.

92. The Accidental Mother

By Rowan Coleman
Rated 4 Stars

I liked this book a lot more than I thought I was going to. I have to give this author credit for taking a story line that is cliched in the Romance genre and turning it into an charming piece of chic lit. After my last book I needed something to make me smile.


FROM BACK OF BOOK: Sophie Mills adores her shoe collection and her job as a corporate party planner in London. Her career is all-consuming, which is fine because she can never make a decision when it comes to men. Just when she is finally about to accept a lunch date, a social worker informs her that her best friend since grade school, Carrie, has died, naming Sophie guardian of her two daughters, six-year-old Bella and three-year-old Izzy. Reluctantly, Sophie agrees to take care of the children until their father, who left three years ago, can be located. How hard can it be to temporarily take care of two girls? And she did promise Carrie, even though she was drunk at the time. Sophie has a lot to learn about children, and by caring for Bella and Izzy, she discovers what it means to be connected to people rather than focused on her next promotion. British author Coleman creates witty and endearing characters and delivers an exceptional and touching read about loss and love.

91. Whose Voice the Waters Heard

by Robert Vaughan

Rated: 1 Star and 3 Stars depending on what I looked at to rate this book.

The biggest problem that I had with this book is that it doesn't know what kind of book it wants to be. It was part WWII action novel for 13 year old boys, part romantic fantasy for 13 year girls, part ghost story and Evangelical proselytising for members of the Christian right of all ages..

There are however, a couple of good things about this book so in the interest of fairness I would like to point them out. The author did a pretty good job of describing the interior of a WWII submarine and I didn't notice any misspelled words. Now since I have never been aboard a WWII submarine that wasn't encased in concrete I can't be sure that he did a good job of describing it but it all sounded plausible to me and I wanted to give the author a break here. I will also admit that I finished it instead of giving into the urge to wall bang it as I was sorely tempted to do in a couple of parts. That's got to say something, although I am not exactly sure what.


While I have no objections to books that include people of the Christian faith practicing their religion. I do object when an author clearly has a Christian agenda and clumsily tries to beat the reader over the head with it. There were several times when I had to suspend disbelief to the point where it completely obscured any credibility the story might have had otherwise.

And last but not least was the constant name dropping. It was as if the author was trying to establish legitimacy for his characters by throwing dozens of well know and respected personalities from that era into his character's paths and giving them some luster via personal connection. Actually the author did a pretty good job of drawing his characters. He really didn't need to create all that clutter that had nothing to do with the story.