36. The Darcy Connection

By Elizabeth Aston
Rated 4.7 Stars
From: Jani

This was a delightful surprise because I am not over fond of knock off books but this one has all new characters, the daughters of Mr. Collins and Charlotte. As knock off books go (all right - pastiche's if one wants to be fancy) this is one of the better ones I have read.

Amazon Blurb: "..... follows the children of Elizabeth Bennet's friend Mrs. Collins, who married the uninspired vicar Collins, now an uninspired bishop. Their eldest, Charlotte, has grown into rare beauty; Charlotte's sister, and our heroine, is Eliza—Mrs. Darcy's goddaughter. Eliza has ill-advisedly acquired a tendresse for Anthony Diggory, the son of the local squire, which is passionately returned. Sent off to London as companion for Charlotte, however, Eliza opens her eyes both to the possibilities of the larger world and her own place there, thence lessening the desirability of a Yorkshire life and of Anthony. Assisting this process is the handsome but proud banker, Bartholomew Bruton, with whom Eliza first becomes annoyed and then enamored. If she can save Charlotte from a cad and fend off Anthony, among other complications, Eliza may just find happiness. More development of Charlotte and one or two fewer complications would have helped, and some ends are simply too tidy. But the results are still utterly charming, with all the verve, humor and Austenian turns of plot one expects from Aston."

35. Getting Stoned with Savages

By J. Maarten Troost
Rated 4.8 Stars
From Library

Amazon Blurb: Using a format similar to that of his previous work, The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Troost creates another comical and touching travel memoir. Troost and his wife, Sylvia, move from busy Washington, D.C., to Vanuatu, a nation made up of 83 islands in the South Pacific. As Sylvia works for a regional nonprofit, Troost immerses himself in the islands' culture, an odd mix of the islanders' thousand-year-old "kastoms" along with imperialist British and French influences. This really means that Troost gets to live in a nice house while he gets drunk on kava; dodges "a long inferno of magma and a cascade of lava bombs" at the "world's most accessible volcano"; and checks out the "calcified" leftovers from one of Vanuatu's not-so-ancient traditions, cannibalism. At the end of the book, the couple move to Fiji so that Sylvia will have state-of-the-art medical care when she gives birth to their first baby. While modern-day Fiji provides little fodder for Troost's comic sensibilities, the birth of his son enables him to share some deeper thoughts and decide it is "time to stop looking for paradise." A funny travelogue with a sentimental heart, Troost's latest work genuinely captures the search for paradise as well as the need for home.

34. How the Irish Saved Cililization

By Thomas Cahil
Rated 4 Stars
From Library

While I enjoyed this book I had to read it in small increments to keep from getting bored with it. I did enjoy the writing style but thought that the author spent way too much time beating around the bush and rehashing the reasons why the Roman Empire failed. I kept wanting to shout "Get On With It, Dude." That should have been another book instead of rolled up into this one. Below is the blurb from amazon and once again I seem to be in the minority as far as critical comments. Oh well......

Amazon.com

In this delightful and illuminating look into a crucial but little-known "hinge" of history, Thomas Cahill takes us to the "island of saints and scholars," the Ireland of St. Patrick and the Book of Kells. Here, far from the barbarian despoliation of the continent, monks and scribes laboriously, lovingly, even playfully preserved the West's written treasury. When stability returned in Europe, these Irish scholars were instrumental in spreading learning, becoming not only the conservators of civilization, but also the shapers of the medieval mind, putting their unique stamp on Western culture.

33. Gone With the Windsors

By Laurie Graham
Rated 3 Stars
From Library

This book is certainly not complimentary to the Duke and Dutchess of Windsor but then I don't think there was very much either nice or admirable about either one of them. A perfect example of what happens when fame and money are not accompanied by brains and character.

AMAZON BLURB: "The diary entries of shallow and oblivious Baltimore socialite Maybell Brumby comprise Graham's fourth novel, which explores the fictional lives of intimates involved in the 1936 abdication of King Edward VIII. Maybell, widowed by her older husband, leaves for London in 1932 to join her sister Violet and falls in with her school friend Bessie Wallis "Wally" Simpson, the married woman (twice, in fact) who has set her sights on the then Prince of Wales. Through Maybell's American patricianism, Graham (The Future Homemakers of America) skewers the tedious royal family and their aristocratic hangers-on. Maybell's self-absorption and dim-wittedness make her endearing at odd moments (as when she learns that her other sister, "Doopie," is deaf rather than mentally handicapped); her chatty tone is grating when the action—primarily Wally's plotting, conquest and royal assumption—slows. Graham depicts the abdication as a kind of bedroom farce and uses Maybell's ignorance to add ambiguity to the controversial relationship of the duke (as he is known after abdication) and Wally to the Nazi regime. As WWII becomes imminent, the leisured friends must make a run for it, and the partings are not all amicable. This light romp through sordid territory is sly, gossipy fun."