Jeanette's Reading Journal

3. 11/22/63

2012-01-16T15:43:00.004-06:00

By: Stephen King
Rated 5 Stars
Audio Book

I finally finished this book today. I was 28 years old when Kennedy was murdered and the world that King has described in such wonderful detail is very familiar to me. 1958-1963 was a much kinder and gentler time than now. It's a trip down memory lane in so many ways and I have been wallowing in it.

Anyway I like time travel books if they are done well and although I am generally not a reader of Stephen King's books I decided to give this one a try. I am so glad I did.

Library Description:

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students, a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning's father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk. Not much later, Jake's friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane, and insanely possible, mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake's new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake's life, a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.

2. Lionheart

2012-01-10T12:03:00.001-06:00

Sharon Kaye Penman
Rated 5 Stars
Audio Book

It's taken me a while with this book but I have been ~~dragging my feet~~ savoring it.

This is not a Historical Romance novel. It's a little on the dry side, more straight history. But great stuff. Authors don't have to gussy up stories about the Plantagnets. You can't make stuff up about them that is better than what they actually got up to on their own. History's most dysfunctional family.

Publisher Summary 1

The life and times of Richard the Lionheart and the Plantagenets--Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Richard's brothers--is recreated against the backdrop of the medieval religious crusades and family conflict

1. World War II On The Air

2012-01-07T10:46:00.002-06:00

By: Mark Bernstien
Rated 5 Stars
Paperback
From: Connie

Book Description:

The story of World War II was told first not by historians, but by reporters. And no one told that story with more impact than Edward R. Murrow and the remarkable band of reporters he assembled. World War II on the Air recounts the dramatic stories behind these extraordinary correspondents. And it lets you hear their actual broadcasts, culled from the archives and collected here-many for the first time-on audio CD, narrated by Dan Rather.

68. Zen For Beginners

2011-12-30T10:49:00.000-06:00

By Judith Blackstone and Zoran Josipovic
Rated 4 Stars
Format: Borrowed Book

This book is a quick, broad and quirky introduction to a complex issue. A friend recommended this book to me and even went so far as to loan me his copy. I like it. It's not particularly something I am prepared at this time of my life to take very seriously, but I do find the book interesting and frankly it has a lot to recommend it.

Book Description:

Zen from its foundation in China of the 6th Century AD, has always been more than a religion. It is an intriguing system of principles and practice designed to give each individual the experience of eternity in a split second, the knowledge of divinity in every living thing. To create a book about Zen, however, is risky. It is one thing to describe the factual history of this exotic strain of Buddhism. It’s quite another to successfully convey the crazy wisdom of the Zen masters, their zany sense of their uncanny ability to pass on the experience of enlightenment to their students. The authors of Zen For Beginners have clearly overcome these considerable risks. The books uses an engaging mix of clear, informative writing and delightful illustrations to document the story of Zen from its impact on Chinese and Japanese culture to its influence on American writers such as Japanese culture to its influence on American writers such as Ginsberg and Kerouac.

66. The Cause, #23

2011-12-30T10:37:00.001-06:00

By: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Rated 5 Stars
Format: Kindle

I am still jumping around in the series and am continuing to fill in the gaps I left in this series when I stopped reading the books in order and skipped to book 24. It's been pretty interesting skipping around. I ought to drive me nuts but somehow it's not bothering me. I guess I need to adapt Lord Peter's family motto "As My Wimsey Takes Me" But I really did want to know the back story of Venetia and Hazelmere and also how things turned out for Charlotte and Oliver. I think The Hidden Shore, #19 is going to be my next read. What a soap opera!

Book Description:

Venetia is on the brink of marrying Lord Hazelmere when she discovers he does not mean to allow her to continue training as a doctor. She calls the wedding off, and from being the talk of the Season becomes the scandal of the year. Estranged from family and friends, she needs all her determination to continue the fight. At Morland place George and Alfreda continue to spend on grandiose building schemes despite the threat of bankruptcy; while Henrietta's cold marriage to the ascetic Rector of Bishopthorpe brings her close to questioning her religion.

64. The Outcast, #21

2011-12-30T10:28:00.000-06:00

By Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Rated 4.8 Stars
Format: Kindle

This book mainly takes place in South Carolina during the time that immediately led up to the American Civil War and during it.

It answered a lot of questions in my mind regarding the American branch of the Morland's and how Ashley and Lennie who play such large roles in future books fit into the fabric of the overall story.

I rated it down just a slight bit because I thought that Benedict was a little bit of wimp. But he was James's son after all. *shrug*

Book Description:

At Morland Place, Benedict's peaceful life is overset when a mysterious orphan arrives. No-one can understand why he takes this waif into the household, but the strain his arrival causes forces Benedict to take the boy to America, to join his much-missed daughter Mary. There Benedict becomes enamoured of the Southern way of life, just as bitter civil war is about to destroy it forever.

67. The Campaigners, #14

2011-12-30T10:17:00.003-06:00

By: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Rated 4.4 Stars
Format: Kindle

With this book it became clear what I had skipped from book 12 to book to book 25 last year. It was because of James. He is a character that I disliked to intensely that he poisoned each book in which he was a character that I couldn't stand to read it.

In this book at hour 11:59 of his life he forgives himself himself for every stupid, rotten thing he did and naturally expects everyone else, especially Heloise to go along with it. Heloise is so lame.

But James didn't play such a large role in this book as he had in the previous books and by skimming through the parts he was in I managed to enjoy the book in spite of him. The rest of it was good. Liked the battle scenes. It was bloody but not as bloody as the Richard Sharpe book was and I liked the rest of the characters.

Book Description

It is 1815, and Napoleon’s escape from Elba has convulsed Europe. The Allied Army is gathered in Flanders, and where the Army is, the fashionable world must follow. So Lucy and Heloise both take their daughters to Brussels for the most exhilarating season ever, and romance flourishes in the warlike atmosphere. Rosamund must finally come to terms with her feelings for her cousin Marcus, Sophie meets an enigmatic French major who may change her future, and Heloise renews acquaintance with a former suitor. The looming shadow of battle only makes the dancers whirl more feverishly, but when the army marches out to face the might of the French at Waterloo, one question is in every heart—which of them will not come back?

65. Bliss Remembered

2011-12-05T17:22:00.001-06:00

By: Frank Deford
Rated 4.5 Stars
Audio Book

This is a hard book to describe. It's not a romance but the core of the book is a love story. It's about a war but it's not just a war story. It's about the 1936 Olympics but it's not all about sports. It has spies but it's not a spy story. In other words it's twisty. I loved it.

I rated it down just a little because I felt that towards the end of the story the author started to lose his grip on the plausible. There were a couple of eye rolling moments for me but by that time I was so involved with the characters and the story that I was able to pretty much suspend my disbelief. Still . . . .

Publisher's Description:

With Bliss, Remembered, the celebrated Frank Deford has produced a work of literature that ranks with the best of his many novels, including Everybody’s All American, which Sports Illustrated ranked as one of the twenty-five best sports books of all time. In Bliss, Remembered, Deford explores new territory as he tells two love stories from the perspective of a beautiful should-have-been Olympic champion named Sydney Stringfellow.

At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Sydney begins an intense love affair with a German, but the affair abruptly ends when political forces tear them apart. Back in the US, Sydney—daring, vulnerable, and memorable—is left healing her broken heart when a striking American begins to pursue her. In Deford’s tender novel, the simplicity and honesty of choices of the heart clash with a brutal time—a time when choices seemed so dire in the enveloping shadows of a changing world.

63. The Winding Road, #34

2011-11-26T17:48:00.001-06:00

By: Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Rated: 4.5 Stard
Kindle Book

If this turns out to be the last book in this series I am going to be sad, sad, sad!

In spite of the fact that Polly, whom I have never cared for, features prominently in the book it was a very satisfying read. Lost some beloved characters but they had all lived long full lives over many books. And for the characters left to make their way into the future without us the book ended on a hopeful note. What more can we ask? Another book that's what!

Product Description

1925. England is prosperous; the nation has put the war behind it, and hope is in the air. The Jazz Age is in full swing in New York, where Polly Morland is the most feted beauty of the day. But a proposal of marriage from the powerful, enigmatic Ren Alexander takes her by surprise. Her cousin Lennie, expanding his interests from radio to television and talkies, worries that no one knows much about Ren; but his attempts to find out more threaten disaster. In London, the General Strike gives the country another chance to show its stiff upper lip, as everyone turns to and helps out. Emma drives an ambulance again, while Molly runs a canteen, and each unexpectedly finds love, and a new career. But the whirligig is slowing, shadows are gathering over Europe, and the good times are almost over. Morland Place is threatened by the worst disaster of its history, and the Old World reaches out a hand to pluck Polly from the New. The Wall Street Crash brings the fabulous decade to a shattering close, and nothing will ever be quite the same again; but new shoots emerge from the ruins, hope is reborn, and the Morlands prove again that family is everything, and will endure.

62. The Winter Journey #20

2011-11-24T20:13:00.001-06:00

By: Cynthia Harrod Eagles
Rated: 5 Stars
Kindle e-book

Having talked a good friend into reading some of the books in this 34 book series I was reminded that I had not read all of them myself. I think I suffered from burn out along about book 11 and then jumped to book 23, leaving me with about 15 more book still to read in this series. Hey, I'm up to it.

I picked this book completely out of any order because part of it was about the Crimean Way and I have always found wars and conflict interesting. It was another of the un-put-down-able books in this series. I'm definitely going to have to get #21, The Outcasts though because it ended with a cliff hanger.

Publisher's Description

The Great Exhibition brings all the Morlands to London - including a cousin from America. Charlotte is using her wealth and social position to build a hospital, and, aware of how badly sick people are nursed, defies convention to train a team of female nurses. When the Crimean war begins, and her brother Cavendish departs with his cavalry regiment and her husband is called on to serve with the Intelligence Department, Charlotte goes too. Not all the soldiers' courage or high spirits can save them from the brutal horrors of war, and as the bitter Russian winter sets in, Charlotte's nursing skills are desperately needed as the army falls victim to cholera, dysentry, frostbite and gangrene.

61. The Secret Life of Pronouns : what our words say about us

2011-11-22T08:08:00.001-06:00

By: By James W. Pennebaker
Rated 3.5 Stars
From: Library
Format: book

This book is interesting but dry. Very dry. I am pretty much a word geek and I love words and language although you couldn't tell it from my own writing. But then I don't presume to be a writer, just a commenter. I would have been a lot happier with this book if the author had written it in a more interesting style. As it was it was just a dry statement of facts. It's the kind of book you would read for information only and not a book I, at any rate, would read for pleasure.

Product Description:

Draws on groundbreaking research in computational linguistics to explain what language choices reveal about feelings, self-concept, and social intelligence, in a lighthearted treatise that also explores the language personalities of famous individuals.

Discovering the secret life of the most forgettable words -- Ignoring the content, celebrating the style -- The words of sex, age, and power -- Personality : finding the person within -- Emotion detection -- Lying words -- The language of status, power, and leadership -- The language of love -- Seeing groups, companies, and communities through their words -- Word sleuthing -- Appendix: a handy guide for spotting and interpreting function words in the wild.

60. Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People

2011-11-19T10:04:00.001-06:00

By: Harold Kushner
Rated 2 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

I am giving this book 2 Stars instead on the 1 that it deserves simply I really did read the whole thing. I did so because I really couldn't believe the author was really writing this stuff and kept reading on to see if he would get his head out of La-La land and come back to earth.

I have a very good friend to whom very bad things are happening right now and I am having a hard time understanding why such a bad thing has happened to such a fine person. A friend recommend this book to help me understand, why we have had so many bad things happen to us, even though we are good people. It's obvious he didn't really read it, but only went by the title of the book. You could easily loose your faith and hope reading this book. I don't recommend it at all!!Page 67 says God does not cause bad things to happen and also, he is unable to stop bad things from happening. He states that all the supernatural events and miracles of the Bible are just stories to make God look good.

And this statement is outrageous: "Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect, even when He has let you down and disappointed you by permitting bad luck and sickness and cruelty in His world, and permitting some of those things to happen to you? Can you learn to love and forgive Him despite His limitations ...?

Give. Me. A. Break! What's the point in being God if you're not really a God! God's gotta do better than that if I'm going to be a believer. Might as well believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Product Description:

When Harold Kushner’s three-year-old son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease and that he would only live until his early teens, he was faced with one of life’s most difficult questions: Why, God? Years later, Rabbi Kushner wrote this straightforward, elegant contemplation of the doubts and fears that arise when tragedy strikes. Kushner shares his wisdom as a rabbi, a parent, a reader, and a human being. Often imitated but never superseded, When Bad Things Happen to Good People is a classic that offers clear thinking and consolation in times of sorrow.

Since its original publication in 1981, When Bad Things Happen to Good People has brought solace and hope to millions of readers and its author has become a nationally known spiritual leader.

58. Why Read Moby-Dick

2011-11-13T07:50:00.001-06:00

By: Nathaniel Philbrick
Rated 3 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

I am rating this book 3 stars because I actually finished it. I wouldn't have if it had not been a very slim book, 127 pages and written in a very readable style. The author, who seems to be to be a few fries short of a happy meal, obsessed on Melvillle's Moby Dick until he convinced me that I should never read it even if I was on a desert island and it was the only book around

Library catalog description:

"Shares expert guidelines on how to read and appreciate Herman Melville's classic work, offering insight into its history, characters, and themes while explaining its literary relevance in the modern world."

57. Turtle Feet : The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk

2011-11-13T07:45:00.001-06:00

By: Nikolai Grozni
Rated: 3 Stars
Source: Library

Generally I love books about the Far East because I find it exotic and the people interesting. While this was a very well written book and interesting, overall I was disappointed. The author spends way to much time on the exploits of his friend Tsar's religious/spiritual experiences as a novice monk. This became yawn inducing.

People are universally people and with a bunch of guys living together and there are always going to be some there with bad tempers, some with mental problems, some who swear like sailors, some who love to talk about sex, some who use drugs and other's who are devout and sincere. Maybe the author thought some of us didn't already know this and it was important to point that out.

But there is so much more that he could have written about, things unique to his life in India and Tibet. Maybe I was looking for another Kim or The Far Pavilions. At any rate it's not a book I would go around recommending.

Publisher Summary:

Traces the author's spontaneous decision to give up his life as a musical prodigy to become a Buddhist monk, a choice that led to his relocation to the Himalayas and his indoctrination into Buddhist culture, where he found unexpected humor, doubts, and new friends.

59. The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany

2011-11-05T10:12:00.000-05:00

I am rating this book 5 Stars. Although it did not turn out to be exactly what I thought I was getting when I started it. But hooray for me it turned out to be even better and far more of a biography of George McGovern but limited to his service with the USAAF during WW2. I am ashamed to say that I knew very little about George McGovern other than that he was a one time Presidential candidate. I need to read an actual biography about him as based on his wartime service he was truly a remarkable man. In the book McGovern also praises Tuskegee Fliers who flew escort missions with his squadron. This group of fliers is something else I am unfamiliar about and I need to go hunting through the library catalogue to find out what they have about them. Heaven help that I should be unfamiliar with something after my interest is piqued. :)

Publisher's Summary

The very young men who flew the B24s over Germany in World War II against terrible odds were an exemplary band of brothers. In The Wild Blue, Stephen Ambrose recounts their extraordinary brand of heroism, skill, daring, and comradeship.

Ambrose describes how the Army Air Forces recruited, trained, and chose those few who would undertake the most demanding and dangerous jobs in the war. These are the boys - turned pilots, bombardiers, navigators, and gunners of the B24s - who suffered over 50 percent casualties.

Ambrose carries us along in the crowded, uncomfortable, and dangerous B24s as their crews fought to the death through thick, black, deadly flak to reach their targets and destroy the German war machine or else went down in flames. Twenty-two-year-old George McGovern, who was to become a United States senator and a presidential candidate, flew 35 combat missions (all the Army would allow) and won the Distinguished Flying Cross. We meet him and his mates, his co-pilot killed in action, and crews of other planes - many of whom did not come back.

As Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers portrayed the bravery and ultimate victory of the American soldier from Normandy on to Germany, The Wild Blue makes clear the contribution these young men of the Army Air Forces stationed in Italy made to the Allied victory.

54. The Winds of War

2011-10-25T18:13:00.001-05:00

By: Herman Wouk
Rated 3 Stars
From: Audible
Audio Book

I read this book thirty years ago and it's a perfect example of how one's reading tastes change over the years. At that time I would have rated it it at least four stars and perhaps even a five. But as I have gotten older, my perceptions have changed and I'm afraid the most I can honestly give this book is a shaky three stars.

Wouk used the character of a U.S. Navy captain and his family to tell his version of the events leading up to the second world war. While I don't expect writers of historical fiction to slavishly repeat generally accepted versions of historical events, there are limits. I do expect writers of fiction to provide me with a good story. Wouk bounced his poor characters from one crisis to another and embroiled him to so many of the plots and plans of the main players in WW2 that I found it impossible to keep my disbelief suspended.

I finally made this book work for me by listening to it in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. As soon as I stopped expecting a novel with a coherent story line I was able to listen to each chapter as an essay based on the author's perceptions of what happened at the time. From then on it went much smoother for me. This made it possible for me to stop and start listening to the story without having to pick up on a story line. It was a wonderful help with my insomnia because I could focus on whatever was happening in the book at the time instead of hearing all the things that go bump in the night.

There is a sequel to this book titled War and Remembrance and I'm not sure I will bother with it. Since Winds of War worked so well for middle of the night listening I just might. I need to think about it.

Publisher's Summary

A masterpiece of historical fiction, this is the Great Novel of America's "Greatest Generation".

Herman Wouk's sweeping epic of World War II, which begins with The Winds of War and continues in War and Remembrance, stands as the crowning achievement of one of America's most celebrated storytellers. Like no other books about the war, Wouk's spellbinding narrative captures the tide of global events - and all the drama, romance, heroism, and tragedy of World War II - as it immerses us in the lives of a single American family drawn into the very center of the war's maelstrom.

53. The Cat's Table

2011-10-17T13:22:00.000-05:00

By: Michael Ondaatje
Rated: 1 Star
From: Library

It's my own fault I ended up trying to read this book. I had forgotten that this is the same author that had written The English Patient. Struggling through to the end left me exhausted and out of breath. What a piece of work!

My journal entry for The English Patient

If I had a better memory for author's names I wouldn't have touched this book with a 10 foot pole. Like the English Patient it's a book about nothing that goes nowhere. Yes Michael Onjaatje writes beautiful prose. But he can't tell a story. I'll bet I remember from now on.

Amazon Best Books of the Month, October 2011: Michael Ondaatje's finely wrought new novel chronicles a young boy's passage from Sri Lanka to London onboard the Oronsay, both as it unfolds and in hindsight. Glancing off the author's own biography, the story follows 11-year-old Michael as he immerses himself in the hidden corners and relationships of a temporary floating world, overcoming its physical boundaries with the expanse of his imagination. The boy's companions at the so-called Cat's Table, where the ship’s unconnected strays dine together, become his friends and teachers, each leading him closer to the key that unlocks the Oronsay's mystery decades later. Elegantly structured and completely absorbing, The Cat's Table is a quiet masterpiece by a writer at the height of his craft. --Mia Lipman

Trust me, if there is a mystery it's buried so deep in smarmy prose that it's impossible to find.

52. The Great Typo Hunt

2011-10-16T10:37:00.000-05:00

By Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson
Rated: 4 Stars
From: Library

Thanks to Maudeen's tip I am currently The Great Typo Hunt; Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time, by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson. It's one opf those books I would never have found out about unless someone pointed it out to me.

I have a lot of nerve snickering at other people's typos seeing that I am Queen of the Typos myself and also someone who has never really gotten a grasp on the correct use of comas and an even shakier grip on the proper use of apostrophes. But I have always loved badly worded signs and have a small inventory of them stored in my memory. One of my favorites is a sign I spied in Michael's in Ft. Worth, Texas that read "All flower arrangements must be returned the same day of purchase with receipt." Bringing it to the managements attention only caused them to look at me like I was crazy for asking what would happen to me if I decided to keep it. Another was in a local Mexican restaurant which read "Everyone eating must have plate including children."

I Hopethat I may have learned a little something about the use of the dread apostrophes and get a firmer grip on commas from this book. Anyway it's a very funny book and I'm enjoying it.

Product Description

"The Great Typo Hunt is the hilarious tale of the adventures and misadventures encountered on a quixotic cross-country trek to correct grammar and spelling mistakes. Over-the-top heroic tone and witty wordplay make this book endlessly amusing, without detracting from the larger point the authors are trying to make about the importance of clear and coherent communication. An overall fun read that will change the way you look at typos."

51. Museum of Thieves

2011-10-16T09:06:00.000-05:00

By: Lian Tanner
Rated 4 Stars
From: Library

I don't read a lot of fantasy but I do dabble in the genre from time to time. I had read so many good reviews of this book written by people whose taste generally runs with mine that I decided to give it a try.

What a fun read! It's set in a world where children are sheltered by being chained to their parents in order to keep them safe from everything. Dogs, cats, loose nails, broken glass and splinters. Everything that might be remotely dangerous are forbidden by law.

Goldie and boy named toadspit escape from this stifling environment and set out to save their world from an assortment of baddies. A modern fairy tale, this book is a well written fun read that should appeal to readers of all ages not just children.

Publisher Summary

Welcome to the tyrannical city of Jewel, where impatience is a sin and boldness is a crime.
Goldie Roth has lived in Jewel all her life. Like every child in the city, she wears a silver guardchain and is forced to obey the dreaded Blessed Guardians. She has never done anything by herself and won’t be allowed out on the streets unchained until Separation Day.

When Separation Day is canceled, Goldie, who has always been both impatient and bold, runs away, risking not only her own life but also the lives of those she has left behind. In the chaos that follows, she is lured to the mysterious Museum of Dunt, where she meets the boy Toadspit and discovers terrible secrets. Only the cunning mind of a thief can understand the museum’s strange, shifting rooms. Fortunately, Goldie has a talent for thieving.
Which is just as well, because the leader of the Blessed Guardians has his own plans for the museum—plans that threaten the lives of everyone Goldie loves. And it will take a daring thief to stop him. . . .

Dolley Madison - DVD

2011-10-11T18:49:00.001-05:00

Rated: 5 Stars
From: Library

What a treat! Before seeing this DVD I knew very little about Dolley Madison as she is not a well know person in American history. I knew she was First Lady when the British burned the White House in the War of 1812 and there are cupcakes named after her. But she was a very interesting lady who certainly deserves to be remembered.

The film was beautifully done and the costumes and sets were gorgeous. Dolley was obviously a lady of style and elegance. I highly recommend this movie.

Product Description

"Born in relative obscurity before the American Revolution, Dolley Madison became one of the most influential American women of the early nineteenth century. As the wife of the fourth president, James Madison, Dolley Madison played an important part in the political and social experiment that was the early American Republic. Long before women held any overt political power, Dolley used her unelected position to legitimize the nation's new capital, to create a political and social style for the new country and to give Americans a sense of their own national identity."

Middlemarch - DVD

2011-10-07T18:04:00.000-05:00

Rated 2 Stars
From: Library

I gave the movie 2 stars because at least I finished it. But I had to force myself to watch it until the end. I formed no attachment, sympathy, or love for any of the characters. I suppose if I had read the book I may have liked it more but this movie certainly isn't going to motivate me to do that.

However, it was beautifully filmed as all BBC productions are. As a period piece it couldn't have been better. Too bad the story didn't work for me.

Product Description

Chronicles the life loves foibles & politics of the fictional english town of middlemarch. This centers on the socially conscious but naive dorothea brooke whose disastrous match to the pedantic rev edward casaubon sets in motion a chain of events that will change middlemarch forever.

50. The Cuckoo's Egg

2011-09-30T07:52:00.000-05:00

Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

By: Clifford Stoll
Rated 5 Stars
From: Library
Book

This was a real page turner for me and unbelievably kept me up until midnight to finish it. Even though all the technology was probably out dated I am computer illiterate enough for the technology bits to go flying over my head. It was the chase that I found so fascinating.

A poster on Bookflurries said that she had seen the author at a book reading and that he was the most entertaining author she had ever seen. She said that he was so hyper-energetic that she jokingly compared it to someone mainlining caffeine. I googled and found a 2007 interview on youtube and I concur with the poster completely. But it is easy to see how someone with that kind of personality would hang on so tenaciously in order to catch the person who was invading "his" computer system so brazenly and, getting away with it. By the end of the book I felt like I too had a personal stake in finding the hacker.

Publisher's Description:

A 75-cent discrepancy in billing for computer time led Stoll, an astrophysicist working as a systems manager at a California laboratory, on a quest that reads with the tension and excitement of a fictional thriller. Painstakingly he tracked down a hacker who was attempting to access American computer networks, in particular those involved with national security, and actually reached into an estimated 30 of the 450 systems he attacked. Initially Stroll waged a lone battle, his employers begrudging him the time spent on his search and several government agencies refused to cooperate.

49. To Say Nothing of the Dog

2011-09-30T07:38:00.000-05:00

Or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last

By Connie Willis

Rated: Pending

From: audible.com

Audio Book

I am still listening along to this book. It's a long audio book. 20 hours and 58 minutes. Audible had it on sale for $4.95 and it was too good a bargain to pass up. Other books keep getting in my way but sooner or later I will finish it. I kind of have to be in the mood for Connie Willis.

Publisher's Summary

Connie Willis' Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Doomsday Book uses time travel for a serious look at how people connect with each other. In this Hugo-winning companion to that novel, she offers a completely different kind of time travel adventure: a delightful romantic comedy that pays hilarious homage to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.

When too many jumps back to 1940 leave 21st century Oxford history student Ned Henry exhausted, a relaxing trip to Victorian England seems the perfect solution. But complexities like recalcitrant rowboats, missing cats, and love at first sight make Ned's holiday anything but restful - to say nothing of the way hideous pieces of Victorian art can jeopardize the entire course of history.

44.. Pirate King

2011-09-30T07:34:00.000-05:00

By: Laurie King
Rated: DNF!
From: Audible
Audio Book

I did not finish this book! I can't believe this happened to me. I tried. I tried three or four times but I just couldn't get into it. Finally I just started hopping through the story clicking here and there hoping to find something going on that would grab me. In desperation I finally clicked about ten minutes from the end and listened to the ending.

It seemed to me that Laurie King had gotten The Pirates of Penzance stuck in her head and couldn't let go of it. The story was all fluff and no edge. Holmes only put in a token appearance in this book and I for one don't blame him. The whole thing was very un-Holmes like. Not his kind of thing at all.

I sincerely hope that this was not a harbinger of where King is planning to go with this series. If so she has just lost a faithful reader in me and I would truly hate for that to happen. Oh well . . . . .

Publisher's Summary

New York Times best-selling author Laurie R. King’s books have received high praise from critics and have earned the Edgar, Creasey, Wolfe, Lambda, and Macavity awards. As Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes embark on their 11th adventure together, they find themselves immersed in the world of silent filmmaking. Here, the pirates are real—and unlike the shooting done with a camera, this sort can be deadly.

In England’s young silent-film industry, the megalomaniacal Randolph Fflytte is king. Nevertheless, at the request of Scotland Yard, Mary Russell is dispatched to investigate rumors of criminal activities that swirl around Fflytte’s popular movie studio. So Russell is traveling undercover to Portugal, along with the film crew that is gearing up to shoot a cinematic extravaganza, Pirate King. Based on Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance, the project will either set the standard for moviemaking for a generation - or sink a boatload of careers.

Nothing seems amiss until the enormous company starts rehearsals in Lisbon, where the 13 blond-haired, blue-eyed actresses whom Mary is bemusedly chaperoning meet the swarm of real buccaneers Fflytte has recruited to provide authenticity. But when the crew embarks for Morocco and the actual filming, Russell feels a building storm of trouble: a derelict boat, a film crew with secrets, ominous currents between the pirates, decks awash with budding romance—and now the pirates are ignoring Fflytte and answering only to their dangerous outlaw leader. Plus, there’s a spy on board. Where can Sherlock Holmes be? As movie make-believe becomes true terror, Russell and Holmes themselves may experience a final fadeout.

Downton Abby - DVD

2011-09-29T11:48:00.002-05:00

Rated 5+++++ Stars
From: Library
DVD

Absolutely Marvelous! Even without finishing it I am giving it 5+ stars. It is so my kind of thing.

I am rationing it out so as to draw out the fun. Eventually I am going to purchase the DVD and I know this is one I will want to re-watch. The sets, the clothes, the atmosphere are as appealing to me as the story is. I just love this kind of thing. Oh, I said that already haven't I. :)

Publisher's Summary

Set in an Edwardian country house in 1912, Downton Abbey portrays the lives of the Crawley family and the servants who work for them. In the drawing rooms, library, and beautiful bedrooms, with their tall windows looking across the park, lives the family, but below stairs are other residents, the servants, as fiercely possessive of their ranks as anyone above.

48. Enigma

2011-09-19T18:41:00.000-05:00

By: Robert Harris
Rated 4.5 Stars
From Library
Hardcover Book

Well here I am, once again reading on Connie's coat tails. I watch her lists very carefully. I always find at least one book that I wouldn't normally find out about that turn out to to gems and this is one of them. Very well written and extremely atmospheric.

Publisher Summary:

A fictional account of the desperate efforts to break the Nazi's Enigma code takes place in a British railway town, a struggle that becomes complicated by the pivotal disappearance of a beautiful cryptographer.A member of a top-secret team of British cryptographers, Tom Jericho succeeds in cracking "Shark," the impenetrable operational cipher used by Nazi U-boats, but when the Germans change the code, Jericho must break the new code before the traitor among his group can stop him.

47. Waterloo, A Captain Richard Sharpe Adventure

2011-09-19T13:51:00.000-05:00

By: Bernard Cornwell
Rated: 5 Stars
From: audible.com
Audiobook

I have loved this series for a long time and it's a little sad that this is the last book. But as Douglas McArthur said "old soldiers never die they just fade away" Richard Sharpe certainly deserves to sheath his sword and fade away into comfortable retirement. If I have missed any of the books in this series it was by sheer accident. If I was really, really rich I would collect them all in audio format to listen to when I am in a nursing home and beyond reading. :)

But Cornwell certainly ended the series with a great big bloody bang with this book. His battlefield descriptions were about as graphic as I have ever read. And his description of William of Orange's character made me go running to Wickipedia to see if this was the same William of Orange that was the scourge of Ireland and despised by Clan McDonald. He wasn't. That King William reigned in England with his wife Mary from 1689 to 1694. The William of Orange that Cornwell is writing about in this book was born in 1792 and was subsequently King of the Netherlands. He may or may not have been the jerk Cornwell protrays him as but after the hatchet job he did on Alfred the Great in his Saxon series I don't entirely trust him. What I do trust is his accuracy as far as events are concerned and anyway this is fiction so Cornwell can write whatever he pleases. But I can grumble about it. :)

Publisher's Summary

With the emperor Napoleon at its head, an enormous French army is marching toward Brussels. The British and their allies are also converging on Brussels - in preparation for a grand society ball. And it is up to Richard Sharpe to convince the Prince of Orange, the inexperienced commander of Wellington's Dutch troops, to act before it is too late. But Sharpe's warning cannot stop the tide of battle, and the British suffer heavy losses on the road to Waterloo. Wellington has few reserves of men and ammunition, the Prussian army has not arrived, and the French advance wields tremendous firepower and determination. Victory seems impossible.

In this, the culmination of Richard Sharpe's long and arduous career, Bernard Cornwell brings to life all the horror and all the exhilaration of one of the greatest military triumphs of all time.

46. Absolute Truths

2011-09-19T13:46:00.000-05:00

By Susan Howatch
Rated: At least 5 Stars
From: audible.com
Audio Book

This is my first attempt in my current plan to listen to all of these books that I can find in audio format this year. I have, for no logical reason started with the last book. (!) It's a variation of the old "Read the Last Page of the Book Syndrome."

Audible has Glamorous Powers, Mystical Paths and Scandalous Risks as well as this one available. Glimmering Images and Ultimate Prizes are available at outrageous prices in cassette tape format. I think I will pass on them but I will reread them in book format.

I re-read these books every once in a while. I am always amazed at how much I am attracted to these books because they are not the kind of books that generally appeal to me. I think it's the writing. Susan Howatch is a magical writer. I don't really like most of the characters in these books but the sincerity of their faith and the fact that they really really try to be good Christians comes shining through. It is non judgmental Christianity without the meanness and bigotry that has become so much a part of what passes for Christianity today. It's almost enough to restore one's faith.

Publisher's Summary

Charles Ashworth, the bishop of Starbridge, is a man of great accomplishment, confidence, and conviction, with a reputation as a no-nonsense bishop - until his beloved wife dies. Bereavement overwhelming his spiritual equilibrium, his strict morality is quickly revealed to him to be nothing more than a facade. Spiralling downwards, Ashworth knows he must find his way out of the maze of his own psyche. In doing so, he must face the absolute truths - both good and bad - of his past that may be the only keys to his future.

45. When the Emperor Was Devine

2011-09-19T13:35:00.001-05:00

Julie Otsuka
Rated: 4 Stars
From: Library

A very interesting story and a shameful part of our nation's history. But sad, very sad. Our government succumbed to public hysterics' after Pearl Harbor and . . . dare I even say it, then to greed. I seriously doubt if any of the U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry were ever reimbursed by as much as one penny on the dollar of what was robbed from them. I blush to think of it.

Myself, I am of thirty one thirty seconds German ancestry and no one messed with my family during WW2. Because we didn't look different. Racism is not just a recent phenomena

Publisher Summary The story is told from five different points of view--a mother receiving the evacuation order, her daughter on the train ride to the camp, the son in the desert internment camp, the family's return home, and the final release of the father after years in captivity--chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

43. Only Time Will Tell

2011-09-09T12:46:00.000-05:00

By Jeffrey Archer
Rated 3 Stars
From Library

For some reason this book didn't pull me in very far. It was an OK book but the relationship between Harry and his Father did't come off as real. The Father's antipathy towards Harry was over the top as far as I was concerned and since that relationship was what the entire story was built around the whole story felt flat to me.

Publisher Summary 1

"From the popular author of Kane and Abel and A Prisoner of Birth comes the story of one family across generations, across oceans, from heartbreak to triumph. The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1920, with the words, "I was told that my father was killed in the war." A dock worker in Bristol, Harry never knew his father, but he learns about life on the docks from his uncle who expects Harry to join him at the shipyard once he's left school. But then his unexpected gift wins him a scholarship to an exclusive boys' school, and his life will never be the same again. As he enters into adulthood, Harry finally learns how his father really died, but the awful truth only leads him to question who was his father? Is he the son of Arthur Clifton, a stevedore who spent his whole life on the docks, or the first-born son of a scion of West Country society, whose family owns a shipping line?

This introductory novel in The Clifton Chronicles includes a cast of colorful characters and takes us from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take up a place at Oxford or join the navy and go to war with Hitler's Germany. From the docks of working-class England to the bustling streets of 1940 New York City, Only Time Will Tell takes readers on a journey through to future volumes, which will bring to life one hundred years of recent history to reveal a family story that neither the reader nor Harry Clifton himself could ever have imagined"--

42. The Leftovers

2011-09-09T12:41:00.001-05:00

By: Tom Perrotta
Rated 4 Stars
From: Library

I've been trying to give my reading a totally different direction . This book was highly recommended to me which is usually a kiss of death. But I have been having such a hard time lately with books I figured what the heck I'd give it a try. To my complete amazement I am really liking it. This is also in spite of it being a post rapture kind of theme, another sure fire kiss of death for me. The book makes no judgements about what happened or why it happened. It just tells a good story about how those "left behind" deal with the situation.

Publisher Summary 2

What if—whoosh, right now, with no explanation—a number of us simply vanished? Would some of us collapse? Would others of us go on, one foot in front of the other, as we did before the world turned upside down?That’s what the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, who lost many of their neighbors, friends and lovers in the event known as the Sudden Departure, have to figure out. Because nothing has been the same since it happened—not marriages, not friendships, not even the relationships between parents and children.

Kevin Garvey, Mapleton’s new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized community. Kevin’s own family has fallen apart in the wake of the disaster: his wife, Laurie, has left to join the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence; his son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet named Holy Wayne. Only Kevin’s teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she’s definitely not the sweet “A” student she used to be. Kevin wants to help her, but he’s distracted by his growing relationship with Nora Durst, a woman who lost her entire family on October 14th and is still reeling from the tragedy, even as she struggles to move beyond it and make a new start.

41. The Devil Himself

2011-09-02T20:58:00.000-05:00

By Eric Dezenhall
Rated: 5 Stars
From: Library

Product Description:

In late 1982, a spike in terrorism has the Reagan Administration considering covert action to neutralize the menace before it reaches the United States. There are big risks to waging a secret war against America's enemies---but there is one little-known precedent.Forty years earlier, German U-boats had been prowling the Atlantic, sinking hundreds of U.S. ships along the east coast, including the largest cruise ship in the world, Normandie, destroyed at a Manhattan pier after Pearl Harbor.

Nazi agents even landed on Long Island with explosives and maps of railways, bridges, and defense plants. Desperate to secure the coast, the Navy turned to Meyer Lansky, the Jewish Mob boss. A newly naturalized American whose fellow Eastern European Jews were being annihilated by Hitler, Lansky headed an unlikely fellowship of mobsters Lucky Luciano, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, and naval intelligence officers.

Young Reagan White House aide Jonah Eastman, grandson of Atlantic City gangster Mickey Price, is approached by the president's top advisor with an assignment: Discreetly interview his grandfather's old friend Lansky about his wartime activities. There just might be something to learn from that secret operation.The notoriously tight-lipped gangster, dying of cancer, is finally ready to talk. Jonah gets a riveting---and darkly comic---history lesson. The Mob caught Nazi agents, planted propaganda with the help of columnist Walter Winchell, and found Mafia spies to plot the invasion of Sicily, where General Patton was poised to strike at the soft underbelly of the Axis. Lansky's men stopped at nothing to sabotage Hitler's push toward American shores.

Based on real events, The Devil Himself is a high-energy novel of military espionage and Mafia justice.

40. Midway

2011-09-01T21:22:00.000-05:00

The Battle That Doomed Japan, the Japanese Navy's Story

By: Mitsuo Fuchida and Masatake Okumiya
Rated: 4 Stars
Audiobook

Publisher's Summary

This landmark study was first published in English by the Naval Institute in 1955. Widely acknowledged for its valuable Japanese insights into the battle that turned the tide of war in the Pacific, the book has made a great impact on American readers over the years. Two Japanese naval aviators who participated in the operation provide an unsparing analysis of what caused Japan's staggering defeat.

Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the first air strike on Pearl Harbor, commanded the Akagi carrier air group and later made a study of the battle at the Japanese Naval War College. Masatake Okumiya, one of Japan's first dive-bomber pilots, was aboard the light carrier Ryujo and later served as a staff officer in a carrier division. Armed with knowledge of top-secret documents destroyed by the Japanese and access to private papers, they show the operation to be ill-conceived and poorly planned and executed, and fault their flag officers for lacking initiative, leadership, and clear thinking. With an introduction by an author known for his study of the battle from the American perspective, the work continues to make a significant contribution to World War II literature.

39. A Year in the Merde

2011-08-13T12:33:00.002-05:00

By: Stephen Clarke
Rated 4 Stars
From: Library
Audiobook

Publisher's Description:

A Year In The Merde is the story of Paul West, a 27-year-old Brit who is brought to Paris by a French company to open a chain of British "tea rooms." He soon becomes immersed in the contradictions of French culture: the French are not all cheese-eating surrender monkeys, though they do eat a lot of smelly cheese; they are still in shock at being stupid enough to sell Louisiana, thus losing the chance to make French the global language, while going on strike is the second national participation sport after ptanque. He also illuminates how to get the best out of the grumpiest Parisian waiter, how to survive a French business meeting, and how not to buy a house in the French countryside.

38. A House by the Fjord

2011-08-13T12:27:00.000-05:00

By Rosalind Laker
Rated 3.5 Stars
From: Library
Book

This is not a very well written book. I could swear I have read this author before but when I looked at her bibliography I did not recognize anything. If I was rating this book on writing style alone I would have only given this book 2 stars. However I learned a lot of interesting stuff about Norway that I didn't know before. It's a shame this author is not a better writer because this could have been a 5 star read for me. Oh well . . . .

Publisher's Description:

When Anna Harvik travels to Norway in 1946 in order to visit the family of her late husband, the country is only just recovering from five cruel years of Nazi occupation. So it is with surprise that she finds in this cold and bitter country the capacity for new love and perhaps even a new home.

36. Last Letter from your Lover

2011-08-04T09:33:00.002-05:00

By JoJo Moyes
Rated 4 Stars
From; Library
Format: Book

I have been in a deep reading slump lately. But I decided to try something that was a total change of pace from what I had been trying to read and it worked.

This is a very well written and poignant love story with a bittersweet ending. I enjoyed it and recommend it highly as a beach read. If it' not too hot at the beach that is. :)

Product Description

A sophisticated, page-turning double love story spanning forty years-an unforgettable Brief Encounter for our times.

It is 1960. When Jennifer Stirling wakes up in the hospital, she can remember nothing-not the tragic car accident that put her there, not her husband, not even who she is. She feels like a stranger in her own life until she stumbles upon an impassioned letter, signed simply "B", asking her to leave her husband.

Years later, in 2003, a journalist named Ellie discovers the same enigmatic letter in a forgotten file in her newspaper's archives. She becomes obsessed by the story and hopeful that it can resurrect her faltering career. Perhaps if these lovers had a happy ending she will find one to her own complicated love life, too. Ellie's search will rewrite history and help her see the truth about her own modern romance.

37. Escape

2011-08-02T12:12:00.003-05:00

By Barbara Delinsky
Rated 3 Stars
From: Library
Audio Book

I really liked the premise of this book because I have been there myself. Who hasn't? But I did have problems with Emily's whining and thought that she wasn't entirely fair to James. She should have given the poor guy a little warning that she was so unhappy. And that ex-boyfriend, what a loser!!! I am going to rate it a C. But still, it kept my interest and since I have been having so much trouble with books lately that's saying something. :)

Publisher's Description:

In her luminous new novel, Barbara Delinsky explores every woman’s desire to abandon the endless obligations of work and marriage—and the idea that the most passionate romance can be found with the person you know best.

Emily Aulenbach is thirty, a lawyer married to a lawyer, working in Manhattan. An idealist, she had once dreamed of representing victims of corporate abuse, but she spends her days in a cubicle talking on the phone with victims of tainted bottled water—and she is on the bottler’s side.

And it isn’t only work. It’s her sister, her friends, even her husband, Tim, with whom she doesn’t connect the way she used to. She doesn’t connect to much in her life, period, with the exception of three things—her computer, her BlackBerry, and her watch.

Acting on impulse, Emily leaves work early one day, goes home, packs her bag, and takes off. Groping toward the future, uncharacteristically following her gut rather than her mind, she heads north toward a New Hampshire town tucked between mountains. She knows this town. During her college years, she spent a watershed summer here. Painful as it is to return, she knows that if she is to right her life, she has to start here.

35. Martha; the life of Martha Mitchell

2011-08-01T15:52:00.001-05:00

By: Winzola McLendon

Rated:

From Library

Format: Hardcover

I've been in a terrible reading slump but I'm going to give reading another shot. I have here before me:

Martha, The life of Martha Mitchell, an example of an Uppity Woman who was quite a character . I found this review and it's lengthy but I found it very interesting. I wish this mail program had block quote boxes. Politics is a dirty, dirty business. After spending darn near a month reading this book off and on I am firmly of the opinion that a) she was right all along, b) she was surrounded by very bad people and c) she fought back in the only way she knew how. Her husband was a scum bag!

"Martha is the startling, behind-the-scenes story of one of the most famous and controversial woman in American politics -- of what motivated Martha Mitchell and what really happened to her after the Watergate scandal broke -- as told by the journalist who was her close friend and confidante in her last years."

"Here are those legendary middle-of-the-night phone calls; the television appearance when she revealed that her husband, Attorney General John Mitchell, said he'd like to trade some of the liberals in this country for Russian Communists; the time she ordered the Arkansas Gazette to "crucify" Senator J. William Fulbright; declaring "the Vietnam War stinks!" when Nixon desperately trying to justify it; calling for Nixon's resignation before the nation was ready to hear of it."

"Her husband labeled her his "unguided missile," creating the impression that he was an unfortunate but compassionate man saddled with a slightly flaky wife whom he adored too much to suppress. But here Martha reveals that John, with White House backing, put her up to almost all her early outbursts. And a former Nixon aide confirms that Martha was deliberately used by the White House to represent an outspoken view from the right, but one for which the Attorney General and the White House would not be held accountable."

"Most dramatic of all is the story of what happened to Martha after Watergate: how she was manhandled, and sedated to keep her from talking. And when it became necessary to discredit Martha, the White House confidentially "leaked" that she had gone "bonkers." Word was also passed that Martha didn't know anything, anyway, although Administration insiders knew that Martha was an incurable eavesdropper who listened in on John's telephone conversations and on his talks with people who came for meetings at the Watergate apartment. They knew, too, that after John went to sleep, she rummaged through his briefcase, reading secret papers. That these efforts to quiet and discredit Martha were a failure is evident from the message on a floral wreath sent anonymously to her funeral: MARTHA WAS RIGHT. "

"Martha reveals, for the first time, the full impact drinking combined with drugs had on Martha's life, and the poignant story of her love for her husband: though she died penniless and almost alone, Martha never ceased wanting John Mitchell to return to her."

34. Strange Images of Death

2011-06-26T08:15:00.001-05:00

By: Barbara Cleverly
Rated: 4.5 Stars
From: Library
Format: Hard Cover Book

I have been following this author ever since her first novel The Last Kashmiri Rose hooked me in 2008. While this is not, in my opinion, one of her best, it's still an engaging mystery with some delightful secondary characters from previous mysteries making an appearance. Witty dialogue is this author's forte along with interesting settings that are of course, set in a period that I particularly enjoy.

Publisher's Summary:

Since Scotland Yard detective Joe Sandilands was going to drive down to the French Riviera for a vacation, he agreed to drop his niece off at a chateau along the way for a visit with her father. But when the pair arrive at the chateau, they find recent vandalism has caused an uneasy atmosphere among the guests. A troubling crime committed just before their arrival leaves a clear message that more violence is to come. To allay panic, Joe agrees to stay on and root out the guilty person. But, despite Joe’s vigilance, a child goes missing and an artist’s beautiful young model is murdered in circumstances eerily recreating a six hundred-year-old crime of passion.

Helped and hindered by a rising star of the French Police Judiciaire, Joe must delve into a horror story from the castle’s past before he can tear the mask from the diseased soul responsible for these contemporary crimes.

35. The Big Burn

2011-06-26T08:14:00.000-05:00

By: Timothy Egan
Rated:
From: Library
Format: Hard Cover Book

Publisher's Summary:

In THE WORST HARD TIME, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.

On the afternoon of August 20, 1910, a battering ram of wind moved through the drought-stricken national forests of Washington, Idaho, Montana, whipping the hundreds of small blazes burning across the forest floor into a roaring inferno that jumped from treetop to ridge as it raged, destroying towns and timber in an eyeblink. Forest rangers had assembled nearly ten thousand men -- college boys, day-workers, immigrants from mining camps -- to fight the fires. But no living person had seen anything like those flames, and neither the rangers nor anyone else knew how to subdue them.

Egan narrates the struggles of the overmatched rangers against the implacable fire with unstoppable dramatic force, through the eyes of the people who lived it. Equally dramatic, though, is the larger story he tells of outsized president Teddy Roosevelt and his chief forester Gifford Pinchot. Pioneering the notion of conservation, Roosevelt and Pinchot did nothing less than create the idea of public land as our national treasure, owned by every citizen. The robber barons fought him and the rangers charged with protecting the reserves, but even as TR's national forests were smoldering they were saved: The heroism shown by those same rangers turned public opinion permanently in favor of the forests, though it changed the mission of the forest service with consequences felt in the fires of today.

THE BIG BURN tells an epic story, paints a moving portrait of the people who lived it, and offers a critical cautionary tale for our time.

33. Queen by Right

2011-06-26T07:53:00.000-05:00

By Anne Easter Smith
Rated 5 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

Library Summary:

The story of Cecily of York, mother of two kings and the heroine of one of history’s greatest love stories.Anne Easter Smith’s novels are beloved by readers for their ability “to grab you, sweep you along with the story, and make you fall in love with the characters.” * In Cecily Neville, duchess of York and ancestor of every English monarch to the present day, she has found her most engrossing character yet.History remembers Cecily of York standing on the steps of the Market Cross at Ludlow, facing an attacking army while holding the hands of her two young sons. Queen by Right reveals how she came to step into her destiny, beginning with her marriage to Richard, duke of York, whom she meets when she is nine and he is thirteen. Raised together in her father’s household, they become a true love match and together face personal tragedies, pivotal events of history, and deadly political intrigue. All of England knows that Richard has a clear claim to the throne, and when King Henry VI becomes unfit to rule, Cecily must put aside her hopes and fears and help her husband decide what is right for their family and their country

31. The Groovy Greeks

2011-06-26T07:46:00.001-05:00

By Terry Deary
Illustrated by Martin Brown
Rated 4.5 Stars
Format: Small Paperback book, 136 pages

I discovered these books in a National Trust bookstore somewhere in England back when I used to travel over there every couple of years or so. I loved the snarky way they were written and such an easy way to learn about history in a short, succinct, and interesting way. If you're into snark that is. :)

Product Description

"The Groovy Greeks" is full of fab facts about the hip and happening Greeks - who hung out all over 2000 years ago. This book tells you who had the world's first flushing toilet and why dedicated doctors tasted their patients' ear wax.

32, The Savage Stone Age

2011-06-26T07:44:00.002-05:00

By Terry Deary

Illustrated by Martin Brown

Rated 5 Stars

Format: Small Paperback book,

Publisher's Summary:

Information on nasty Neanderthals, awesome archaeologists and curious cave paintings. Find out about the truth of Stonehenge and what suffering scientists do with Stone Age poo.

39. A Reluctant Queen

2011-06-12T10:26:00.000-05:00

By: Joan Wolf
Rated 4.5 Stars
From: Amazon.com
Paperback

I was skeptical about this book because Biblical Fiction is really not my thing. However I am a long time reader of Joan Wolf's books and asked myself "how bad can it be if she wrote it." I was therefore very pleased at how much I enjoyed it although not really surprised. This author has written some very excellent Historical Fiction in the past and has always managed to attain a fine balance in blending history, romance and a darn good story together. Fortunately I am one of those readers who do not have a problem with keeping fiction and non fiction separate in my head so I was able to just sit back and enjoy the book.

I am not adding a Summary because:

This is the biblical story of Esther. As I'm not much of a bible person I wasn't familiar with it and I couldn't find any good summary on line that wasn't either copyrighted or someone else's review.

38. My Dear I wanted to tell you

2011-06-07T10:02:00.000-05:00

By: Louisa Young
Rated 4 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

This is really the most uneven book I have ever read. Parts of it were brilliant and parts of it were so far out in left field I couldn't make any sense of it whatever. I recommended this book to a friend before I got very far into it because it started out like a real page turner but now I am going to have to go back and add caveats to my recommendation. Like the nursery rhyme, when it was good it was very very good and when it was bad it was horrid.

The brilliant parts reminded me of Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong. Where the book fell apart for me was with the female characters, especially Julia. When it came to describing how she felt about herself and her relationship with her Mother it all felt shallow and unreal. It was like the author just could not connect with the character beyond creating her. Nadine was a little better and so was Rose but both of them needed to be developed far beyond what this author seemed capable of.

But with her male characters she was absolutely right there making every feeling and experience she gave them come vibrantly alive.

Publisher's Summary:

The lives of two very different couples are irrevocably intertwined and forever changed in this stunning World War I epic of love and war.

From the day in 1907 that eleven-year-old Riley Purefoy meets Nadine Waveney, daughter of a well-known orchestral conductor, he takes in the difference between their two families: his, working-class; hers, "posh" and artistic. Just a few years later, romance and these differences erupt simultaneously with the war in Europe. In a fit of fury and boyish pride, Riley enlists in the army and finds himself involved in the transformative nightmare of the twentieth century.

While Riley and his commanding officer, Peter Locke, fight for their country and their survival in the trenches of Flanders, Peter's lovely and naive wife, Julia, and his cousin Rose eagerly await his return. But the sullen, distant man who arrives home on leave is not the Peter they knew. Worried that her husband is slipping away, Julia is left alone with her fears when Rose joins the nursing corps to work with a pioneering plastic surgeon treating wounded and disfigured soldiers.

Only eighteen at the outbreak of the war, Nadine and Riley want to make promises to each other—but how can they when their future is out of their hands? Youthful passion is on their side, but then their loyalty is tested by terrible injury, and even more so by the necessarily imperfect rehabilitation that follows.
Moving among Ypres, London, and Paris, this emotionally rich and evocative novel is both a powerful exploration of the lasting effects of war on those who fight—and those who don't—and a poignant testament to the power of enduring love.

37. Vet in the Vestry

2011-06-04T10:19:00.000-05:00

By: Alexander Cameron
Rated 3.5 Stars
From: Library

This was a pretty good book but just a little to reminiscent of James Herriot for me. Also once he became a minister what interest I had in the story just kind of faded away. Thankfully that was mostly toward the end.

Product Description

The colorful, charming story of a country-veterinarian-turned-country-minister--a healer of body and soul. Told with wry Scottish wit, these stories are filled with the kind of hearty embrace of human and animal ways that are reminiscent of James Herriot.

36. Year of Disunion

2011-05-25T08:14:00.000-05:00

By: Blythe Forcey Toussant
Rated: Still reading
From: Gayla
Format: Book

From Back of Book:

On the morning of July 21, 1861 several hundred civilians set out to Centerville, picnics packed, to watch the Battle of Bull Run. Year od Disunion is a novel who explores who these people were and what their experience must have been. The story opens in Vermont as two very different sisters, Lettie and Roxana, reunited after years spent apart. Changes caused by the war take them to Washington and an invitation to watch the battle, along with their five young children. Things do not go well for the spectators. Visions of champagne toasts to celebrate a glorious easy victory are shattered as inglorious retreat drives the civilians from the field along with the soldiers.

After the battle, Lettie is pursued by her abusive husband and Roxana travels south to find her husband, chaplain to the 2nd Vermont, who has been captured and made a prisoner of war. Events lead the characters into wartime Washington D. C.; Raleigh, N.C; Cairo, IL; and the North Carolina Outer Banks as they respond to "disunion" the war brings to their lives throughout the remainder of 1861.

Chasing Fire - DNF

2011-05-24T11:14:00.001-05:00

By: Nora Roberts
Rated: DNF
From Library
Format: Book

Almost forgot to list this one. I got about 30 pages into it and started asking myself why I was bothering to read it. It just seemed so trite. A Cut and Paste job from 1000 books she has written before. :(

Guess it's time to check out Mary Balogh out and see if she has another book out. Joan Wolf has, of all things, a christian themed romance out. I guess she is writing what publishers are putting out now days. Still I like her well enough to check it out in spite of my aversion to christian themed books. Most of them are so badly written.

I really need a romance book fix!

The number-one New York Times-bestselling author delves into the world of elite firefighters who thrive on danger and adrenaline-men and women who wouldn't know how to live life if it wasn't on the edge.

There's little as thrilling as firefighting-at least to Rowan Tripp. The Missoula smoke jumpers are in Rowan's blood: her father is a legend. She's been fighting fires since her eighteenth birthday. At this point, returning to the wilds of Montana for the season feels like coming home-even with reminders of the partner she lost last season still lingering.

Fortunately, this year's rookie crop is one of the strongest ever-and Gulliver Curry's one of the best. He's also a walking contradiction, a hotshot firefighter with a big vocabulary and a winter job at a kids' arcade.

Everything is thrown off balance when a dark presence lashes out against Rowan, looking to blame someone for last year's tragedy. Rowan knows she can't complicate things with Gull-any distractions in the air or on the ground could mean the end-but if she doesn't find someone she can lean on, she may not make it through the summer.

35. DOC

2011-05-24T10:54:00.001-05:00

By: Mary Doria Russell
Rated 5 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

This book changed by whole conception of Doc. Holliday. Not that I really knew all that much about him since Western history and books written about the west are really not my thing. Lonesome Dove excepted of course. I have visited Tombstone and with the exception of the cemetery wasn't much impressed. It looked like a movie set and the Erps and Doc. Holliday were pretty much unreal made in Hollywood on some B movie lot.

And now this book . This is a sad book. Doc Holliday was a sad, lonely and tragic figure and sort of makes the point with me that how ones life turns out pretty much depends on the spin of the wheel of life. Had he not become ill he would have probably lived a long, happy and uneventful life in Georgia married to the girl he loved and no one would have ever heard of him.

Publishers Summary:

The year is 1878, peak of the Texas cattle trade. The place is Dodge City, Kansas, a saloon-filled cow town jammed with liquored-up adolescent cowboys and young Irish hookers. Violence is random and routine, but when the burned body of a mixed-blood boy named Johnnie Sanders is discovered, his death shocks a part-time policeman named Wyatt Earp. And it is a matter of strangely personal importance to Doc Holliday, the frail twenty-six-year-old dentist who has just opened an office at No. 24, Dodge House.

Beautifully educated, born to the life of a Southern gentleman, Dr. John Henry Holliday is given an awful choice at the age of twenty-two: die within months in Atlanta or leave everyone and everything he loves in the hope that the dry air and sunshine of the West will restore him to health. Young, scared, lonely, and sick, he arrives on the rawest edge of the Texas frontier just as an economic crash wrecks the dreams of a nation. Soon, with few alternatives open to him, Doc Holliday is gambling professionally; he is also living with Mária Katarina Harony, a high-strung Hungarian whore with dazzling turquoise eyes, who can quote Latin classics right back at him. Kate makes it her business to find Doc the high-stakes poker games that will support them both in high style. It is Kate who insists that the couple travel to Dodge City, because “that’s where the money is.”

And that is where the unlikely friendship of Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp really begins—before Wyatt Earp is the prototype of the square-jawed, fearless lawman; before Doc Holliday is the quintessential frontier gambler; before the gunfight at the O.K. Corral links their names forever in American frontier mythology—when neither man wanted fame or deserved notoriety.

Authentic, moving, and witty, Mary Doria Russell’s fifth novel redefines these two towering figures of the American West and brings to life an extraordinary cast of historical characters, including Holliday’s unforgettable companion, Kate. First and last, however, Doc is John Henry Holliday’s story, written with compassion, humor, and respect by one of our greatest contemporary storytellers.

34. One Was A Soldier

2011-05-20T10:56:00.005-05:00

By: Julia Spencer-Fleming
Rated: 4.5 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

I really had to think about how I wanted to rate this book. On one hand I wanted to give it a full 5 stars because I loved the book and thought the mystery was very, very well written

On the other hand I though that Ms. Spencer-Fleming had an anti-war message and got a little heavy handed with it. I am anti-war myself but when I am reading a book of fiction for entertainment I don't particularly like being hit over the head with public service announcements from the author. So I rated it down .5 stars and that was pretty much an act of charity on my part because it probably deserves only a 4 because of the clumsy way the message came through. To me at least.

One other thing, I sure do wish that Flynn and Hadley would stop dancing around each other and get on with things.

Regarding the news Clare got at the end of the book? Cool! :)

Publisher's Summary

On a warm September evening in the Millers Kill community center, five veterans sit down in rickety chairs to try to make sense of their experiences in Iraq. What they will find is murder, conspiracy, and the unbreakable ties that bind them to one another and their small Adirondack town.

The Rev. Clare Fergusson wants to forget the things she saw as a combat helicopter pilot and concentrate on her relationship with Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne. MP Eric McCrea needs to control the explosive anger threatening his job as a police officer. Will Ellis, high school track star, faces the reality of life as a double amputee. Orthopedist Trip Stillman is denying the extent of his traumatic brain injury. And bookkeeper Tally McNabb wrestles with guilt over the in-country affair that may derail her marriage.

But coming home is harder than it looks. One vet will struggle with drugs and alcohol. One will lose his family and friends. One will die.

Since their first meeting, Russ and Clare’s bond has been tried, torn, and forged by adversity. But when he rules the veteran’s death a suicide, she violently rejects his verdict, drawing the surviving vets into an unorthodox investigation that threatens jobs, relationships, and her own future with Russ.
As the days cool and the nights grow longer, they will uncover a trail of deceit that runs from their tiny town to the upper ranks of the U.S. Army, and from the waters of the Millers Kill to the unforgiving streets of Baghdad.

33. The Long Ships

2011-05-10T10:32:00.000-05:00

By: Frans G. Bengtsson
Rated: 4.8 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

Not quite King Hereafter but darn close!

Publisher Summary:

Frans Gunnar Bengtsson’s The Long Ships resurrects the fantastic world of the tenth century ad when the Vikings roamed and rampaged from the northern fastnesses of Scandinavia through the Straits of Gibraltar to Byzantium in all its fabled splendor. Bengtsson’s hero, Red Orm, is a boy when he is abducted from his Swedish home by the Vikings and made to take his place at the oars of the dragon-prowed ships. He then has the misfortune to be captured by the Moors in Spain, where he is initiated into the pleasures of the senses. Escaping from captivity, Orm goes to Ireland, plays an ever more important part in the intrigues of the various Scandinavian kings and clans and dependencies, helps defeat the army of the king of England, and returns home an off-the-cuff Christian convert and a very rich man. Packed with pitched battles and blood feuds, founded in history and told with high good humor, Bengtsson’s book is a fantastic adventure that features one of the most unexpectedly winning heroes in modern fiction.

32. Soul Survivor

2011-05-02T09:09:00.000-05:00

By: Bruce and Andrea Leininger
Rated: Barely 2 Stars
From: Library
Format: Book

This is an prime example how what could have been a compelling story was made practically unreadable by bad writing. Generally I can wade through some pretty bad writing if the story is there. In this case there was just not enough of the real story and way too much from parents who thought that in spite what was happening to the kid it was really all about them. And they are so boring. It's a real shame.

I would however recommend it for someone who has been forewarned and has the patience to read through all the minute trivia about a couple of silly and self absorbed parents and pick out the story of the child that is scattered through the book in small segments. The story of the child is fascinating but it is practically overwhelmed by the idiot carryings on by his parents who tried their hardest to make the book all about themselves.

Publisher Summary:

This is the story of James Leininger, who-- a little more than two weeks after his second birthday-- began having blood-curdling nightmares that just would not stop. When James began screaming out recurring phrases like, "Plane on fire! Little man can't get out!" the Leiningers finally admitted that they truly had to take notice.

When details of planes and war tragedies no two-year-old boy could know continued-- even in stark daylight-- Bruce and Andrea Leininger began to realize that this was an incredible situation. SOUL SURVIVOR is the story of how the Leiningers pieced together what their son was communicating and eventually discovered that he was reliving the past life of World War II fighter pilot James Huston. As Bruce Leininger struggled to understand what was happening to his son, he also uncovered details of James Huston's life-- and death-- as a pilot that will fascinate military buffs everywhere.

In SOUL SURVIVOR, we are taken for a gripping ride as the Leiningers' belief system is shaken to the core, and both of these families come to know a little boy who, against all odds and even in the face of true skeptics, harbors the soul of this man who died long ago.

31. I'll be Seeing You

2011-04-30T09:21:00.000-05:00

By: Margret Mahew
Rated 4.5 Stars
From: Library

Well this wasn't exactly a Romance novel but it was a nice, well written and well plotted sentimental WWII novel about a woman's search for the American airman who fathered her. It filled the hole my monthly need for a sappy book very nicely.

Publisher Summary 3

A superbly romantic and moving wartime saga of a young woman's quest to find her American father, formerly a B17 pilot. Juliet Porter loved her mother. She thought she loved her father, too. It is only when her mother dies, leaving her a letter of confession, that she learns the truth: the man who raised her was not her father at all. Instead, her mother, like so many other English girls during the Second World War, fell passionately for an American pilot ? only to lose him in the chaos of the war. With no name, no clues, and only a photograph to guide her, Juliet must learn the truth. Shot down over France in 1944 and presumed killed for so long that Juliet's mother married another man, her father never learned of her existence. But Juliet is determined to find him, and sets out on a journey that will take her from the old wartime Suffolk airfield in England all the way to California, to meet not only her past, but her future

30. Quilters : Women and Domestic Art : An Oral History

2011-04-30T09:13:00.000-05:00

By: Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Allen
Rated 5 Stars
From Library

I find the history of these strong women who learned to make to in the days before Wal-Mart and Shopping Mall's fascinating.

Publisher's Description

Those forms of creativity dominated by women-weaving, potting, quilting-have long been called "crafts," as if to imply that women weren't capable of artistic inspiration. These domestic arts were, however, often the only artistic outlet historically available to women, and the skills were passed down from mother to daughter. Poignantly revealed here, through interviews with quilters all over the Southwest, is how these women gained inspiration for their art from their daily lives. The quilts aren't idle pictures to hang on the wall; they are alive as dynamic parts of everyday life, reflecting family, community and history.

31. Stitched from the Soul : Slave Quilts from the Ante-Bellum South

2011-04-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

By: Gladys Marie Fry
Rated 5 Stars
From Library

This is a fascinating book on this history of quilting by early African American Quilters. Not very many examples of these quilts survive since the purpose of making them was the need for bedcovers and most saw heavy usage and simply wore completely out. There are a few examples of the lucky ones that have survived over the years and it's very interesting to see their distinctly styles and to read about the experiences of some of these early quilters.

Product Description

This richly illustrated book offers a glimpse into the lives and creativity of African American quilters during the era of slavery. Originally published in 1989, Stitched from the Soul was the first book to examine the history of quilting in the enslaved community and to place slave-made quilts into historical and cultural context. It remains a beautiful and moving tribute to an African American tradition.Undertaking a national search to locate slave-crafted textiles, Gladys-Marie Fry uncovered a treasure trove of pieces. The 123 color and black and white photographs featured here highlight many of the finest and most interesting examples of the quilts, woven coverlets, counterpanes, rag rugs, and crocheted artifacts attributed to slave women and men. In a new preface, Fry reflects on the inspiration behind her original research--the desire to learn more about her enslaved great-great-grandmother, a skilled seamstress--and on the deep and often emotional chords the book has struck among readers bonded by an interest in African American artistry

28. Breaking In - Breaking Out

2011-04-30T09:05:00.000-05:00

By Nicholas Monsarrat
Rated 4.5 Stars
From: Library

This 2 volume autobiography of Nicholas Monsarrat was published as one book titled Breaking In - Breaking Out in 1970. I find Monsarrat's writing style very entertaining and his life, while kind of sad overall, still fascinating. I always wonder what it is about someone's life that makes them turn into a very good writer. Wistfulness on my part I imagine.

I've read most of what Monsarrat has written and consider this his best work. It is the story of his life, told in glimpses with 5-year intervals and gives the most vivid portrait of the pre-war era (social customs, education, family life and general way of thinking) that I have ever read.

Monsarrat seems to hold nothing back and gives what effectively amounts to the story of his life, wonderfully condensed. Reading it feels like being inside his head, but he never goes too far. If you are at all interested in the pre-war era, Monsarrat as a person or how other people live and think you want to read this. I knew Monsarrat was a good writer, but the quality of this book still shocked me.

Summary

Nicholas Monsarrat was a noted English novelist, best known for THE CRUEL SEA. BREAKING IN, BREAKING OUT is an engaging and candid autobiography in which we follow Monsarrat to Cambridge, the Royal Navy, South Africa and Canada. We learn much about him, much more about the world through which he traveled. Monsarrat resists sentimentality while clearly expressing his hopes and frustrations as a writer and man.

29. Finders Keepers

2011-04-30T08:43:00.000-05:00

By: Fern Michaels
Rated 2 Stars
From: Library

I try to throw in a Romance novel every month or so just to keep my reading balanced and to keep me from taking myself too seriously and turning into one of those insufferable snooty readers that make everyone laugh at them behind their backs. Sadly this novel came very close to turning me into one of those insufferable snooty readers that make everyone laugh at them behind their backs. It was bad. Badly written and what was worse, badly plotted. I finished it but I will never understand why I did.

Jessie Roland always knew that her feelings for her parents--dislike and disgust for her mother, less than love for her father--were anything but what a child should feel, especially for the parents that had given her a privileged childhood filled with private schooling, lavish vacations, and any gift that her heart desired. But try as she might, something always kept her from truly loving the Rolands. Strange dreams of a yellow dog and a stroller hinted at the truth, but Jessie couldn't recall the fateful day when Thea and Barnes Roland had stolen her from her stroller, leaving her pet retriever Jelly to chase after their car for miles, only to return to Jessie's stunned parents without the golden-haired little girl. Now a woman, and armed with a sizeable trust fund, Jessie moves far away from her parents to start a new life in Washington, D.C., where a new job, new apartment, and a new man awaits her. Tanner Kingsley is handsome, charming, and hiding something. Jessie's involvement with him will lead to happiness, heartache, and the full realization of her hidden past--a past she must come to terms with before she can find true peace.

27. Building a Home With My Husband

2011-04-10T18:48:00.001-05:00

By Rachel Simon
Rated 4 Stars
Format: Hard Cover
From: Library

Publisher's Summary
The bestselling and highly acclaimed author of Riding the Bus with My Sister returns with an illuminating and tenderhearted memoir about the unexpected ways a home renovation can change a life.

Rachel Simon's historic home on a charming tree- lined street was hardly ideal. It was too small, too dark, and there was a gaping hole in the dining room ceiling. So when the house is burglarized, Rachel and her husband, Hal, agree it's time to sell. But in a difficult housing market, and with Hal being an architect, they soon realize: Why leave when they can renovate?

Rachel prepares herself for the disagreements and disasters that can accompany a major home renovation. But what she isn't prepared for is the emotional journey that will blow open the seal around everything she thinks she knows about herself, about family, and about the misunderstandings and resilience of love. From Hal's first design sketch to the last stroke of paint, memories of a difficult childhood, friendships left behind, challenges with siblings, and an improbable path to marriage come bursting out. Once the dust settles, Rachel is astonished by the many gems revealed along the wayÂ—and comes to discover profound insights about the construction, demolition, and renovation of personal connections.

26. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

2011-04-10T09:39:00.000-05:00

By: David Mitchell

Rated 4.5 Stars

Format: Audiobook
Currently Listening

Publisher's Summary

The year is 1799, the place Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, the “high-walled, fan-shaped artificial island” that is the Japanese Empire’s single port and sole window onto the world, designed to keep the West at bay; the farthest outpost of the war-ravaged Dutch East Indies Company; and a de facto prison for the dozen foreigners permitted to live and work there. To this place of devious merchants, deceitful interpreters, costly courtesans, earthquakes, and typhoons comes Jacob de Zoet, a devout and resourceful young clerk who has five years in the East to earn a fortune of sufficient size to win the hand of his wealthy fiancée back in Holland.

But Jacob’s original intentions are eclipsed after a chance encounter with Orito Aibagawa, the disfigured daughter of a samurai doctor and midwife to the city’s powerful magistrate. The borders between propriety, profit, and pleasure blur, until Jacob finds his vision clouded, one rash promise made and then fatefully broken. The consequences will extend beyond Jacob’s worst imaginings. As one cynical colleague asks, “Who ain’t a gambler in the glorious Orient, with his very life?”

25. West From Home

2011-04-07T18:30:00.001-05:00

By Laura Ingalls Wilder
Rated 5 Stars
From: Library
Format: Hard Cover

Laura Ingalls Wilder had a huge impact on my lifelong reading tastes.

Publisher Summary

Letters written by the author of the Little House books to her husband reveal her impressions of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition:"It is like a fairyland."So Laura Ingalls Wilder described her 1915 voyage to San Francisco to visit her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Laura's husband, Almanzo, was unable to leave their Missouri farm and it is her faithful letters home, vividly describing every detail of her journey, that have been gathered here. Includes 24 pages of exciting photographs and completely redesigned jacket art. Children's Books of 1974 (Library of Congress)

24. Minding Frankie

2011-04-02T07:36:00.001-05:00

By: Mave Binchey
Rated: DNF
Audiobook

I have always liked Maeve Binchey and the description sounded good. Therefore I was very surprised by the fact that this book didn't hit a single chord with me. Boring! I couldn't force myself to listen past 60 minutes and that was after a couple of tries.

Publisher Summary

Maeve Binchy is back with a tale of joy, heartbreak and hope in a close-knit Dublin community.

When Noel learns that his former flame is terminally ill and pregnant with a child she claims is his, he agrees to take care of the baby girl once she’s born. But as a recovering alcoholic whose demons are barely under control, he can’t do it alone. Luckily, he has an amazing network of family and friends who are ready to help: love-starved Lisa, who becomes his round-the-clock partner in little Frankie’s care; his American cousin and pep-talker Emily; and the many eager babysitters from the neighborhood, including old friends like Signora and Aidan, Dr. Declan and his parents.

The unconventional arrangement works out beautifully—until a nosy social worker becomes convinced that Frankie would be better off in a foster home. Now it’s up to everyone in town to persuade her that each of them has something special to offer when it comes to minding Frankie.

23. A Lesson in Secrets

2011-03-25T12:19:00.002-05:00

By: Jacqueline Winspear
Rated 5 Stars
Audiobook

In this book Masie is asked by the Secret Service to take a job at Cambridge as a Philosophy professor at a college dedicated to the furthering of peace. Masie is tasked with the job of finding out if the staff or students are part of the Communist party and are engaged in activities that are a threat to the Government.

Sure enough, Maisie is not there more than a day or two before a man is murdered and Scotland Yard is called into investigate. Maisie engages in a delicate dance between investigating subversives for the Secret Service and assisting Scotland Yard (unasked) solve the murder. Maisie turns up a group of students sympathetic to the growing SDP in Germany and warns the Secret Service about their activities. The Secret Service is more concerned with ferreting out Communists than they are Fascists and this creates a certain amount of conflict between Maisie and the SS. At that point my brain switched over to real life and I remembered that it was in just this very period in time that Trinity College in Cambridge was the place that The Cambridge Five met and became the most effective espionage agents against the British and American interests in the history of spydom. Using 20/20 hindsight perhaps the SS and Winspear should have expanded Maisies mission to include both groups. But then no one had a clue at the time that that nest of vipers was forming its self so I guess being clueless is appropriate.

This book is not heavy on plot. The main mystery was the murder and the spy hunt merely peripheral it seemed to me. Meantime, back at the ranch (London) another mystery develops and is left to Billy to investigate. I thought that much more could have been done with this mystery but perhaps Winspear thought Maisie had her hands to full already.

But is was a lovely visit into Maisie's world. Winspear is a master at creating an atmosphere that drips with authenticity and her secondary characters are always credibale, both new and those from previous books who have become old friends.

One of the things I like most about Maisie is that she is never static. She is not stuck in time but moves on with her life appropriately, according to the situation that is unfolding in Britain at the time each book is set.

Publisher's Summary

Maisie Dobbs' first assignment for the British Secret Service takes her undercover to Cambridge as a professor—and leads to the investigation of a web of activities being conducted by the emerging Nazi Party.

In the summer of 1932, Maisie Dobbs' career takes an exciting new turn when she accepts an undercover assignment directed by Scotland Yard's Special Branch and the Secret Service. Posing as a junior lecturer, she is sent to a private college in Cambridge to monitor any activities "not in the interests of His Majesty's government".

When the college's controversial pacifist founder and principal, Greville Liddicote, is murdered, Maisie is directed to stand back as Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane and Detective Chief Inspector Richard Stratton spearhead the investigation. She soon discovers, however, that the circumstances of Liddicote's death appear inextricably linked to the suspicious comings and goings of faculty and students under her surveillance.

To unravel this web, Maisie must overcome a reluctant Secret Service, discover shameful hidden truths about Britain's conduct during the Great War, and face off against the rising powers of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei—the Nazi Party—in Britain.

As the storm clouds of World War II gather on the horizon, this pivotal chapter in the life of Maisie Dobbs foreshadows new challenges and powerful enemies facing the psychologist and investigator

22. Whirlwind

2011-03-24T19:52:00.002-05:00

By: James Clavell

Rated: 4.5
From: Library
Format: Hard Cover Book

This is not the exact cover from the book but from some sort of game but I liked it much better than the book covers so I used it instead. It is the first book by James Clavell that I didn't give a 5 star rating. That in no way indicates that this book was not just as well written or as convoluted as the others, it's just that the the subject matter was not as interesting to me as his Asian based novels were.

Whirlwind is one of his later books. They are all connected although this one is a lot more loosely connected than the others. Andrew Gavalan is a Director of The Noble House and is operating a fleet of helicopters in the Middle East. This setting allows the author to give the reader is an insight into why the Middle East is as it is and why it reacts as it does to 'infidels." Although the writing is somewhat dated I certainly learned a lot more than I ever wanted to know about Iran and the Iranian revolution. Some of the characters from Noble house are carried over and put in cameo appearances but the Noble House Tai Pan has retired and there is a new Tai Pan who was one of the minor characters from the previous book. Without Ian Dunross the Noble House is not the dynamic force that it was. Disappointing. Also another one of the characters who puts in a brief appearance from Noble House is Profitable Choy. Sadly he has turned into a villain. :( I kind of liked Profitable Choy.

From Library Journal

Andrew Gavallan, based in Scotland, runs a helicopter company operating in Iran during the Shah's reign. When Khomeini comes to power, Gavallan must get his pilots and their families, and his valuable helicopters, out of the riot-torn country. Complicating matters is his power struggle with his company's secret owner, the Noble House of Hong Kong. The pilots' escape efforts form the basic story but as usual in a Clavell novel the action sweeps across many lives: lovers, spies, fanatics, revolutionaries, friends and betrayers. British, Finnish, American, and Iranian, all are caught up in a deadly religious and political upheaval. Clavell effectively portrays the chilling and bewildering encounters when Westernized lifestyle clashes with harsh ancient traditions. This novel, the fifth in what he calls his Asian Series ( Noble H o use, King Rat, Tai Pan, Shogun ) is certain to be in much demand.

21. Great Railway Bazaar

2011-03-24T10:33:00.000-05:00

By: Paul Theroux

Rated: 5 Stars

Audiobook

I love this author. He paints such beautiful word pictures that I feel I am right there on the train with him.

Publisher's Summary

In 1973 the novelist Paul Theroux made a decision that dramatically altered his career and changed a genre. He would travel Asia by train (from London to Japan and back), write copious notes, and, on his return home to London, write a book about the experience. Published in 1975, The Great Railway Bazaar achieved a popular and critical success rare in publishing. The book became a classic of travel writing and created a model for the genre that today remains vibrantly alive. (The very interesting back story of this seminal work is relayed by Theroux in his 2008 book Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.)

Chapter one begins: "Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it. Those whistles sing bewitchment: railways are irresistible bazaars." Muller, with these first sentences, displays his mastery of phrasing and timing; his subtleties of intonation; his coloring and fluent shifts of emphasis and stress. Throughout The Great Railway Bazaar he displays the incomparable quickness and assurance with which these exceptional narrative qualities develop and transform at every turn of phrase, change of scene, and development of plot. This astonishing ability is Frank Muller's modus operandi, making him one of the greatest and most popular audiobook narrators of all time.

19. The Three Muskateers

2011-03-24T10:31:00.000-05:00

By Alexander Dumas

Rated 4.3 Stars

From Libravox.org

I love these free downloads. The readers are all volunteer and it's kind of catch as catch can to find one you really like but this one was very good.

I have been using this for a book to listen to when I quilt. It's really pleasant to be entertained while doing needlework. Of course this story is dated but it's so dated that it doesn't matter a bit. It's probably the only story about France that I have ever enjoyed. France and Ireland are just two countries I can ever get enthusiastic about. The U.S., Canada, India, China, England and Scotland are much more my cup of tea.

Publisher's Summary

Mixing a bit of seventeenth-century French history with a great deal of invention, Alexandre Dumas tells the tale of young D'Artagnan and his musketeer comrades, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis. Together they fight to foil the schemes of the brilliant, dangerous Cardinal Richelieu, who pretends to support the king while plotting to advance his own power. Bursting with swirling swordplay, swooning romance, and unforgettable figures---including the seductively beautiful but deadly femme fatale, Milady, and D'Artagnan's equally beautiful love, Madame Bonacieux---The Three Musketeers continues, after a century and a half of continuous publication, to define the genre of swashbuckling romance and historical adventure.

20. The Far Pavillions

2011-03-04T13:10:00.001-06:00

By: M. M. Kaye
Rated 5 Stars
From: Library
Still Reading

I love this book and just wanted to visit with it again so I decided to do a leisurly re-read. The product Description is gushy but justified but it doesn't say anything about the book. So I am inserting a link to a wonderful customer review on amazon.

Review on amazon

Product Description

When The Far Pavilions was first published nineteen years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind."

From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M.M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction.

The Far Pavilions is itself a Himalayan achievement, a book we hate to see come to an end. it is a passionate, triumphant story that excites us, fills us with joy, move us to tears, satisfies us deeply, and helps us remember just what it is we want most from a novel.

18. The Marvelous Land of Oz

2011-03-04T12:52:00.002-06:00

By: L. Frank Baum
Rated 5 Stars
Download libravox.0rg

This was just a quick, delightful re-read of a book I read so long ago that it was the same as a first read. After All Clear I needed something totally different. This was certainly totally different. I loved all the Oz books when I was young.

Publisher's Summary

The Marvelous Land of Oz is the second Oz book.
In this sequel to the original book, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman are back with a boy named Tip as well as a host of new characters, including Mr. H. M. Woggle-Bug, Princess Ozma of Oz, Dr. Nikidik, and Old Mombi. When the Scarecrow, now the ruler of the Emerald City, is driven out by General Jinjur and her all-girl army, his friends--the Tin Woodman, a boy named Tip, and Jack Pumpkinhead--try to restore peace. Dorothy isn't in this story, though she is mentioned frequently by her friends.

17. All Clear - Redux

2011-03-04T12:48:00.003-06:00

By: Connie Willis
Rated 4.5 stars
Audiobook

There were still some odds and ends that I hadn't really gotten a clear picture of in my first read. This was an extremely convoluted story line. I think I have finally gotten a handle on why Colin and Eileen understood at the end of the book how they had met before in time. Anyway I'm done with this book for a while. Maybe I will do another re-read in 5 years or so. If I'm still able to follow such a complicated story when I'm 81.

Here is my original journal entry after I read it last November.

All Clear November 2010

The Woman in White

2011-02-27T10:40:00.002-06:00

By Wilkie Collins
Rated - 3.5
From: Audible.com
Format: Audio Book

This was only an OK book as far as I was concerned. Way too much description and rambling prose. If an editor with a sharp pen went through and reduced by about half it would have been a much better book because the story was very good. It was just that I had to fight my way through to find it.

Product Description

One of the greatest mystery thrillers ever written, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White was a phenomenal best seller in the 1860s, achieving even greater success than works by Charles Dickens. Full of surprise, intrigue, and suspense, this vastly entertaining novel continues to enthrall audiences today.

The story begins with an eerie midnight encounter between artist Walter Hartright and a ghostly woman dressed all in white who seems desperate to share a dark secret. The next day Hartright, engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie and her half sister, tells his pupils about the strange events of the previous evening.
Determined to learn all they can about the mysterious woman in white, the three soon find themselves drawn into a chilling vortex of crime, poison, kidnapping, and international intrigue.

Masterfully constructed, The Woman in White is dominated by two of the finest creations in all Victorian fiction: Marion Halcombe, dark, mannish, yet irresistibly fascinating, and Count Fosco, the sinister and flamboyant "Napoleon of Crime".

15. The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

2011-02-19T10:33:00.001-06:00

By Will Cuddy
Rated 5 Stars
From Library
Format: Printed Book

Back when I used to wander around the UK I bought one of two books in the Horrible Histories Series. They were so funny and my my whole family read and enjoyed them. View Horrible Histories

This book is written in very much the same style and again the entire family started saying "me next," " I'm after you." I think I am going to send a set of these boxed up Horrible Histories to three of my Great Grandchilden for Christmas. I hope I don't get them into too much trouble with their teachers.

Publisher Summary 1

Ever wonder what Nero did before he began fiddling about in Rome, or wanted the bare facts about Lady Godiva? Maybe you've found the story of Lucrezia Borgia a bitter pill to swallow, or wanted the straight skinny on corpulent King Henry the Eighth, but you haven't the stomach for stuffy history books. Now these and twenty-two more of history's most famous personages are brought brilliantly to life, in this collection of unfailingly accurate yet undeniably hilarious biographies. You'll laugh while you learn about the very real people behind the legendary names, including why Montezuma was so vengeful, and why Catherine was so Great. You'll even finally lay to rest the rumor that Charlemagne was called "Chuck" by his friends.

14 One Unashamed Night

2011-02-19T10:13:00.001-06:00

By: Sophia James
Rated: 4 Stars
From: Library
Format: Audio Book

This is a nice, moderately steamy little Historical Romance. It had a decent story but one that wouldn't stand up to someone scrutinizing it too deeply for logic. But for what it is, it is a nice little diversion.

Product Description

Living in a gray world of silhouette, Lord Taris Wellingham conceals his fading eyesight from society. He has long protected himself from any intimate relationships.

Plain twenty-eight-year-old Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke does not expect to attract any man, especially not one as good-looking as her remote traveling companion.

Forced by a snowstorm to spend the night together, these two lonely people seek solace in each other's arms. The passion they unleash surprises them both. Then a new day dawns....

13. The King's Speech

2011-02-16T18:58:00.002-06:00

By: Mark Logue and Peter Conradi
Rated 4.5
Library

This journal entry is for the book, not the movie which is not out on DVD yet, or if it is my library hasn't ordered it yet. I imagine given the popularity of the movie that they will be ordering it at the first possible minute.

I am enjoying this book although the punctuation is weird. I can only guess that it is the editors or the printers fault as I can imagine an author with as many books as Peter Conradi has under his belt making the kind of errors that are in this book, i.e. periods where commas should be and commas in place of periods. It kind of jolts one out of the story since misplaced periods especially can distort the meaning of sentences. This is not the only book I've read in the last couple of years that looks like the publisher's have made a decision to reduce costs by either overworking and rushing editor's or perhaps hiring cheap incompetent ones. :(

However it is still a very good book.

Publishers Description:

Presents the life of the Australian speech therapist who helped the English king, George VI, overcome a lifelong speech disorder and become an eloquent leader of his people during the difficult days of World War II.

12. A Needle in the Right Hand of God

2011-02-14T11:09:00.001-06:00

The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry
By: R. Howard Bloch
Rated 4 Stars
From Library

I enjoyed this author's writing style. It's very readable. I learned quite a few things that surprised me. For one it is a lot larger than I had imagined and for another it has some rather earthy images on it. The most amazing thing about it is that it has survived as well as it has for so long. I would dearly love to see it in person. Oh well, my next life maybe. :)

Publisher Summary

The Bayeux Tapestry is the world’s most famous textile–an exquisite 230-foot-long embroidered panorama depicting the events surrounding the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is also one of history’s most mysterious and compelling works of art. This haunting stitched account of the battle that redrew the map of medieval Europe has inspired dreams of theft, waves of nationalism, visions of limitless power, and esthetic rapture. In his fascinating new book, Yale professor R. Howard Bloch reveals the history, the hidden meaning, the deep beauty, and the enduring allure of this astonishing piece of cloth.

11. Life

2011-02-12T11:06:00.003-06:00

By:Keith Richards & James Wise
Rated 4.5 Stars
From: Library

I picked this book up on a whim, mostly because it was about as far as I could get from Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill.

What came through to me is that in spite of everything he was basically a very talented and decent human being who loved his family. Yeah he did a lot of drugs but the only person he ever really hurt was himself. It seemed to me that this kind of life often goes along with the kind of stardom he had and would probably drive almost anyone to seeking relief from all the pressure. He somehow managed (willy nilly) to have raised four decent and seemingly happy and productive children and that is something even a lot of more conventional parents can't brag of.

I came away from this read liking him better than I expected too. I really didn't know much about him before as I am not much into paying attention to the private lives of the people who make the music I just enjoy listening.

Publisher Summary

As lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics, and the songs that roused the world. A true and towering original, he has always walked his own path, spoken his mind, and done things his own way.

Now at last Richards pauses to tell his story in the most anticipated autobiography in decades. And what a story! Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records in a coldwater flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, building a sound and a band out of music they loved. Finding fame and success as a bad-boy band, only to find themselves challenged by authorities everywhere. Dropping his guitar's sixth string to create a new sound that allowed him to create immortal riffs like those in "Honky Tonk Woman" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash." Falling in love with Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones's girlfriend. Arrested and imprisoned for drug possession. Tax exile in France and recording Exile on Main Street. Ever-increasing fame, isolation, and addiction making life an ever faster frenzy. Through it all, Richards remained devoted to the music of the band, until even that was challenged by Mick Jagger's attempt at a solo career, leading to a decade of conflicts and ultimately the biggest reunion tour in history.

In a voice that is uniquely and unmistakably him--part growl, part laugh--Keith Richards brings us the truest rock-and-roll life of our times, unfettered and fearless and true.

The Young Victoria

2011-02-09T16:41:00.000-06:00

DVD
From Netflix

Sweet little flick for a cold and snowy day.

And, it was even vaguely historically correct!

Netflix Blurb:

Eighteen-year-old British royal Victoria (Emily Blunt) ascends to the throne and is romanced by future husband Prince Albert (Rupert Friend) in this lush period film that chronicles the early years of the British monarch's larger-than-life reign. Produced by Martin Scorsese and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, the Oscar-nominated film also stars Miranda Richardson as the Duchess of Kent, Jim Broadbent as King William, and Paul Bettany as Lord Melbourne.

10. You Know When The Men Are Gone

2011-02-09T10:24:00.003-06:00

by Siobhan Fallon
Rated 5 Stars
From Library

This book is about the experiences and stresses on Army Wives at Fort Hood, Texas when their husbands unit deploys, sometimes multiple times. I thought I might relate to this book more than I did because I was certainly no stranger to deployments as I was a military wife (Navy) during the Viet Nam war.

But while some experiences are universal re: separation and what I always called "shifting gears" from being "In Charge" to part of a partnership, I was older than these girls (and to me they are girls.) My children were all school age and I had the relief of always being able to find a job outside my home and was able to keep my days filled and my brain distracted. And brother, were they full! Also sailors usually are (excepting corpsmen, small boat crews and seals) not in the immediate danger that soldiers are so while I was lonely I was never terrified for Jim's safety
on a daily basis. My heart goes out to these families for what they are going through

Good book though. More Americans than will ought to read it. There is a tendency to ignore this never ending war we are caught up in. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be most peoples attitude. By constantly dinging away on Facebook with the IGTNT (I Got the News Today) Diaries I vent a tiny bit of my anger and frustration about the way we (this country) are paying such a high price for such a small (if any) return.

Publisher Summary
Reminiscent of Raymond Carver and Tim O'Brien, an unforgettable collection of intercollected short stories.

In Fort Hood housing, like all army housing, you get used to hearing through the walls... You learn too much. And you learn to move quietly through your own small domain. You also know when the men are gone. No more boots stomping above, no more football games turned up too high, and, best of all, no more front doors slamming before dawn as they trudge out for their early formation, sneakers on metal stairs, cars starting, shouts to the windows above to throw them down their gloves on cold desert mornings. Babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.

There is an army of women waiting for their men to return in Fort Hood, Texas. Through a series of loosely interconnected stories, Siobhan Fallon takes readers onto the base, inside the homes, into the marriages and families-intimate places not seen in newspaper articles or politicians' speeches.

When you leave Fort Hood, the sign above the gate warns, You've Survived the War, Now Survive the Homecoming. It is eerily prescient.

9. Blind Your Ponies

2011-02-01T11:34:00.001-06:00

By. Gordon West
Rated 4 Stars
From: Library

This story was a not very plausible adolescent fantasy. But still a pleasant read.

Library Summary

Sam Pickett never expected to settle in this dried-up shell of a town on the western edge of the world. He's come here to hide from the violence and madness that have shattered his life, but what he finds is what he least expects. There's a spirit that endures in Willow Cree, Montana. It seems that every inhabitant of this forgotten outpost has a story, a reason for taking a detour to this place--or a reason for staying. As the coach of the hapless high school basketball team (zero wins, ninety-three losses), Sam can't help but be moved by the bravery he witnesses in the everyday lives of people--including his own young players--bearing their sorrows and broken dreams. How do they carry on, believing in a future that seems to be based on the flimsiest of promises? Drawing on the strength of the boys on the team, sharing the hope they display despite insurmountable odds, Sam finally begins to see a future worth living.

8. The Second World War: Alone

2011-01-31T10:27:00.002-06:00

By: Winston Churchill
Rated 5 Stars
Audio Book

This is book 2 of Churchill's 4 volume autobiography/history of World War Two.

Product Description:

"After the first forty days we were alone", writes Churchill. This edition is part two of Churchill's own abridgement of his original six-volume history of the Second World War."

Alone: May 1940-May 1941 - starts with the fall of France: May-June 1940-- with 350,000 British and French soldiers trapped near the French port city of Dunkirk, on the Channel coast near the Pas de Calais. As the Germans inexplicably pause a few miles away from the seemingly doomed Allied forces, the British execute Operation Dynamo, the quickly improvised and mounted evacuation of almost the entire British Expeditionary Force and a few contingents of French soldiers. Using ships and boats of all sizes and types (including civilian pleasure craft and motorboats), the Royal Navy pulls off this daring mission, known as the "Miracle at Dunkirk."

But even though the "little ships" have carried the soldiers to safety in Britain, most of the BEF's heavy weapons (tanks, armored cars, and artillery) has to be left behind, and until the British divisions can be refit and re-equipped, Great Britain -- with her determined and inspiring Priime Minister Winston Churchill -- faces Nazi Germany's dreaded Luftwaffe, U-boats, and even the threat of a sea-borne invasion alone for the next 12 months.

Alone: May 1940-May 1941 covers:

* The German pause at the gates of Dunkirk and the evacuation of the BEF

* The preparations on both sides for the expected German invasion of Britain, including a discussion on various Nazi attack plans, the frantic effort to beef up shore defenses all along the island's coastline, and the training of the Home Guard.

* The Battle of Britain, Germany's ill-fated and poorly executed attempt to "soften up" Britain prior to Operation Sea Lion, which was cancelled when the Luftwaffe failed to defeat the Royal Air Force and gain air supremacy over the British Isles.

* The Blitz, Hitler's attempt to bomb Britain into submission in a series of almost nightly air raids against London and other major cities; these went on for months and ceased only a few weeks before Hitler attacked Russia on June 22, 1941.

7. The Second World War; Milestones to Disaster

2011-01-31T10:17:00.000-06:00

By: Winston S. Churchill
Rated 5+
Audio Book

This was originally a part of a four volume history of the Second World Way from Churchill's point of view. He lated abridged and divided the 6 volumes into 4 volumes. This portion was Renamed Milestones to Disaster.

This book is Plan B. As part of the challenge I have set for myself to read the biographies of the people who shaped the world I was born into I first decided to read William Manchester's 2 volume Biography of Churchill. But due to his death the last book, the one that covered the WWII years I decided to instead read the 4 volume Autobiography written by the man himself.

Product Description:

Churchill's history of the Second World War is, and will remain, the definitive work. Lucid, dramatic, remarkable for its breadth and sweep and for its sense of personal involvement, it is universally acknowledged as a magnificent reconstruction.

Churchill tracks the erosion of the shaky peace brokered at the end of the First World War, followed by the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and their gradual spread from beyond Germany's borders to most of the European continent. Churchill foresaw the coming crisis and made his opinion known quite clearly throughout the latter '30s, and this book concludes on a vindicating note, with his appointment in May 1940 as prime minister, after which he recalls that "I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.

The Taming of the Shrew

2011-01-31T10:01:00.000-06:00

By: William Shakespeard &
BBC Time Life Films
Rated 5+
From: Library

This play is my favorite Shakespeare comedy. And, as a fan of Monty Python having John Cleese play Petruchio makes it all the funnier.

Product Description:

Baptista will not allow his saccharine younger daughter Bianca to marry until someone can rid him of his obstreperous older daughter Katherine. The swaggering Petruchio (John Cleese) , eager to wive it wealthily in Padua, agrees to do just this. He proceeds to break her. First, he cools her scalding wit by putting his tongue in her tale; nearly jilts her on her wedding night and then shows up at the church in antic garb; forbids her food, sleep and the beautiful clothes he himself had tailored for her, all on the pretense of providing for her; lastly, commands that she call the sun the moon, the moon the sun, an elderly gentlemen a fresh virgin and then refute her own assertions, all according to his whim.

Meanwhile, Bianca has three suitors: the gray-bearded Gremio, the youngish Hortensio and the young and handsome Lucentio. Lucentio disguises himself as a tutor named Cambio. Hortensio disguises himself as a tutor named Litio. Tranio, Lucentio's servant, disguises himself as Lucentio, at Lucentio's request. A traveling pedant disguises himself as Vincentio, Lucentio's father, also at Luciento's request. Later, the real Vincentio shows up.

4. Mother Country

2011-01-27T12:04:00.001-06:00

By: Jeremy Harding
Rated 4.5 Stars
From Library

This is a beautifully written memoir.

Publisher Summary

When Jeremy Harding was a child, his mother, Maureen, told him he was adopted. She described his natural parents as a Scandinavian sailor and a“little Irish girl” who worked in a grocery. It was only later, as Harding setout to look for traces of his birth mother, that he began to understand whohis adoptive mother really was—and the benign make-believe world she built for herself and her little boy. Evoking a magical childhood spent intransit between west London and a decrepit houseboat on the banks of the River Thames.

Mother Country is both a detective quest, as Harding searches through the public records for clues about his natural mother, and a rich social history of a lost London from the 1950s. Mother Country is a powerful true story about a man looking for the mother he had never known and finding out how little he understood the one he had grown up with.

6. King Hereafter

2011-01-27T12:00:00.001-06:00

By Dorothy Dunnett

Rated 5 + Stars

Reading with On Line Group

I own this book

This is one of my favorite books ever. I am so enjoying rereading this along with one of the on line Dunnett groups. I love the ladies in this group. They combine insightful reading with a delicious sense of humor that is making one of my favorite reads even more enjoyable than it was before. They are cool people who do not squeeze the joy out of books by taking either books, or themselves way too seriously.

Personally I don't really care if this historically correct or not but considering that written records from that period either do not exist or were written much later (sometimes hundreds of years) and rely oral histories passed down by generations of story tellers it's my opinion that any history of this period is mostly someone's best guess. I am perfectly willing to go with Dorothy Dunnett's best guess. It makes for a really great story.

Product Description

With the same meticulous scholarship and narrative legerdemain she brought to her hugely popular Lymond Chronicles, our foremost historical novelist travels further into the past. In King Hereafter, Dorothy Dunnett's stage is the wild, half-pagan country of eleventh-century Scotland. Her hero is an ungainly young earl with a lowering brow and a taste for intrigue. He calls himself Thorfinn but his Christian name is Macbeth.

Dunnett depicts Macbeth's transformation from an angry boy who refuses to accept his meager share of the Orkney Islands to a suavely accomplished warrior who seizes an empire with the help of a wife as shrewd and valiant as himself. She creates characters who are at once wholly creatures of another time yet always recognizable--and she does so with such realism and immediacy that she once more elevates historical fiction into high art.

5. Goodnight Tweetheart

2011-01-27T11:23:00.000-06:00

By Teresa Medeiros
Rated 4.5 Stars
From: Library
Recommended by Maudeen

This is another book that I am the wrong generation to be able to relate to the Twitter group but it was very cleverly written and was both humorous and very poignant at the same time. I enjoyed it a lot. It was a great change of pace from some of the more ponderous books I am reading at the moment.

Publisher Summary

New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros absolutely dazzles in this quick-witted, laugh-out-loud funny, and highly moving love story that will set readers’ hearts atwitter.

Abigail Donovan has a lot of stuff she should be doing. Namely writing her next novel. A bestselling author who is still recovering from a near Pulitzer Prize win and the heady success that follows Oprah’s stamp of approval, she is stuck at Chapter Five and losing confidence daily. But when her publicist signs her up for a Twitter account, she’s intrigued. What’s all the fuss?

Taken under the wing of one of her Twitter followers, “MarkBaynard"—a quick witted, quick-typing professor on sabbatical—Abby finds it easy to put words out into the world 140 characters at a time. And once she gets a handle on tweets, retweets, direct messages, hashtags, and trends, she starts to feel unblocked in writing and in life. After all, why should she be spending hours in her apartment staring at her TweetDeck and fretting about her stalled career when Mark is out there traveling the world and living?

Or is he?

3. Before I fall

2011-01-27T11:19:00.000-06:00

By: Lauren Oliver
Rated 3 Stars
From: Library
Recommended by Maudeen

To begin, I am really not the target audience that this book was aimed at. I have little to no empathy for todays teenagers. They live on a different planet than the one I have always occupied.

Still, as much as I really didn't like this book I couldn't give up on it entirely because it is so very well written. The author managed to drag me kicking and screaming all the way to the end. The premiss was very interesting though and caused me to do a re-reread of Ken Grimwoods book Repay that is written around the same idea but with characters I had much more sympathy with and was able to relate to more easily.

Publishers description:

What if you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High—from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life.
Instead, it turns out to be her last.

Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death—and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

2. Talking About Detective Fiction

2011-01-10T09:02:00.000-06:00

By: P. D. James
Rated 4 Stars
From Library Website

Copied from Library Summary:

What are we talking about and how did it all begin? -- The tenant of 221B Baker Street and the parish priest from Cobhole in Essex -- The Golden Age -- Soft-centered and hard-boiled -- Four formidable women -- Telling the story : setting, viewpoint, people -- Critics and aficionados : why some don't enjoy them and why others do -- Today and a glimpse of tomorrow.

P. D. James--one of the most widely admired writers of detective fiction at work today--gives us a personal, lively exploration of the human appetite for mystery and mayhem, and of those writers who have satisfied it. She examines the genre from top to bottom, beginning with the mysteries at the hearts of such novels as Charles Dickens's Bleak House, and bringing us into the present with such writers as Colin Dexter and Sara Paretsky. She compares British and American Golden Age mystery writing. She discusses detective fiction as social history, the stylistic components of the genre, her own process of writing, how critics have reacted over the years, and what she sees as a renewal of detective fiction--and of the detective hero--in recent years.

3. Adolph Hitler

2011-01-10T08:56:00.003-06:00

By: John Toland
Rated 5 Stars
Currently Reading
Update - finished 2/6/2011
From Library

Since I have already done Roosevelt and 1/3 of Churchill I thought it would be interesting to add Hitler to the mix as these are three of the four very powerful men who were such a strong influence on the world as it was in 1935 when I was born. I need to add Stalin to the list and at some time I probably will. I have the second Churchill - Vol II, The Lost Years on my wish list and will probably do it next month or maybe March. It's a huge shame that William Manchester was unable to complete the trilogy he planned to write because I really would love to read what he would have written about Churchill during the war years.

But for right now I have Hitler. Very interesting but not much joy. I read this book back in the 70's and I'll tell you - I made me seriously wonder about demonic possession and whether or not it was actually possible. I still wonder.

1. The Noble House

2011-01-07T08:18:00.000-06:00

By: James Clavell
Rated 5 ++ Stars

I just finished listening to an audiobook of The Noble House by James Clavell. 56 hours and 13 minutes of fast moving action and spies everywhere. Russian Spies, Chinese Spies, British Spies, American Spies, Industrial Multinational Spies, and Corporate Spies. The saving grace of this complicated story is that Clavell peopled it with characters I cared about.I loved it!

Although the story is set in 1963 and the politics is somewhat dated it is true to it's time and some of it, re: Viet Nam for instance is downright prophetic. I read this book sometime in the mid 70's back when I was still naive about what went on in the world. Sadly this time through I found all the goings on completely believable.

Publishers Description:
The setting is Hong Kong, 1963. The action spans scarcely more than a week, but these are the days of high adventure, from kidnapping and murder to financial double-dealing and natural catastrophes: fire, flood, and landslide. Yet they are days filled as well with all the mystery and romance of Hong Kong, the heart of Asia, rich in every trade: money, flesh, opium, power.

70. Face of a Stranger

2010-12-23T11:59:00.000-06:00

By: Anne Perry
Rated 4.5
From Library

This is a new series to me although it's been around a while. I enjoyed it enough to request the next book in the series.

Publisher's Description:

After an accident in his carriage, detective William Monk wakes up with no memory; ashamed to admit it, he bluffs his way through recovery and returns to work, where he is assigned a particularly tricky investigation of a young nobleman's brutal murder. While tracking the last affairs of the victim, Monk traces his own history and dislikes what he turns up on both fronts. Uncovering unpleasant secrets within Grey's aristocratic family, he also finds his gradually revealed former self to have been ambitious, cold and perhaps cruel. Integral to Perry's rich, unpredictable plot is the Crimean War, graphically described by Hester Latterly, a forthright young woman of the middle class who nursed there with Florence Nightingale.

War of 1812

2010-12-20T18:27:00.002-06:00

DVD
From: Netflix
Rated 4 Stars

Never had much of a handle on that war beyond that it started over the Brit's impressing American seamen and that they burned the courthouse in Gilford Co., N.C. causing me much inconvenience. Yeah I know they also burned The White House but that wasn't personal as none of my ancestors records were kept there.

This would have been a lot more interesting if the disk had not been damaged and did a lot of skipping. Still, I enjoyed it anyway.

Netflix Description:

This absorbing series compiles an impressive roster of documentaries that illuminate the history-making 1812 battle between the United States and Great Britain, a war that at first appeared to be a lost cause. But with Andrew Jackson as America's leader, the country emerged victorious. Programs include "First Invasion: The War of 1812"; "The Battle of New Orleans"; and "The Ironclads." Also contains a detailed biography of Jackson.

67 & 68 Bess Crawford Mysteries

2010-12-17T15:37:00.001-06:00

A Duty to the Dead

By Charles Todd
Rated 4.5
Audiobook
From Library

The summary below that I copied from my library's website (and is not copyrighted) is so complete that I will only comment that I thought the character of Bess got off to a somewhat rocky start. She was coming across like a long suffering bore and I was sure I wasn't going to like her. But after a while the authors got a handle on her I soon warmed up to her.

The mystery was excellent. Even after I figured out whodunnit I was still in doubt whether or not everything was going to turn out alright. I would have been very upset if it hadn't.

Publisher's Summary:

From the brilliantly imaginative New York Times bestselling author Charles Todd comes an unforgettable new character in an exceptional new series

England, 1916. Independent-minded Bess Crawford's upbringing is far different from that of the usual upper-middle-class British gentlewoman. Growing up in India, she learned the importance of responsibility, honor, and duty from her officer father. At the outbreak of World War I, she followed in his footsteps and volunteered for the nursing corps, serving from the battlefields of France to the doomed hospital ship Britannic.

On one voyage, Bess grows fond of the young, gravely wounded Lieutenant Arthur Graham. Something rests heavily on his conscience, and to give him a little peace as he dies, she promises to deliver a message to his brother. It is some months before she can carry out this duty, and when she's next in England, she herself is recovering from a wound.

When Bess arrives at the Graham house in Kent, Jonathan Graham listens to his brother's last wishes with surprising indifference. Neither his mother nor his brother Timothy seems to think it has any significance. Unsettled by this, Bess is about to take her leave when sudden tragedy envelops her. She quickly discovers that fulfilling this duty to the dead has thrust her into a maelstrom of intrigue and murder that will endanger her own life and test her courage as not even war has.

An Impartial Witness

Rated 5 Stars
Hardcover
From: Library

It is the early summer of 1917. Bess Crawford has returned to England from the trenches of France with a convoy of severely wounded men. One of her patients is a young pilot who has been burned beyond recognition, and who clings to life and the photo of his wife that is pinned to his tunic.

While passing through a London train station, Bess notices a woman bidding an emotional farewell to an officer, her grief heart-wrenching. And then Bess realizes that she seems familiar. In fact, she's the woman in the pilot's photo, but the man she is seeing off is not her husband.
Back on duty in France, Bess discovers a newspaper with a drawing of the woman's face on the front page. Accompanying the drawing is a plea from Scotland Yard seeking information from anyone who has seen her. For it appears that the woman was murdered on the very day Bess encountered her at the station.
Granted leave to speak with Scotland Yard, Bess becomes entangled in the case. Though an arrest is made, she must delve into the depths of her very soul to decide if the police will hang an innocent man or a vicious killer. Exposing the truth is dangerous—and will put her own life on the line.

66. Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone

2010-12-16T09:37:00.002-06:00

By: J. K. Rowlings
Rated 5 Stars
Audio Book
From Library

Casting around for a lighter read I decided it might be a good idea to revisit this series before the last movie(s) come out on DVD. Not that these books stay a light read but in the beginning they were and maybe by the time they start to get darker my mood will change.

On Bookflurries last night a poster was talking about how the series develops and that the books are even better read together, because you can see where she plants seeds that bear fruit in later books. It will probably be a while before these last two movies are out on DVD but then I plan a leisurely listen to the series so maybe I won't be too out of sync with the movies by the time they are released.

Product Description on Wrapper of Audiobook

Say you've spent the first 10 years of your life sleeping under the stairs of a family who loathes you. Then, in an absurd, magical twist of fate you find yourself surrounded by wizards, a caged snowy owl, a phoenix-feather wand, and jellybeans that come in every flavor, including strawberry, curry, grass, and sardine. Not only that, but you discover that you are a wizard yourself! This is exactly what happens to young Harry Potter in J.K. Rowling's enchanting, funny debut novel, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

In the nonmagic human world--the world of "Muggles"--Harry is a nobody, treated like dirt by the aunt and uncle who begrudgingly inherited him when his parents were killed by the evil Voldemort. But in the world of wizards, small, skinny Harry is famous as a survivor of the wizard who tried to kill him. He is left only with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, curiously refined sensibilities, and a host of mysterious powers to remind him that he's quite, yes, altogether different from his aunt, uncle, and spoiled, piglike cousin Dudley.

A mysterious letter, delivered by the friendly giant Hagrid, wrenches Harry from his dreary, Muggle-ridden existence: "We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." Of course, Uncle Vernon yells most unpleasantly, "I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" Soon enough, however, Harry finds himself at Hogwarts with his owl Hedwig... and that's where the real adventure--humorous, haunting, and suspenseful.

Hamlet

2010-12-11T08:24:00.002-06:00

By: William Shakespeare
Directed by and Starring Kenneth Branagh
Rated 5++
From: Gift from Friend

l loved this movie. When I first realized that it was 4 hours long I thought it was going to be tedius but when I saw it I was so enthralled that i didn't notice the passage of time. When I saw it a second time the only part that detracted at all was the performances of Lemmon (dull and somehow out of place) and Depardieu (way overrated in my opinion). Everyone fom Kenneth Branagh to Rufus Sewell, excluding Lemmon and Depardieu, gave truly amazing performances. Kate Winslet's performance as Ophelia was unparalleled. Nobody has ever done it better. Ever. It was nice to see his use of old favorites from his previous films ,Richard Briers and Derek Jacobi, as well as some new blood. I really loved the Palace they used it added some interesting elements to the film. My three favorite scenes are the "play scene", the "May all my thoughts be bloody scene", and the "gravedigger" scene. This movie is easily my favorite version of Hamlet.

Amazon.com Product Description:

It's the greatest work of literature, but nobody had ever filmed Hamlet uncut--until Kenneth Branagh went about the task for his lavish 1996 production. The result is a sumptuous, star-studded version that scores a palpable hit on its avowed goal: to make the text as clear and urgent as possible. Branagh himself plays the melancholy son of the Danish court, caught in a famous muddle about whether to seek revenge against his royal father's presumed slayer… the man who now sits on the throne and shares the bed of Hamlet's mother. (Or, as the song "That's Entertainment" summarizes the plot: "A ghost and a prince meet / And everyone winds up mincemeat.") As a director, Branagh (who shot the movie in 70 mm.) uses the vast, cold interiors of a vaguely 19th-century manor to gorgeous effect; the story might scurry down this hallway, into that back chamber, or sprawl out into the enormous main room. With its endless collection of mirrors, the place is as big and empty as Citizen Kane's Xanadu.

My Comments:

Sherman's March

2010-12-11T08:03:00.001-06:00

History Channel
DVD from Netflix
Rated 4 Stars

Product Description

General William Tecumseh Sherman s scorched-earth strategy against the South helped end the Civil War and in the process changed military strategy forever. In SHERMAN S MARCH, THE HISTORY CHANNEL explores his brutal and effective campaign, which arguably saved the Lincoln presidency, the Union, and thousands of lives on both sides--and made Sherman one of the most hated and misunderstood figures in American history.

In November 1864, Sherman and an army of 60,000 troops began their month-long march from Atlanta to Savannah. Burning crops, destroying bridges and railroads, and laying waste to virtually everything in his path, Sherman moved relentlessly to the sea, crushing the South s will to fight.

Through cutting-edge CGI battle scenes and dramatizations based on contemporary sources, SHERMAN S MARCH mixes the sweep of large-scale military strategy with intimate stories of the women, the slaves, and the soldiers who fought on both sides. Shot in hi-definition, SHERMAN S MARCH is both a lavish documentary and a gripping portrait of the complicated man who coined the phrase War is Hell and came to be called the father of modern, total warfare.

DVD Features: Full-Length Documentary Sherman s Total War Tactics episode of Save Our History ; History in the Making

The Last Lion, Volume I: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

2010-12-07T09:39:00.001-06:00

By: William Manchester
Rated 5 Stars
Audiobook from Library

This audiobook is over 32 hours long! But this an amazingly well done history of the man and the times. Long, but never boring! We need more inspirational books like this to remind us of the struggles that are required to stay free in a world that is dangerous and full of those who would rule us as dictators. History in the name of a person - that's what this book is about. I am looking forward to Volume 2, Alone 1932-1940. 36 hrs 22 minutes. One could make a career of listening to this biography.

Publisher's Summary

Winston Churchill is perhaps the most important political figure of the 20th century. His great oratory and leadership during the Second World War were only part of his huge breadth of experience and achievement. Studying his life is a fascinating way to imbibe the history of his era and gain insight into key events that have shaped our time.

In political office at the end of WWI, Churchill foresaw the folly of Versailles and feared what a crippled Germany would do to the balance of power. In his years in the political wilderness, from 1931 to 1939, he alone of all British public men, continually raised his voice against Hitler and his appeasers. For over 50 years, he was constantly involved in, and usually at the center of, the most important events of his age. It was, however, his obduracy on matters of principle, his fortitude in the face of opposition, and his perseverance in standing alone that defined him.

65. Flanagan's Run

2010-12-06T06:20:00.006-06:00

By Tom McNab
Rated 5+++
From: Library
Audiobook

I don't know how one can call an audiobook a page turner with a straight face but this recording was absolutely riviting. I stayed up late to finish it because I couldn't bear to stop. The reader, Rubert Degas did an excellent job of bringing the characters to life and that made it even more exciting. It's been a while since a book pulled me into it this deep. I am sure that had I read this book I would have loved it but this is a book that is enhanced by listening to Rupert Degas turn these characters into real people in my mind.

I woke up thinking about the characters and what became of them this morning. It told you about the main characters but there were almost a thousand runners who finished. I had to keep reminding myself that this is a work of fiction because I really cared what happened to these people after they completed such a huge event. If a book pulls me in like this on did I sometimes have a problem separating fictional people from non fictional people. What a silly woman I can be.

But anyway, a delightful, exciting read that's for sure. I am not or ever have been a runner but now, in my heart I am one.

Product Description:

It is depression-era America and notorious huckster, Flanagan, plans the ultimate race, reeling in contestants with the promise of a glittering jackpot prize. Two thousand audacious hopefuls line up at the starting line from every walk of life and all ends of the globe, each with something to prove. As they run themselves ragged across America, they come up against numerous hazards, including the precipitous Rockies, shady mobsters and crooked officials. Their different stories, ambitions and dreams converge through a shared determination which will inspire you to push on to the finishing line.

64. The Forgotten Garden

2010-11-30T08:47:00.002-06:00

By: Kate Morton
Rated 4 Stars
Audio Book from Library

This is another do-over for me. I am ordering audio books from the library that I was disappointed in the first time to ee if I like them better in audio. This is definitely one I like better in audio format.

The only complaint I have about it is that the POV changes were not always smooth for me and I often found myself disorientated. It would take a minute or to for me to figure where I was in the story of a particular pov. Aside from that it was a very good story.

Publisher Summary

A tiny girl is abandoned on a ship headed for Australia in 1913. She arrives completely alone with nothing but a small suitcase containing a few clothes and a single book - a beautiful volume of fairy tales. She is taken in by the dockmaster and his wife and raised as their own. On her twenty-first birthday they tell her the truth, and with her sense of self shattered and with very little to go on, "Nell" sets out on a journey to England to try to trace her story, to find her real identity. Her quest leads her to Blackhurst Manor on the Cornish coast and the secrets of the doomed Mountrachet family.

But it is not until her granddaughter, Cassandra, takes up the search after Nell's death that all the pieces of the puzzle are assembled. At Cliff Cottage, on the grounds of Blackhurst Manor, Cassandra discovers the forgotten garden of the book's title and is able to unlock the secrets of the beautiful book of fairy tales.

63. The Dancing Years, #33

2010-11-30T08:36:00.001-06:00

By:Cynthia Harrod Eagles

The 33rd installment in the saga of the Morland family begins in the year 1919. I am very sad that this sagas coming to a close. What a wonderful literary soap opera this has been. A pox on grasping publishers who never think enough money is enough. *sigh* One more book to go.

As the euphoria of the Armistice fades, the nation count the cost—millions dead or disabled, unemployment, strikes, and shortages—and attempt to build a new life. Teddy tries to recreate balance but then a trip to France to see the place where Ned fell has unforeseen consequences. Polly, grieving for Erich Kuppel, persuades her father to send her to New York, and despite Prohibition, the great city pulses with life and promises her a fresh start. Jessie and Bertie, detained in London by Bertie's job, long to start their new life together. Jack becomes a pioneer of civil aviation, but when the company fails he's faced with unemployment, with a growing family to support. As they all seek relief from their own memories, the Morland's witness a new world struggling to be born out of the ashes; and as long as the music lasts, they will keep on dancing.

64. Whose Body

2010-11-30T08:32:00.002-06:00

By: Dorothy L. Sayers
Rated: 5 Stars
Audio Book
From: Download from Libravox

This is the only Dorothy Sayers book available at Libravox.org. It's Sayers introduction to Lord Peter Wimsey. It was a fun read/listen. I love Lord Peter.

The stark naked body was lying in the tub.Not unusual for a proper bath, but highly irregular for murder -- especially witha pair of gold pince-nez deliberately perched before the sightless eyes. What's more, the face appeared to have been shaved after death. The police assumed that the victim was a prominent financier, but Lord Peter Wimsey, who dabbled in mystery detection as a hobby, knew better. In this, his first murder case, Lord Peter untangles the ghastly mystery of the corpse in the bath.

Henry V - DVD

2010-11-30T08:05:00.000-06:00

By: William Shakespeare
Rated 5 Stars
From: Gift

I really couldn't add a thing to the amazon description I have copied and pasted below. This is my favorite adaption of Henry V.

Amazon Description

Very few films come close to the brilliance Kenneth Branagh achieved with his first foray into screenwriting and direction. Henry V qualifies as a masterpiece, the kind of film that comes along once in a decade. He eschews the theatricality of Laurence Olivier's stirring, fondly remembered 1945 adaptation to establish his own rules. Branagh plays it down and dirty, seeing the bard's play through revisionist eyes, framing it as an antiwar story. Branagh gives us harsh close-ups of muddied, bloody men, and close-ups of himself as Henry, his hardened mouth and willful eyes revealing much about this land war. Not that the director-star doesn't provide lighter moments. His scenes introducing the French Princess Katherine (Emma Thompson) are toothsome. Bubbly, funny, enhanced by lovely lighting and Thompson's pale beauty, these glimpses of a princess trying to learn English quickly from her maid are delightful.

What may be the crowning glory of Branagh's adaptation comes when the dazed, shaky leader wanders through battlefields, not even sure who has won. As King Hal carries a dead boy (Empire of the Sun's Christian Bale) over the hacked-up bodies of both the English and French, you realize it is the first time Branagh has opened up the scenes: a panorama of blood and mud and death. It is as strong a statement against warmongering as could ever be made.

62. All Clear

2010-11-09T12:44:00.001-06:00

By: Connie Willis
Rated 5 Stars
Audio Book

I loved this book but it really did make my head spin. But it is si important to read"Blackout" before reading "All Clear" the latest novel by Connie Willis. It is not a sequel with explanations of what went on before, it's PART 2; it picks up right where the other left off. Together they combine to create a first rate suspenseful work in which many of the themes characteristic of her work - single-minded characters whose agendas interfere with the plans of the protagonists, the impact of technology on personal lives, the effort to cope with tragedy and loss - are on full display.

Even with reading them together I never did get all of it. This was a very complicated story. One charecter was in it twice, one as Mary in 1945 and as Polly in 1941. That kind of gave me a headache for a while intil I got a firm grip on it. I never did figuire out the Eileen-Colin link (???) butI really liked the Vicar and was glad that worked out.

There was a I scene in the War Museum that I especially loved because I have been there and went through the Blitz exhibit. It was exactly like it was described in the book.

I was an amazing story and I felt it was a real tribute to the people of London. On day in 1984 when I was at Jenny's house in Scotland her elderly Aunt came up from London for a visit. On a cold rainy day while Jenny was away from home her Aunt and I spent a long afternoon together. I was lucky and came up with an inspired question and asked her if she lived in London during the blitz.She said yes and I asked her what it was like. It was like I had opened a spigot. She talked about it all afternoon and I was absolutely fascinated. It was such a huge thing to have lived through and she obviously remembered everything about what she lived through. In my mind the book paid tribute to people like Jenny's Aunt Ciss.

I put those books on my hard drive and at some point I am going to listen to them again as one big book. My brain has a hard enough time with them without a long interuption in the middle.