87. The Time of Singing

By:  Elizabeth Chadwich
Rated 5+++++ Stars

Absolutely wonderful!

FROM ELIZABETH CHADWICK WEBSITE:  In 1173, Roger Bigod is heir to the vast and powerful earldom of Norfolk When his treacherous father, Hugh, loses the family lands and castles in a rebellion against King Henry II, Roger finds himself in reduced circumstances and dogged by a bitter family dispute with his half brother over the remaining crumbs. Whilst trying to resolve the matter, he encounters Ida de Tosney, the King's young mistress. Seduced by Henry, Ida's gaze is now drawn to Roger in whom she sees a chance of lasting security beyond the fickle dazzle of the court. But she has to navigate a careful path between her dearest wishes and the King's reluctance to part with her. Every fulfilled wish has its price, and that price is losing the son she has borne to Henry. When King Richard comes to the throne, Roger is restored to his family's lands and becomes a great earl, and one of the richest men in England. He builds a great castle at Framlingham for himself and for Ida, but life is still riddled with uncertainty as Richard goes on crusade and the men left to govern the country quarrel their way into civil war. Ida struggles to come to terms with their new future...

86. Crossroads

By Belva Plain
Rated 2 Stars
Purchased in Train Station

Something to read on train.

Plain's tepid latest focuses on two women—privileged but plain Gwen Wright and beautiful but poor Jewel Fairchild. Their lives occasionally intersect, and eventually Jewel marries a wealthy man and discovers that money can't buy happiness. Gwen, meanwhile, marries a poor but honest man—but she still finds herself drawn to Jewel's husband, and the foursome is soon tangled in a web of deceit. Unfortunately, Jewel and Gwen don't evolve throughout the novel; Gwen is a character that some readers might find intolerably perfect—smart, privileged, shy, well-spoken, with simple needs and a tragic past—but any irritation that one might have with her is eliminated by the calculating and shallow Jewel, who is too pathetic to be a legitimate antagonist and too tragic to really be hated. It functions well as a simplistic morality tale.

85. The Elfish Gene

By:  Mark Barrowcliff

Rated 4 Stars

From:  Purchased

My ten year old Great Grandson was very impressed that I was reading this.  He told me that for a Great Grandmother I read interesting books. 

--BOOK JACKET.  "In the summer of 1976, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had the chance to be normal. He blew it. While other teenagers were being coolly rebellious, Mark - like twenty million other boys in the 1970s and 80s - chose to spend his entire adolescence pretending to be a wizard or a warrior, an evil priest or a dwarf. He had discovered Dungeons Dragons, and his life would never be the same. No longer would he have to settle for being Mark Barrowcliffe, an ordinary awkward teenager from working-class Coventry; he could be Alf the Elf, Foghat the Gnome or Effilc Worrab, an elf warrior with the head of a mule." "Armed with only pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games and everything that went with it - from heavy metal to magic mushrooms to believing your bike is a horse named Shadowfax. Spat at by bullies, laughed at by girls, now they rule the world. They were the geeks, the fantasy wargamers, and this is their story."

84. The Hour I first Believed

By Wally Lamb

Rated:  One Star

From:  Purchased

This book was at least well written but way to depressing for me to enjoy.

Relocating to a family farm in Connecticut after surviving the Columbine school shootings, Caelum and Maureen discover a cache of family memorabilia dating back five generations, which reveals to Caelum unexpected truths about painful past events.

83. A House in Fez

By Susanna Clarke

Rated 5 Stars

From:  Purchased

http://riadzany.blogspot.com/2007/11/house-in-fez-book-launch.html

82. Nella Last's War

There is so much to like about this book that I am almost having a hard time writing about it.  For one thing Nella Last is one of the most eloquent writers I have ever seen.  She says in one part that if she had been clever enough she would have liked to write books.  Well I beg to differ with her - she is most assuredly clever enough.  Like you I am impressed that the British Government had the time to put together a project like the Observation Project.  They were incredibly lucky to catch Nella Last in the wide net they cast to find "ordinary" people to contribute their actual experiences in the form of a diary.  Aside from some reallhy eloquent writing what comes through to me is the breath taking honesty with which she bares her soul when she discusses her reactions and feelings as the war goes on. From all she writes of her crafts projects that she has turned into assisting in the war effort that she always had been a very creative person as well as sensitive and caring.   I would very much like to see the DVD and also there is a sequel coming out called Nella Last's Peace where presumably she continues her diary through the post war period.

One of the passages she wrote that I flagged as I read through the book is where she discusses how her work with the W.V.S. and various other projects  has changed her.  It gets more and more evident as you read through that while she has some affection for her husband (they have been married about 30 years) she has very little, if any respect for him as a person.  In fact, in the whole entire book she never once refers to him by his name - always as my husband.  Any way this passage struck me:

"When she had gone out, my husband said, 'You know, you amaze me really, when I think of the wretched health you had just before the war, and how long it took you to recover from that nervous breakdown.' I said, 'Well, I'm in rhythm now, instead of always fighting against things' - but stopped when I saw the hurt, surprised look on his face.  He never realises, and never could, that the years when I had to be quiet and always do everything he liked, and never the things he did not, were slavery years of mind and body."

And from page 195 - this made me laugh  - "As I walked I junketed off in my mind on a gay road of 'what I'd like to be next time I came".  I think I'd like to be a man and have the freedom to go to the far ends of the earth, to do things and see places, to go where few, if any, have travelled and be clever enough to write about it."

And the last bit I am going to bore you all with "The countryside was a painted glory of crimson and gold and green, so heartbreakingly lovely and it was impossible to believe that in the South - our South - there was death and destruction.  I wonder if everyone has the queer disbelief that I have so often.  And will keep it until bombs come and work havoc in Barrow, and I've seen destruction and death for myself?  I feel as if between me and the poor Londonpeople there is a thick fog, and it is only at intervals that I can believe it is our own people - not Spaniards or Dutch or French."

I cannot thank you enough Kathy for recommending this book.

81. The Bee Keeper's Apprentice

Rated 5 Stars
Re-read
From own shelves

What would happen if Sherlock Homles, a perfect man of the Victorian age--pompous, smug, and misogynisitic--were to come face to face with a twentieth-century female? If she grew to be a partner worthy of his great talents?Laurie R. King, whose very different first novel,. A Grave Talent (SMP, 1993), drew rave reviews, read the Conan Doyle stories and wondered about such an imaginary encounter. And following through, she has written The Beekeeper's Apprentice.1914, a young woman named Mary Russell meets a retired beekeeper on the Sussex Downs. His name is Sherlock Holmes. And although he may have all the Victorian "flaws" listed above, the Great Detective is no fool, and can spot a fellow intellect even in a fifteen-year-old woman.So, at first informally, then consciously, he takes Mary Russell as his apprentice. They work on a few small local cases, then on a larger and more urgent investigation, which ends successfully. All the time, Mary is developing as a detective in her own right, with the benefit of the knowledge and experience of her mentor and, increasingly, friend.And then the sky opens on them, and they find themselves the targets of a slippery, murderous, and apparently all-knowing adversary. Together they devise a plan to trap their enemy--a plan that may save their lives but may also kill off their relationship.This is not a "Sherlock Holmes" story. It is the story of a modern young woman who comes to know and work with Holmes, the story of young woman coming to terms with herself and with this older man who embodies the age that is past.

78. Identical Strangers

Rate 4 Stars
From Library

Elyse had always known she was adopted, but it wasn't until her mid-thirties that she searched for her biological mother. She was not prepared for the life-changing news: she had an identical twin sister. Not only that: she and her sister, for a time, had been part of a secret study on separated twins. Paula also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered the phone one spring afternoon, her life suddenly changed. As they take their tentative first steps from strangers to sisters, Paula and Elyse are also left with haunting questions. As they investigate their birth mother's past, they begin to solve the puzzle of their lives. Interweaving eye-opening studies and statistics on twin science into their narrative, they offer an intelligent and heartfelt glimpse into human nature.--From publisher description.

80. The Firemaster's Mistress

Rated 4.5 Stars
From Jani

England in the early reign of James I: an unsteady nation adapts to its new king; Shakespeare labors over the tragedies of Othello and Macbeth; bearbaiting is a popular diversion . . . and Guy Fawkes, with a small group of desperate men, hatches a terrifying plot to assassinate the king and all of Parliament by explosion.Francis Quoynt is a firemaster who would rather make fireworks than war. Kate Peach is a poor glovemaker and a mistress to the powerful Hugh Taylor, who is forced to hide her Catholicism as she spends her days looking out on noisy, teeming London streets crowded with prostitutes and drunks.Once Francis and Kate were lovers before the firemaster abandoned her and the plague destroyed her family. Now they will meet again-as enemies-caught up in the maelstrom of treachery and violence surrounding Fawkes's malevolent plot. In the midst of chaos and madness, the flame of their romance will be dangerously rekindled, as their lives and the London they know are changed forever.

79. 8.4

Rated 5 Stars
From Library

Scary, scary book for someone who lives right next door to the New Madrid Fault.  The stories are the stuff of legend, and they are all true. In 1811 and 1812, three earthquakes measuring 8 on the Richter scale ruptured an area spanning twenty-four states and a third of the land mass of the United States. Lakes formed in Tennessee, church bells rang in Boston, and the mighty Mississippi ran backward.But today it is all a distant memory. Until the underground force reawakens. Kentucky farmers say animals are acting strange: cows butt each other with unheard-of aggression and a few hundred rats race across a road in broad daylight. In the Ozark Mountains, leaking subterranean gases flash bursts of red and green across the midnight sky. Suddenly the earth beneath a sleepy Tennessee town "liquefies" in a fountain of mud and foul-smelling water.A man and a woman, both seismologists, find themselves in a race against the clock to convince the world that their daring mission is the only way to stop the last monstrous earthquake to come. History is about to repeat itself. It's Mother Nature calling.

77. American Wife

by Curtis Sittenfeld
Rated about 3 Stars - maybe
From: Library

I still haven't made up my mind what I think of it. The story is based on Laura Bush and it was obvious that the author admires her and definitely does not admire her husband. It was, or my take on it was, that this was an attempt to explain why such a nice woman loves such a jerk and sticks by him when (according to this book) she hates everything he stands for politically.

It would have been a very interesting book had it not been based on the Bush's but that part was hard for me to get past. There are so many things about the lives of these fictional characters that are are a matter of public record as happening to the Bush's and then some pretty controversial things attributed to the fictional character that are not a matter of record that I think some readers will not draw a distinction between what is fact and what is fiction. Unless this was written with the cooperation or permission of Laura Bush then I think that it was an invasion of her privacy. So at the end I was left hanging about whether or not I liked it.

And heaven knows how hard it is for me to defend the Bush's. *LOL* But the fact is that I have never had a problem with Laura herself.

Copied from Amazon:


From Bookmarks Magazine
While critics couldn’t say for sure whether or not Sittenfeld captures the exact thoughts of Laura Bush, they did agree that she creates a realistic and highly sympathetic portrayal of the (soon-to-be former) First Lady. (The author supposedly based the novel on Ann Gerhart’s 2004 biography, The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush.) Sittenfeld asks provoking questions about marriage, loyalty, and responsibility. But many reviewers couldn’t fundamentally understand why the very decent Alice had supported her husband despite her doubts about his capabilities; Sittenfeld’s pat, unsatisfactory answer is that Alice leads a life “in opposition.” That, combined with the author’s obvious contempt for Charlie, brought the reviews down a notch. Still, there’s nothing as titillating as a look, albeit fictional, inside the White House—especially during an election year.
Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

76. Killing Rommel

By: Stephen Pressfield
Rated 4 1/2 Stars
DVD Recording
From: Library

This was a rousing WWII adventure story. British Eighth Army, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps are advancing on the valuable oil fields of the Middle East. If the Desert Fox and his panzers gain control of these reserves, Hitler will have all the fuel he needs to power a successful offensive against the Soviets. The British government gambles with a desperate plan: send a small, highly skilled team of commandos, the Long Range Desert Group, behind enemy lines to assassinate Rommel. Told from the point of view of a young tank officer and second in command of the team, R. L. Chapman, this gripping novel is chock-full of evocative, historical details that readers of military fiction will voraciously devour.