61. Blackout - redux

By:  Connie Willis
Rated 5 Stars
Format:  Audio Book

This was a do over for me.  Here is my review from when I read it back in April.

My original review of Blackout

It was immediately evident to me that 1.) I read on an entirely different level than I listen, and 2.) mood plays a huge part in how I feel about a book when I read it.

There are so many characters at the beginning, that it's hard to keep them straight. The reader/listener is getting the viewpoints of three main characters, historians Polly, Eileen and Mike, all time traveling to WWII England for first person experiences during the London Blitz.  Polly as a shop clerk in London during the Blitz, Eileen as a maid in the north of England to observe child evacuees from London, and Mike to Dover to observe ships returning from the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk. They all worry incessantly about every thing they do and whether what they've done has changed history.  This got so tiresome that if this had been a book I probably would have wall banged it at least once.  I would have picked it back up and continued to read it though. :) Also the number of obstacles the characters encountered every time they tried to so something felt contrived.   However . . .

But I gave a 5 star rating on this journal for my reread that was AFTER I real the sequel (?) All Clear.  These books do not stand alone.  It is all one book and Blackout ends in the middle of the story.  At the end of All Clear things made sense that annoyed the heck out of me in Blackout although I still thought that the characters agonized to much over every little thing they said or did.

These are great books but the plot is very complicated and multi layered.  Be warned.

60. The English Patient

By: Michael Ondaatje
Rated 1 Star
Audio Book from Library

This book had no plot!  It really didn't.  But it did have beautiful prose.  But even beautiful prose can't carry a story if the story doesn't exist.  I thought the author was indulging him self by offering up his obvious talent for writing really beautiful phrases, and then sticking them haphazardly together  and trying to pass them off as great literature.

The story (?) was supposed to be about an unnamed English flier who was terribly burned in a plane crash who was left behind along with a nurse who refuses to leave when the hospital moves on.  Right.  Like that would happen in the military!  If anyone reads this blog and is interested in what the story is supposed to be about you can go to amazon and see what other readers tried to make of it.  Amazon reader reviews  For my part It passeth all understanding.

59. Fly Away Home

By:  Jennifer Weiner
Rated 2.5 Stars
From Library

The story line wasn't too bad. My problems with this book was the characters. They were just not the kind of people I could relate too. Also I felt the author wimped out with the ending. I think she tried to end it in a way that didn't offend anyone. But in doing that nothing was resolved for any of the characters and the book was left without making any kind of sense. [shaking head in disgust]


Publishers Description

When Senator Richard Woodruff's affair makes headlines, his wife and two daughters are forced into the spotlight. Wife Sylvie has shed everything that made her who she was in order to fit the role of a senator's wife. Daughter Lizzie is a recovering addict and older daughter Diana, an emergency room physician finds herself being tempted out of her loveless marriage. Jennifer Weiner, author of Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, presents a new novel about a female bonding and the facets of family.

The Fort

By: Bernard Cornwell
Audio Book - DNF
Rated 0 Stars
Library

I would have never believed that Bernard Cornwell could wrire such a boring book if I hadn't tried the book myself.  It's simply mind numbingly dull.

Publishers description

On Aug. 14, 1779, a New England fleet, including a 32-gun frigate and the entire Massachusetts Navy, and 14 transports, was destroyed — sunk, scuttled, blown up, or captured — by a British squadron in Penobscot Bay. It was a disaster matched only at Pearl Harbor some 162 years later. Bernard Cornwell gives this little-known event his usual on-the-ground treatment, backed up by a detailed historical note. What will startle local readers is Cornwell's revisionist depiction of the iconic Paul Revere, the expedition's artillery commander, as petulant, insubordinate, and downright incompetent.

60. The true story of Paul Revere

his midnight ride, his arrest and court-martial, his useful public services

Rated 5 Stars
From Library

Product Description

Originally published in 1905. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume

58. Fall of Giants

By:  Ken Follett
Rated:  5 Stars
Format:  Audio Book

I just finished listening to Fall of Giants. It certainly held my attention from Start to finish. But as I said before, I like these long historical rambles. By the end I had realized it had less in common to Delderfield and was written very much in the style of Herman Woulk's Winds of War.

If I had bought a hardcover addition instead of an audio version I think I would have given this story 4 Stars. But John Lee who reads the story did such a wonderful job with the accents, especially the Welsh that he made the characters so real for me it fully deserves five stars.
One of the things that made this story stand out was that Mr. Follett seamlessly wove in so many interconnected points of view that it added to the drama of what was happening to each character. I can hardly wait for the sequel to find out what happened to these people. I hope the talented John Lee reads it, and I fervently hope Lloyd wins the Victoria Cross in WWII and stuffs it up Fitz's nose.

Before I purchased this book I checked the ratings on amazon and was very surprised to see it only had a two star rating.

I was so curious about so many one star reviews I started reading them.  I did't read all of them but did read the first fourty.  Those were all complaining about the Kindle pricing.  Apparently there is some sort of organized protest going on trying to force amazon to reduce the price.  Amazon is going to have to figure out a way to weed out the inappropriate use of the review system before it is destroy it.  Those 99 one star "reviews" are little more than spam IMO.

Link to Fall of Giants on Amazon

56. The Attenbury Emeralds

By:  Jill Paton Walsh
Rated 4.5 Stars
From:  Owned
Format:  Audio Book

The novel begins with Lord Peter and Bunter telling Harriet the story of their 1921 investigation into the disappearance of the Attenbury emeralds. Then the  current Lord Attenbury asks Lord Peter to investigate a new mystery involving the emeralds. As Lord Peter starts looking into the current mystery he discovers mysteries within the mystery.  

In addition the Wimsey family has an adventure of their own.  It's interesting how it ends.  Also I'm very curious whether or not there will be another LPW mystery in the future.   While bringing the career of Lord Peter to a rather logical conclusion Walsh left the door slightly open for a future book.  It probably depends on how well this one sells.


Product Description

It was 1921 when Lord Peter Wimsey first encountered the Attenbury emeralds. The recovery of the magnificent gem in Lord Attenbury’s most dazzling heirloom made headlines – and launched a shell-shocked young aristocrat on his career as a detective.

Now it is 1951: a happily married Lord Peter has just shared the secrets of that mystery with his wife, the detective novelist Harriet Vane.  Then the new young Lord Attenbury – grandson of Lord Peter’s first client – seeks his help again, this time to prove who owns the gigantic emerald that Wimsey last saw in 1921.

55. The Cruel Sea

By: Nicholas Monsarrat

Rated 5 Stars

From:  Library

One of the classic naval adventure stories of World War II, Monsarrat's novel tells the tale of two British ships trying to escape destruction by wolf pack U-boats hunting in the North Atlantic.

I read everything the small library the naval station on Guam had by this author.  I loved his writing.  But that was 35 years ago and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then and I had forgotten the author's name and the titles of his books.  But I knew when I read the first page of The Cruel Sea that THIS WAS IT!!  The books I have been looking for in the past ten years. :)

Now I'm looking forward to a nice leisurely time happily reading through my library's books by this author.  What a treat to look forward too. 

54. Adventures Among Ants

By:  Mark W. Moffett
Rated 4.3 Stars
From Library

This book is very well written in a very light and easy to read style.  I am enjoying it and since I've been fighting (and losing) an ongoing war with the critters I am hoping knowing them better might give me an edge.

Library Summary

Intrepid international explorer, biologist, and photographer Mark W. Moffett, "the Indiana Jones of entomology," takes us around the globe on a strange and colorful journey in search of the hidden world of ants. With tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological exploits and provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, yet at a different scale and at a faster tempo. Moffett's spectacular close-up photographs shrink us down to size, so that we can observe ants in familiar roles: working as farmers, warriors, builders, big-game hunters, and slave owners. We find them in marketplaces and on assembly lines. We discover them dealing with issues we think of as uniquely human-from hygiene and recycling to warfare and terrorism. Adventures among Ants introduces some of the world's most awe-inspiring species, and at the same time, offers a startling new perspective on the limits of our own perceptions.

* Ants are world-class road builders, handling complex traffic problems on thoroughfares that dwarf our highway systems
* Ants take slaves from conquered armies and create societies dependent on their labor
* Ants with the largest societies often deploy complex military tactics
* Some ants have evolved from hunter-gatherers into farmers, domesticating other animals and growing specific crops for food

53. God is an Englishman Trilogy

By:  R. L. Delderfield
Rated 5+ Srars
Re-read


1. God is an Englishman
Adam Swann, scion of an army family, returns home in 1858 after service with Her Majesty's army in the Crimea and India, determined to build his fortune in the dog-eat-dog world of Victorian commerce. Swann is soon captivated by Henrietta, the high-spirited daughter of a local mill owner. As Swann works to build his name, he and Henrietta share adventures, reversal, and fortune.

2. Theirs was the Kingdom
The 1880s in England were a laissez-faire decade of national optimism and prosperity, of rampant colonialism, typhoid epidemics, and a Diamond Jubilee. This follow-up novel continues the saga of the Victorian giant of commerce Adam Swann, his tough-minded wife Henrietta, and their five children. This prolific tale records the triumphs and tragedies of a memorable family and a nation at the height of its imperial power.

3. Give us This Day
Sweeping Adam Swann and three generations of his family into the tide of events that followed Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, this stirring novel confronts them, and England, with the social upheaval of a rapidly changing world. The same revolutionary ferment that stirs up labor unrest also births the English suffragette movement, taking the family idealist, Giles, to Parliament. With conflicting interests, two of his brothers usher the family's firm into the twentieth century and another Swann brother, Alex, a professional soldier, attempts to introduce an outmoded army to modern tactics. Like their aging father, these Swanns strive energetically to wed personal dreams to national values-even as the rumble of the guns of August 1914 signals the end of the world as they and their country have known it.

51. Rag and Bone

By:  James R. Benn
Rated 4.5 Stars
From:  Library

This is the fifth book in the Billy Boyle series and I think it's the best one yet.  It's a fascinating picture of the intelligence world during WWII and the author is very skillful in depicting the impact of war on London--the bricks from bombed buildings piled neatly on the streets, families living in Tube stations, "the odor of the Blitz." Destruction aside, Billy never forgets that "Even in the midst of war, murder is unacceptable."

Publishers Description

Billy is sent to London in the midst of a Luftwaffe bombing offensive to investigate the murder of a Soviet official. There's reason to believe that the crime could be connected to the recent discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest, where thousands of Polish officers were executed. Is a killer is out there, targeting Soviet officials in revenge for the Katyn Massacre? If so, the diplomatic stakes couldn't be higher as the uneasy relationship between the Soviets and the other allied powers hangs in the balance. Further complicating matters, Scotland Yard names Billy's friend Kaz, now working for the Polish government in exile, as the prime suspect. Billy must track the killer through London's criminal underworld and save his friend.

52. The Last Lie

By Stephen White
Rated 4 Stars
From Library

This book got some pretty bad reviews on Amazon but I stayed up reading until after midnight to finish this book last night.  That's very unusual for me.  I thought it was a real page turner but I didn't quite buy into all the secret's the house its self had.  I guess I need to go back and read the book that featured the builder.

Publisher Summary - bestselling author Stephen White returns to his beloved Alan Gregory series with a taut, ripped-from-the-headlines crime story.

Stephen White's most recent bestseller, The Siege, featured his series character Sam Purdy in a relentlessly paced stand-alone thriller that critics hailed as "brilliantly conceived and executed" (Publishers Weekly) and "the best and most interesting terrorism thriller I've seen." (The Washington Post) Now, in The Last Lie, White returns to his Alan Gregory series roots with the popular characters and Boulder setting that first launched him onto the bestseller lists and attracted legions of fiercely loyal fans.

Shortly after Alan and Lauren welcome their affluent new neighbors-a legal legend in women's rights law and his beautiful wife-the couple hosts a housewarming party that ends in quiet disaster. One of their guests, a young widow, elects to spend the night after indulging in too much wine, only to wake the next morning with no memory beyond getting ready for bed. Was she drugged? Raped? Lauren, a deputy district attorney, and detective Sam Purdy are both privy to facts they can't share with Alan, but Alan soon discovers that he has a most unusual perspective into what truly happened after the housewarming party. Before Alan can discover all the pieces to the puzzle, an important witness to the events is murdered. Alan fears that other witnesses-people he loves-will be next. Smart, topical, and deftly plotted, The Last Lie delivers the pulse-pounding return of one of contemporary fiction's most enduring heroes.