38. My Dear I wanted to tell you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.