Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
Whidbey by T Kira Madden
Okay, I could have given this a higher rating for the writing but this book is bleak. The author even gives a subject matter warning to scare you off. And also I kept thinking this was reference to Dracula as in Whitby, but not. On multiple occasions I wanted to stop reading because this book was not my thing.
Birdie is a survivor of childhood sexual. Calvin is her abuser. Mary Beth is Calvin's mother. Linzie King was also abused by Calvin and wrote a book about it. The book starts with everyone's story about Calvin and how the abuse affected them. Basically, Birdie runs away to Whidbey island when the book by Linzie King comes out about Linzie's experience with SA and it has a fictionalized version of Birdie in there. But this is a murder mystery so Calvin is murdered and then we have to see how that affects everyone. For most of the book, the narrators switch to give different view points of everyone's simply tragic lives. But then the author remembers about the mystery and starts talking directly to the reader about how the mystery is going and who the main suspects should be, tossing out red herrings and then saying why they are red herrings. Along the way we get more tragedy as more of Calvin's victims appear. And that there are more abusers out there. All bad.
Glad I'm done. Not sure I'm glad if I read that but it does show abuse in great detail, mostly mental.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
Noir by Christopher Moore
Sammy and Stilton fall in love on the mean streets of post WW2 San Francisco while falling afoul of the government and find an alien.
Moore writes a love letter to the Noir films he loves, Chandler and Hammet and San Francisco. It's all particularly hard-boiled. There is a strong LGBTQ undercurrent. Sammy travels all over the town from Chinatown to Nob Hill to Hunter's Point meeting all sorts of interesting noirish characters. The mystery isn't that particularly enthralling and I don't think Moore really cares about that aspect of the book. It's all about the characters and their scenes together.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
Alamein by Jon Latimer
Expect quite a few books about the early stages of the war in the Western Desert during World War 2. I'm trying to get a fuller picture of what happened there in the place my grandfather served.
To that end, Alamein. It's one of those battles I heard about but didn't know quite what it was about. Something Rommel. Something Montgomery. As far as the British go, the 2nd battle of El Alamein is where the war turned around for them. As Churchill said, "Before El Alamein, we hadn't won a battle. After El, Alamein, we never lost a battle" El Alamein war pretty much Commonwealth Affair, as England gathered in all her subjects and put them between the Italians and the Germans and the Suez Canal.
The book goes into great detail about every corp, division, brigade and battalion and their movements during the 11 days of the battle. I might hazard a guess there was too much detail. Latimer talks about places in the desert that I've never heard of and probably won't remember in a few weeks. The cast of characters is huge and a lot of them get a name check. Well, there were about 200,000 men duking it out in the sand. That calls for a lot of names. Latimer doesn't just talk about Big Boys, he gives snippets of what Captains, Lieutenants, and Sergeants were doing as well. It was mostly dying. That's pretty much what everybody was doing.
A lot of the book is just much in my head, but I do think I know a lot more of the battle when I started. I got some starts and finishes. A few of places might stick. And my Grandfather's 64th Fighter Group was mentioned twice. Still trying to answer the question of how they ended up there.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 7,012
Threads: 170
Joined: Oct 2005
Reputation:
0
(08-30-2026, 01:43 PM)Greg Wrote: Noir by Christopher Moore
Sammy and Stilton fall in love on the mean streets of post WW2 San Francisco while falling afoul of the government and find an alien.
Moore writes a love letter to the Noir films he loves, Chandler and Hammet and San Francisco. It's all particularly hard-boiled. There is a strong LGBTQ undercurrent. Sammy travels all over the town from Chinatown to Nob Hill to Hunter's Point meeting all sorts of interesting noirish characters. The mystery isn't that particularly enthralling and I don't think Moore really cares about that aspect of the book. It's all about the characters and their scenes together.
“You dirty manchego!”
In the Tudor Period, Fencing Masters were classified in the Vagrancy Laws along with Actors, Gypsys, Vagabonds, Sturdy Rogues, and the owners of performing bears.
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
Red Empire by Jonathan Maberry
This was a very enjoyable addition to the canon. There was a lot of backstory for Mr. Church and they were up against a foe that seemed to target Rogue Team International, so it wasn't just RTI racing around trying to figure out what was going on. They were actively being targeted. It's always good to put the good guys back on their heals. As usual the end felt a bit rushed. Big solutions to the problems were given a hand wave.
But I did want to stay up late reading and find out how everything turns out. Now I have to go find out when the next book in the series is due.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
More fun with Ne'er do well Thomas Hawkins as he settles into his new life post-prison. Hawkins is a jerk and does nothing to redeem himself. There are a whole bunch of threads flowing through the book. Hawkins gets involved with the leader of the underworld which leads him to do work for the Queen. The Queen is trying to help the King's mistress leave the mistress's husband so she can spend more time with the King, I guess. Meanwhile, Hawkins has trouble with his neighbor who winds up dead and, of course, Hawkins is the prime suspect. He has to solve the murder to clear himself, which doesn't go all together great.
There is another book in this series, but I'm not reading it. I've had enough of Hawkins.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
Eighth Army by Robin Neillands
Research continues to rear its ugly head. The Eighth Army was put together to stave off the incursions from the Italians from invading Egypt. They were the longest serving Army in WW2. There job finished in May of 1945 with the defeat of the Germans in Italy shortly before Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945. This book charts the whole course of the fighting from Egypt to Italy and thankfully does not go into as much detail as El Alamein did. The book gave me more clarity about the different units that make up an Army which helps a great deal when you go from corps to divisions to battalions to brigades.
It was all very informative and helped me learn more about the conflict my grandfather was involved in.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
This is the first book in the Cairo Trilogy. I received the entire trilogy as one book from the library. Clocking in at 1500 pages, the book is physically a pain to read. Just too thick. I'm getting ready to just get the Trilogy for my Kindle so I don't have to fight with the book so much.
It is also a tough read mentally. The family fully gives into the patriarchy. What the father Al-Sayid says goes. Despite the fact he goes out drinking and whoring every night. Amina, his wife never gets to leave the house. The one time she does, to visit a local mosque, she gets kicked out of the house for a week. The two sons live in fear of their dad. Fahmy, son number 2, is going to be lawyer. Yasin has the same desires as dear old dad and he is a rapist. The youngest son Kamal doesn't have much character yet. He just goes to school. The two daughters won't ever leave the house until they marry. Khadijia is less than attractive but since she is eldest, she must marry first. Aisha is pretty but has to wait. Fortunately, they do find husbands to get them out of the house.
The first three-quarters of the book depicts their home life in tremendous detail. In the last quarter, the revolution of 1919 intrudes. Fahmy is part of the student revolutions. Al-Sayid gets stopped by the soldiers camped outside of their home and forced to do work. Everything gets tense.
I needed more of the last quarter and less of the first three-quarters. I really wanted to go in and get those women out. But it is a close look at that culture at that time. In many ways, they are just like us. In some, strikingly different.
On to the second book.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee
What a slog. I thought I would never finish because I just stopped caring. I figured out the central big gotcha early on and I spent an eternity waiting for the characters in the book to catch on.
Distant planet, struggling to survive. Cut off from Earth while terraforming the planet. It has basically a high-tech feudal Japan analog culture. Isako plays the Samurai to the head of one of the different corporations running the planet. They lose a corporate battle and the head of the company walks out of the Dome to his death. Isako wants to follow but she takes one last job to sort of avenge his death.
Her job is to get some dirt on Uchi who runs the Southern Terraforming company to keep him from becoming one of the world leaders. One of her former students is Uchi's Samurai, but he has gone missing.
Blah Blah Blah. Mystery, ooh mystery.
I just didn't care.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
Posts: 17,863
Threads: 1,096
Joined: Jan 2016
Reputation:
1
The Hidden City by Charles Finch
I don't know if I had just been going through a series of mediocre books recently, but I really enjoyed this trip back to Charlie Lennox's house in Victorian, London. Lennox is still recovering from wounds received in the United States. He feels like he just doesn't have it anymore. But his former housekeeper wants him to find out who murdered the former tenant in her new home. This is just the tonic to get him out of the house and back to his old self.
All the familiar faces are here, plus a new cousin coming to him for help from India. The whole story is very posh and mannered. Lots of concern given to the proper etiquette for everything. I don't know how Lennox and his wife ever had children everyone is so solicitous.
It all works out in the end.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm
|
