Since my last entry, I've finished 4 books, two that I started in January and two more recent ones. I'll update that, let you know what 4 books I've currently got on the go and then show you 4 books that arrived in the mail yesterday. Oh Happy Days!! :0)
Just Finished
"Adam Bede is the third book by George Eliot that I've read over the past 3 or 4 years, the others being Daniel Deronda and The Mill on the Floss. Adam Bede, written in 1859, was her first novel. I preferred the other two but this book was still an impressive work.
At it's simplest, it's a love triangle. Adam Bede runs from 1799 - 1807. Adam Bede is a carpenter who lives with his brother Seth and his parents. He loves the niece of a reasonably prosperous farmer, Martin Poyser, Hetty, but because he is responsible for caring for his parents, he doesn't feel he is yet ready to pledge his love to Hetty. Hetty, a pretty girl of 18, has cast her eye and hopes towards the rich son of the local landowner, a young man above her station, he being Arthur Donnithorne. Arthur is a friendly, handsome young man who is waiting for his grandfather to die so he can inherit the estate. He is a happy-go-lucky sort, who wants everyone to like him and has great plans for the estate land. He flirts with and develops feelings for pretty Hetty.
So there is the basic premise. Some unfortunate aspects to this triangle. Adam is a good friend of Arthur's. Hetty, even though she does realise that nothing can ever become of her love for Arthur, is able to talk herself into a belief that he might still marry her. This whole situation will have drastic consequences; a situation that is so well developed by Eliot that you will find yourself reading on and on to find out how it might resolve.
There are other story lines as well and other excellent characters. Seth loves Dinah, another niece of the Poysers, who spends time at their home. Dinah is a wonderful character, a young woman who is a Methodist preacher, who cares for the poor and downtrodden in her county. Everybody likes Dinah; she brings comfort to so many. As I mentioned, Seth loves her but, she won't marry him because she is dedicated to her preaching. (In a way there will be another interesting triangle that affects these two as the story develops)
It's an excellent story and as I write this review I can appreciate it even more. It's a slow build and you get to know and care for all of the different characters. There is great tragedy and there is also great love. For a first novel and one that lead the way for Eliot's other writings, it's a pretty darn good start. Eliot only wrote 7 novels between 1859 and 1874. If the others are as good as the three I've already read, I'll be trying them as well. (4 stars)"
"Order in Chaos is the third book in Jack Whyte's Templar trilogy. I've had mixed feelings about it as I've read the story. On the one hand, I think it's about 400 pages too long (it runs 900+ pages) but on the other hand, whenever I sat down to it and spent some time with it, I found it flowed nicely and before I knew it, I'd covered 50+ pages. But on the other hand, I kept moaning about the lack of action. Then again, it did cover quite momentous events in the lives of the Templar knights and especially that of Will Sinclair, who must save and re-establish his knight.
So what is the story about? It's set in 1307 and the years following. The Knights Templar are well-established in France, wealthy and settled in their strongholds. But there is a threat to their existence. King Philip of France has ordered the arrests of all of the Templars in France, with the concurrence of his puppet pope, Clement. Philip wants the Templar wealth to help pay off his great debts. The leader of the Templars has sent Will Sinclair, one of his trusted advisors and a member of the Templar inner circle on a mission to gather the Templar treasure and as many of his people as he can and take them to safety and establish the Templar elsewhere.
Sinclair decides to go to Scotland, his home country and offer his services to the Scottish king, Robert Bruce. The story follows this journey and Sinclair's attempts to save and restructure his organization. As I mentioned, it's a long story and moves along this path until the Battle of Bannock Burn, between Scotland and England.
Along the way we meet Lady Jessica, who brings her dead husband's treasure to support Robert and also interacts with Sinclair; a monk who has lived a life of chastity. This brings about its own tensions and developments. You can throw in another sideline as well, the journey of a small band of knights to try and find the fabled land of 'Merica. Now for the most part, many of the major events described above are viewed on the periphery of the specific events surrounding Will Sinclair.
I could go on and on, as mentioned previously, the story is 900+ pages but you get the gist I think. The whole trilogy is an interesting concept and I'm glad I have finished it. Do I strongly recommend? No. But if you like that medieval type story, it's worth trying the first, Knights of the Black and White, to see what you think. :0) (3 stars)"
"The Dolly Dolly Spy is the first of four books by Adam Diment featuring British spy, Philip McAlpine. It was first published in 1967 and it definitely has that '60s vibe about it. McAlpine is a security officer for a big firm and is blackmailed into working for a subset of MI6.
He is sent for pilot and armed combat training in the US and assigned to a job with a company, International Charters that works out of a small island in Greece. He does legal and illegal flying missions and periodically reports back to his boss in England with information on his missions. Ultimately he gets assigned a specific mission, to acquire a target that MI6 wants to interrogate.
On its own it's a relatively simple spy story but there is more to it than that. The feel for the time is excellent. It's maybe a James Bond light but the characters are interesting. McAlpine is a neat guy, kind of a coward but still a guy whose quick off the mark and a problem solver. There is enough action, a bit of sex and drugs and rock 'n roll, and an entertaining spy story. Diment disappeared after his fourth book and has retained a cult following (from what I read anyway). If the other books are as entertaining, I'm looking forward to them. (4 stars)"
"The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy, originally published in 1905, is an entertaining, exciting adventure. Set during the French Revolution, when the Revolutionaries are executing French noblemen and their families, the story is about the mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel who with a band of intrepid followers works to spirit out as many of these people as possible to safety in England.
The French desire to find and destroy this Pimpernel. Is he a Frenchman or English noble? They send one of their representatives, the implacable Chauvelin, as their ambassador, to find out who is the Scarlet Pimpernel. He blackmails one of the most popular women in England, a French beauty, married to Englishman, Sir Andrew Blakeney, to assist in uncovering the Pimpernal's identity. He threatens to have her brother executed if she won't help him.
This begins a fast-paced, non-stop adventure, journeying from England to France as Lady Blakeney tries to save both her brother and the Pimpernel from the clutches of this evil Revolutionary. It's an easy read, a real page-turner. I think the title is somewhat misleading, as the focus is on another, but that is a small detail. The Scarlet Pimpernal follows the best traditions of the swashbuckling adventure, tension, action and a happy ending. (4 stars)"
Currently Reading
February is moving along nicely so far. It helps when you are enjoying the books you're reading of course. ;0) I'm still reading Company Town by Madeline Ashby, which I mentioned in my last BLog entry. The other three books I've got on the go are below.
"Andy Prescott is the most laid-back young lawyer in Austin, Texas. Specialising in traffic law, he operates from a small room above a tattoo parlour. Ambition has never been Andy's strong point - he prefers to take it easy.
That is, until one of Texas's wealthiest men walks into his office. On the spot, billionaire Russell Reeves retains Andy as his lawyer and pays him more money than he has ever earned before. Andy's life is transformed.
But nothing comes for free. Russell is a desperate man whose sole aim is to save the life of his eight-year-old son, Zach. He is prepared to do anything - even if it means putting Andy's life in danger..."
"No sign of foul play. So concludes Dr. Carr's post-mortem on Agatha Dawson, and the case is closed. But Lord Peter Wimsey is not satisfied and, with no clues to work on, begins his own investigation. No clues, that is, until the sudden and senseless murder of Agatha's maid.
Then the most debonair sleuth in detective fiction is faced with the problem of catching a desperate murderer before he himself becomes one of the victims ... and of discovering what goes on in the mysterious Mrs. Forrest's Mayfair flat."
"Twelve thousand miles away there was a coral reef ... wedged upon that reef was a three-ton lump of lead surmounted by another lump of concrete. Deep buried in the concrete probably would still be the copper box. In the copper box was Jo's jewel case and in her jewel case were 26,000 pounds worth of diamonds...
Keith Stewart is middle-aged and happily married. A strange quirk of fate means he must exchange his Ealing workshop world for an odyssey in search of a fortune his own ingenuity had helped to hide..."
New Purchases
Four books arrived in the mail from Discovery / Hippo books. It turns out that they are the same book company... lol. Two were from ongoing series I've been enjoying and the other two are new series I want to try.
"Mr. Moto that very polite and very deadly Japanese Secret Agent, is in Hawaii trying to find out how large sums of American dollars are being smuggled into Manchuria. Mr. Moto knows all the angles and is able to get what he wants, even if it means breaking a man's arm or murdering him...
But the people involved in this cunning intrigue are clever - Mr. Moto has had dealings with them before and he knows if he's to stay alive, he must .... Think Fast."
"Inspector Hal Challis, head of Australia's Mornington Peninsula Crime Investigation Unit, has been summoned to his boyhood home. Mawson's Bluff in the Australian Outback. His father is dying.
Sergeant Ellen Destry is left to head an investigation into a ring of pedophiles. A little girl has been abducted from the fairgrounds of the annual Waterloo Show. Her mother failed to report her absence until the next day. After twenty-four hours, hope is slim that the police will find the child before it is too late.
Challis has his own investigation to conduct. When a new grave is dug in the town graveyard, an extra corpse is found. It turns out to be his sister's husband, who has been missing but was presumed to be off on an excursion of his own. Solving this long unsuspected crime is a challenge that puts Challis in peril of his life."
"Madrid 1939. Carlos Tejada Alonso y León is a Sergeant in the Guardia Civil, a rank rare for a man not yet thirty, but Tejada is an unusual recruit. The bitter civil war between the Nationalists and the Republicans has interrupted his legal studies in Salamanca. Second son of a conservative Southern family of landowners, he is an enthusiast for the Catholic Franquista cause, a dedicated, and now triumphant, Nationalist.
This war has drawn international attention. In a dress rehearsal for World War II, fascists support the Nationalists, while communists have come to the aid of the Republicans. Atrocities have devastated both sides. It is at this moment, when the Republicans have surrendered, and the Guardia Civil has begun to impose order in the ruins of Madrid, that Tejada finds the body of his best friend, a hero of the siege of Toledo, shot to death on a street named Amor de Dios. Naturally, a Red is suspected. And it is easy for Tejada to assume that the woman caught kneeling over the body is the killer. But when his doubts are aroused, he cannot help seeking justice."
"In the remote Brazilian town of Cascatas do Pontal, where landless peasants are confronting the owners of vast estates, the bishop arrives by helicopter to consecrate a new church and is assassinated.
Mario Silva, Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters of the Federal Police of Brazil, is dispatched to the interior to find the killer. The Pope himself has telephoned Brazil's president; the pressure is on Silva to perform, and fast.
Assisted by his nephew, Hector Costa, also a federal policeman, Silva must battle the state police and a corrupt judiciary as well as criminals who prey on street kids, warring factions of the Landless League, and their enemies, the big landowners, as well as the Church itself in order to solve the initial murder and several brutal killings that follow.
Justice is hard to come by. An old priest, a secret liberation theologist, is its instrument. Here is a Brazil the tourist never sees."
So there you go, pilgrims (gratuitous John Wayne reference). I hope you're having a great week and watching the Olympics. Take care.
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