Review: An Irish Country Welcome: An Irish Country Novel

An Irish Country Welcome: An Irish Country Novel by Patrick Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Happily there is a novella to close out the series. Had thought this was the absolute end. The novella is Yuletide so imagine it will tie up the tale once and for all, although this installment has pretty much set the paths the main characters will take once there is no more written chronical to keep us up to date. A marriage, a birth, a new partner, older folks slowing down and making room for the younger ones to take their places. Momentarily, the factional unrest of Northern Ireland has ceased, but as Taylor said, he did not want to take Ballybucklebo any closer to the Troubles. For that his readers are grateful. For ever after we can imagine our friends there continuing on in peace and love and cooperation. It is a happy ending all round.

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Review: An Irish Country Family

An Irish Country Family by Patrick Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Held on to this book for over a year-- just did not want to read it too soon, knowing that there is only one more book in the series. Taylor decided to stop because the time line had brought him to the turbulent Troubles and he did not want to ignore them, nor did he want his characters to become embroiled in them. So, in this book, he focuses on Barry Laverty's last year as Houseman alternately with is current status as a married man in Balleybucklebo. He and Sue are in the throes of seeming infertility and much of the advances in female medicine are explained as the tests and physician confersations ensue to determine why this young couple does not seem able to conceive.

Time is moving on for the residents and their families and friends in this volume. Some of our favorites die, some marry, some find new positions, others new homes but through it all the news of conflict between Catholics and Protestants cannot be ignored. Yet, the nastiness and violence of it has not reached this little village and the residents wish to celebrate their closeness and ability to rise above this difference. As one man tells his Protestant beau of his Catholic daughter, I cannot let the fact that our two families worship the same God in different ways come between you two. Not a direct quote but close enough to relay the gist of this story.

I've come to love these people and though my Catholic Irish grandmother and her son, my father, would not exactly share that sentiment, having a more personal experience with the British Protestants in their Irish life, I am removed from that and love the way Patrick Taylor has created a fictional place where all is serene and accepting. I will miss it and its inhabitants very much.
Now to the final book, alas!

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Review: The Confession

The Confession by John Grisham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The book is divided into three sections--the crime and arrest, the last minute efforts to put a stay on the execution of an innocent man, the aftermath of the death. While the first two sections were interesting they were excessively long, repetitive and ultimately boring though the result was heart-breaking and the situation from the very first unbelieveably mishandled and manipulated. It was difficult to read--not so much because of the story line which was engrossing, but because the need to make a book of 400 pages rather than 250 created a desire to just get on with it. The last section, the aftermath--what happened with the victim and her family, the second victim and his family and all the legal beagles and politicians as well as the real killer--was interesting and was read quickly. The sense that none of it--the book, the crime, the resolution--resulted in any real change was the keaviest blow of all and unfortunately more real than fiction.

The low star rating was primarily due to the writing rather than the plot or message. Padding with excessive prose to create the proper length for " literature " does not always work. He's written better books.

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Review: The Montevideo Brief: A Thomas Grey Novel

The Montevideo Brief: A Thomas Grey Novel by J.H. Gelernter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a review of an ARC provided by BookBrowse for review.

Loved this book especially since I read it while vacationing at the shore, where several days the weather was dirty--very atmospheric for the setting of the book. The sea, that is, not the Maine coast rather than the seas of the Southern Hemisphere. There is so much history in the book but couched in an engrossing story of seafaring men working on behalf of the Crown of England. A straightforward tale of international espionage turns into a tale of piracy, growth of a new nation, America and her navy, and the impressment of men into the British navy. There is name dropping--James Monroe is our Ambassador to the Court of St James. Napoleon is making dirty deals with Spain, supposedly neutral. Britain is trying to retain her rule of the seas. And all of the action revolves around Captain Thomas Grey, a marine in the Secret Service and his interaction with many men of various ranks and loyalties.
The author tosses in so much of the history of the time--the Elgin Marbles of Greece, the relationship between Beethoven and Haydn, the writing of the Eroica Symphony and its premier performance, the piratic empire of Jean LaFitte, the development of Dept of Discovery that employed Lewis and Clarke, the building of sea-faring vessels. Oh, and the rules governing the original form of tennis, court tennis, which are mind-boggling! Not to mention the finer points, no pun intended, of the art of dueling with sabres.

There is so much interesting packed into this relatively small novel, that it is worthy of a second read to absorb it all. So much more than just a run of the mill tale of sea battles between sailing ships bearing huge, recoiling cannons, though there is a bit of that, too!

I'm going to have to find the other two Thomas Grey novels--I hope they take place before his interesting wife, Paulette, has died.

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Review: The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill

The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill by Brad Meltzer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

BookBrowse provided an Arc to be discussed this month on their website.

One of the most engrossing, interesting and stirring books I've ever read about the Second World War. Having been born in Washington DC in 1942 this is a particular chapter in American history that has fascinated me very much. There is no flamboyant language or overly dramatic flourishes to the writing and yet it is a fast and moving read. It is not a dry rendition of facts but rather a flowing narrative that is, at times, blood curdling in its bare and succinct description of genocide carried out coldly and in numbers beyond comprehension. At other times, it is an espionage saga with spies at every turn. And, at still other places, it is a political tale of three men---all intelligent, all powerful, all intent on controlling the Allied response to an enemy as intelligent and powerful as they. They are patriots to their countries but also defenders of freedom and though, not truly friends, they are determined to defeat without compromise or conditions the movement they see threatening to take over the entire world--Nazism.
Never, however, have a read a book that gives as much insight into the man and his officers who are in charge of the danger. Their backgrounds and personalities are fascinating and their unstinting belief in a Master race and the threat of the Jews of the world is almost difficult to trully comprehend. Yet, at the same time, my mind kept seeing seeds of the same type of belief in today's world. Chilling and frightening to think that might be true.

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Meet Me in Malmo

Meet Me in Malmö by Torquil MacLeod
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Didn't See That Coming!

Ending abrupt,shocking and unexpected! Didn't see that coming;totally forgot the prologue! Don't think Anita expected it either! Guess it takes one to know one.

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Review: The Easy Life in Kamusari

The Easy Life in Kamusari by Shion Miura
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Young guy from Yokohama is sent by his parents to the high mountain town of Kamusari to learn a trade, grow up and become independent. They are preoccupied with a new baby and don't have time for a teen-ager with time on his hands and no direction. Yuki hates the place at first sight--he's had to take several means of transportation to even reach it, the head of the forestry training program has taken away his phone and he hasn't a clue what he's meant to be doing with a chain saw. Once his basic training is over, he is taken farther into the mountains where he joins a cedar growing outfit and one of its crews.

This town is the worst--he is placed in the home of Yoki and his wife as well as an old lady, Grannie. The young couple fight constantly, Yoki cheats on her, she doesn't like it and Grannie just takes it all in. But, Yuki decides to write about his first year in Kamusari and his tales of caring for a cedar plantation throughout the year are fascinating and awe-inspiring. The ancient traditions, the tight knit community of a small town at the end of the earth, the ways of fighting boredom in a place with no movie house, or young people, learning about cypress and cedar trees and the endless work done to maintain them as well as Yuki's eventual love of place and people are riveting.

Having finished his year long record of how the seasons change, the work changes and how he has changed , I'm now ready for Forest #2 !

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