4 Stars. Oh my gosh, Russian novels, even when they aren’t written by Russians, defeat me with the names. Everyone has at least two or three wildly different (to me, anyway) names! I can’t keep them straight! This one wasn’t too bad but I would still draw the occasional blank. I just had to keep reading and hope that I eventually got that […]
The Great Sachem of the Seneca tribe has lost his infant son. In grief, he joins an alliance of tribes in making war on other tribes and an English settlement. In the settlement, he finds a baby boy, only a few days old, who looks at him fearlessly even though the mother has just been Continue Reading…
I just couldn’t write this review without getting some big spoilers off my chest. I kept it safe for everyone though. If you’re not worried about spoilers and it looks like something is missing, just highlight and you’ll see what I wrote. You’ll get it. Just when I thought this series couldn’t get any more Continue Reading…
Synopsis from GoodReads: In his journal, John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families–the Trasks and the Hamiltons–whose generations helplessly reenact Continue Reading…
Picking up where the first book left off, the Seven Kingdoms are in chaos. There are now three claimants to the Iron Throne and the North has declared something of a war of independence on the rest of the country. This book has almost everything. Treachery, loyalty, conspiracies, conspiracies within conspiracies, turncoats, power plays, twists, Continue Reading…
The first volume in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not an easy read. It picks up when she’s three and her brother is four and they’re being shipped from California to Arkansas–alone on a train. They live with their paternal grandmother for years. Maya writes poignantly and heart-breakingly, but Continue Reading…
The Lies of Locke Lamora was a hugely fun tale of a group of con artists called The Gentlemen Bastards and their lives in Camorr, a fantasy version of Venice. I’m going to say right out that I actually struggled a little with this, and that says more about my attention span at the moment Continue Reading…
Honestly, I can’t help but feel that for me to sit in judgment of a memoir of the Holocaust would be terribly presumptuous. We can’t ever forget the Holocaust, and any work that reminds us of what happened is important and should be read as widely as possible. The style is a little sparse for Continue Reading…
This book, the first in a series, is too big to easily sum up the plot and do it justice. Basically, Robert Baratheon led a revolt against the old king of the Seven Kingdoms when he was a young man. Now that he’s middle-aged, he’s found that he was more interested in fighting for the Continue Reading…
My favorite book growing up was Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. It’s still one of my all-time favorite books. I have to confess that the first time I tried to read it, I thought it was boring. I’d seen the movie somewhere and grabbed the book at the library, and I think Continue Reading…
“I should have thought it obvious,” I said impatiently, though even at that age I was aware that such things were not obvious to the majority of people. “I see paint on your pocket-handkerchief, and traces on your fingers where you wiped it away. The only reason to mark bees that I can think of Continue Reading…