Coming soon . . .
Category: Books
Reading Life of a Dull Study
Agrippa; Robert Harris
Coming soon…
An Officer and a Spy; Robert Harris
Coming soon…
Jeffery Archer
The life of British author Jeffery Archer is almost as fascinating as his novels. He was a Member of Parliament, involved in scandals, convicted of fraud and perjury (or both) and served time in prison. Despite all that he was appointed a life peer by the Queen as Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare. See Jeffrey Archer – Wikipedia. I don’t recall the first book I read, but Nothing Ventured of the William Warwick Series is a likely candidate. Most recently I read Traitors Gate (also William Warwick Series) aboard a cruise ship headed west and finished it in three days; a page-turner. I completed The Clifton Chronicles Series a few years past and became an Archer fan.
Archer has written over 40 novels, published in 47 languages and sold over 300 million books and is still writing. His books are known for their fast pace, attention to details and fascinating plots. He incorporates British history into his novels which adds depth to his work without getting the reader lost on an unwelcomed journey.
Traitors Gate; Jeffrey Archer
Calling Traitors Gate a page-turner is an
Traitors Gate was a page-turner experience for me. The book was in the ship library on our cruise to Hawaii from Vancouver, so I had time to read this Jeffery Archer novel, which is from his William Warwick Series. Archer, a former Member of Parliment introducers readers to British history which adds depth to his work. Traiters is a story within a story about the theft of the Crown Jewels in London.
The story is presented as Archer deftly covers the only acutal (ultimately unsucessful) theft of the Crown Jewels in 1671 from the Tower of London by Colonel Thomas Blood.
Of course our protagonist, Inspector William Warwick of Scottland Yards, foils the plans of the master thief and arch antagonist, Miles Faulkner, who is behind the well planned attempt to steal not only the Crown Jewels, but also the reputation of Warwick and Scottland Yard.
The Back Bedroom: A True Story of Exorcism and Murder; Gregg Olsen
The Back Bedroom unfortunately is not fiction, but a story of events in my hometown during the years I was living in Spokane, going to Gonzaga Law School. Most of what happened occurred in Yakima, Washington in the mid to late 1970s. Gregg Olsen has captured the tragic events in a documentary form based on research and added his own suppositions to make the book readable.
The book is not exactly a page-turner, but it is a stomach turner because of the horrible events that occurred and are described. I cannot recommend the book only because it is so hard to read without feeling pain for the child who was killed and outrage at the people who let it happen.
11/22/63; Stephen King
What would you do if you could time travel and change a historical event? It may depend on your generation. A baby boomer might reset “the day the music died” per American Pie by making sure the airplane carrying Buddy Holly and friends in 1959 never leaves Mason City, Iowa. A younger person might pull the World Trade Center fire alarms in NYC on the morning of September 21, 2001, or intervene in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass killing in 2012. In Stephen King’s novel, 11/22/63, school teacher Jake Epping travels from Maine in 2011 back to 1960 with the mission of stopping Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK in Dallas.
Jake does not understand the perils involved or that history resists change. In addition, the “butterfly effect” means a slight change (like a butterfly’s wing) can have an unexpected, larger effect in the future. More importantly, he finds that historical events run on parallel, altered timelines, so the intervener agent (Jake) can go back multiple times to “correct” things he didn’t think about or that went wrong in earlier time travel.
To be sure, there are many entertaining stories in this 849-page novel leading up to Jake killing Lee Harvey Oswald in the Texas School Book Depository on Elm Street in Dallas. I think 11/22/63 is one of King’s best works of science fiction based on historical events. The lesson is that it takes courage to face the future and accept what cannot or should not be changed from the past.
Spoiler Alert: Jake does kill Oswald, saves JFK’s life, then goes back to Maine in 2011 and finds the world is a mess because things did not go well with JFK in his second term.
Just One Damned Thing After Another, Jodi Taylor
This is my first Jodi Taylor book in The Chronicles of St. Mary’s, which I will remember as a comedic time travel novel about British historians. Just One Damned Thing After Another is a rather generic title that could apply to a number of books, but it does describe a series of adventures by the protagonist, Madeleine Maxwell (Max), who has a sharp and contagious sense of humor even in the worst of circumstances.
The St. Mary’s series appears to have a significant following, and I believe, based on reading only one book, it is because you learn to love Max as she travels from one damn thing to another. There is disagreement among readers about whether the book has an identifiable plot.
I enjoyed the humorous dialogue and lively description of people and historical places. Will I read more of the Chronicles? Stay tuned.
Whistler, Ann Patchett
I’ve become an Ann Patchett fan after reading Whistler, a story within a story. The main story unfolds on two timelines as the adult Daphne Fuller, by chance, reconnects with her former stepfather, Eddie, in New York City 40 years after he left her mother’s marriage. The loving relationship is rekindled as they recall their lives together and the almost fatal car accident when Daphne was 9 years old.
While they are trapped in a badly damaged Chevy station wagon, Eddie tells Daphne about a horse named Whistler that saves an injured rider’s life. It is a rich, complex tapestry involving multiple generations, memories, and life-changing drama.
The first Ann Patchett book I read was Bel Canto (2001), about a hostage crisis in South America, which is also highly recommended. Patchett knows how to tell a story and keep you asking for more.
Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke
Fantasy, time travel, satire, and a polarizing, unlikable main character (Natalie), a social influencer, in a first-person narrative. She lives on a ranch called Yesteryear in Idaho. The author uses Natalie to portray a negative view of Evangelicals as shallow fundamentalist, check-the-box Christian Nationalists. Everything in the book is about extremes. Natalie is not just educated; she goes to Harvard. She doesn’t just have a social media presence; she has millions of followers. She not only has children; she has at least a half dozen in two eras of her life. Not only does she marry (poorly) into money, but they are very wealthy and have political power.
I did not like the book for the first several chapters. I grew more interested as I realized we are invited to watch a woman who has it all together drift into mental illness. There is no joy in learning about mental illness, but the way Caro Claire Burke portrays what is happening to our narrator is rather clever. Nothing is as it seems or appears on social media, and it gets worse. If Burke is trying to comment on our cancel culture, post-facts politics, tradwifes, and gender role dyslexia, she has done a great job. Natilie wakes up in 1855, and the ranch life staged for Instagram suddenly becomes real. She “feels frozen in the pages of a children’s nursery rhyme.” At one stage of Natilie’s life, her mother says to her, “You think kindness is a side virtue. It’s not, it is the whole thing.” Good advice that comes too late.
At the end of the book (a bit of a spoiler alert), we see the march of her children toward a life Natalie never had, and the return of her college roommate for a final revenge.