End of blog

We have been posting our book blog now as long as our travel blog.

However, to conserve, and also reduce broadband usage while on the road we have decided to send out our travel blog, 'Qo Vadis On The Road' only when we have access to free or unlimited WiFi.  And we have decided to end our book blog.

Frankly we are just not seeing much interest in it.

If any of our followers will miss the book blog please let us know, as we could continue it as we are the travel blog. Posting from free WiFi spots.

In any case, it has been fun reviewing each of the books we've read over much of the past year.  Now we'll just spend more time reading more books!

Ken and Mona

Tobacco Road

Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

Tobacco road is the story of doomed people, fated to starve because the land is no longer fertile. To Jeeter, stuborn and hopeful, the land was where he was born - and where he would die along with remnants of his family he lived in squalor without prospect or purpose. A joke yet not without dignity; rotting physically and morally.

-FantasticFiction

Humorous in narrative yet sad in content, this Caldwell classic rates five stars*****.

-Mona

Dreamers of the Day

Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell

“I suppose I ought to warn you at the outset that my present circumstances are puzzling, even to me. Nevertheless, I am sure of this much: My little story has become your history. You won't really understand your times until you understand mine.”
So begins the account of Agnes Shanklin, the charmingly diffident narrator of Mary Doria Russell's compelling new novel,Dreamers of the Day. And what is Miss Shanklin's “little story?” Nothing less than the creation of the modern Middle East at the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, where Winston Churchill, T. E. Lawrence, and Lady Gertrude Bell met to decide the fate of the Arab world - and of our own.

A forty-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio still reeling from the tragedies of the Great War and the influenza epidemic, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the Peace Conference convenes, Agnes, with her plainspoken American opinions - and a small, noisy dachshund named Rosie - enters into the company of the historic luminaries who will, in the space of a few days at a hotel in Cairo, invent the nations of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan.

Neither a pawn nor a participant at the conference, Agnes is ostensibly insignificant, and that makes her a welcome sounding board for Churchill, Lawrence, and Bell. It also makes her unexpectedly attractive to the charismatic German spy Karl Weilbacher. As Agnes observes the tumultuous inner workings of nation-building, she is drawn more and more deeply into geopolitical intrigue and toward a personal awakening.

With prose as graceful and effortless as a seductive float down the Nile, Mary Doria Russell illuminates the long, rich history of the Middle East with a story that brilliantly elucidates today's headlines. As enlightening as it is entertaining, Dreamers of the Dayis a memorable, passionate, gorgeously written novel.

-FantasticFiction

Fascinating book rich in historical fact.  This one rates four stars****.

-MONA

Fordlandia

Fordlandia, by Greg Grandin

Finalist for the National Book Award , “A gripping story of high hopes and deep failure-Boston Globe”. This is the story of the rise and fall of Henry Ford Senior’s forgotten Amazon jungle empire.  Hundreds of thousands of acres of land; thousands of people; two entire American style small towns right down to the concrete sidewalks, cape cod homes, and red fire plugs; and millions of planted rubber trees.  Dead and gone.

Fordlandia and its daughter community, Belterra, were built in the 1920’s and 30’s to grow latex producing rubber trees which would provide all the military needs of the US in case of war. The war came.  The latex, in any great amount, never did.

Disease, fungus, insects of many kinds in swarms and hordes did. And the blunders of the heretofore could-not-fail Ford industrial genius only added to or allowed the disasters to fall, one after another.

Nonetheless, this is not a story about failure, but about tenacity, and dreaming big, and heart.

Fordlandia still exists, almost completely deserted, its old mills and homes almost covered in the jungle it was cut out of.  The golf course, tennis courts, movie theater, almost all gone.  But not quite.

A thrilling story of the Ford family and the Ford empire, and Henry Ford himself, whose greatest gifts became as he aged his greatest weaknesses.

In this book, there is a lesson for every leader of others in any walk of life.-****

-Ken

Scarlet Women

Scarlet Women by J.D. Christilian

New York, 1871. A prostitute named Alice Curry is found murdered near the East Street docks. Not unusual, except that the clothes the victim is wearing belong to the missing wife of an aristocrat. Street-smart private investigator Harp takes on the case. When a restaurateur who was the closest thing Harp had to a father is also murdered, the two cases prove to be related. Harp, the son of a prostitute, once a street urchin and apprentice thief, possesses a sometimes unbelievable encyclopedic knowledge of the city. He knows everybody who is anybody in every dance hall, brothel, precinct house, and gambling parlor. Though less about the lives of prostitutes than the title implies, this novel invites readers onto the streets of Victorian New York and steeps them in its vivid stories of danger, corruption, destitution, and obsession. Harp's flawed but heroic triumphs prove highly entertaining. Christilian is the pseudonym of an author of historical nonfiction and fiction, screenplays, and contemporary suspense.

-Amazon

Touted to be "Gripping suspense for fans of The Alienist", I must say I was somewhat disappointed.  Although filled with detail of the underworld  life in New York in 1871, I was disappointed in the story.  Caleb Carr created a much more compelling mystery in his book The Alienist.  I can only rate this one with three stars***

-MONA

Off Season

Off Season by Anne Rivers Siddons

For as long as she can remember, they were Cam and Lilly--happily married, totally in love with each other, parents of a beautiful family, and partners in life. Then, after decades of marriage, it ended as every great love story does...in loss. After Cam's death, Lilly takes a lone road trip to her and Cam's favorite spot on the remote coast of Maine, the place where they fell in love over and over again, where their ghosts still dance. There, she looks hard to her past--to a first love that ended in tragedy; to falling in love with Cam; to a marriage filled with exuberance, sheer life, and safety-- to try to figure out her future.

It is a journey begun with tender memories and culminating in a revelation that will make Lilly re-evaluate everything she thought was true about her husband and her marriage.

-FantasticFiction

Anne Rivers Siddons does not just tell a story.  Her books draw you in and make you a part of the characters and their surroundings.  You want them to never end.  Once again she earns five stars*****

-MONA

A Beautiful Place to Die

A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

When an Afrikaans police captain is murdered in a small South African country town, Detective Emmanuel Cooper must navigate his way through the labyrinthine racial and social divisions that split the community. And as the National Party introduces the laws to support the system of apartheid, Emmanuel struggles - much like Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko - to remain a good man in the face of astonishing power.In a considered but very commercial novel, Malla Nunn combines a compelling plot with a thoughtful and complex portrayal of a fascinating period of history, illustrating the human desires that drive us all, regardless of race, color or creed. "A Beautiful Place To Die" is the first of a planned series of novels featuring Detective Emmanuel Cooper.

-FantasticFiction

Full of the pain and horrors of apartheid, the novel was very compelling.  I was somewhat disappointed in the ending as I felt that it ended rather abruptly and left a few unresolved issues.  I would give this four stars****

-MONA

The Wheel of Darkness

The Wheel of Darkness. by Douglass Preston and Lincoln Child

Pendergast has taken Constance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure
and a sense of the world that she's missed. They head to Tibet, where Pendergast
intensively trained in martial arts and spiritual studies. At a remote monastery, they learn
that a rare and dangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations has
been mysteriously stolen. Pendergast agrees to take up the search. The trail leads him
and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Queen Victoria, the world's largest and most
luxurious passenger liner--and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.
-Fantasticfiction.com

I have read all but one of the 'Pendergast' series to this one in order.  They can be creepy, authentic, and riveting.  They are always just real enough to keep me from feeling they are too fantastic.  Wheel of Darkness was no exception.  And it will hold you riveted at least from page 350 through 470.

Enjoy!  *****

-Ken

The Midwife of Hope River

The Midwife of Hope River by Patricia Harman

A remarkable new voice in American fiction enchants readers with a moving and uplifting novel that celebrates the miracle of life. In The Midwife of Hope River, first-time novelist Patricia Harmon transports us to poverty stricken Appalachia during the Great Depression years of the 1930s and introduces us to a truly unforgettable heroine. Patience Murphy, a midwife struggling against disease, poverty, and prejudice - and her own haunting past - is a strong and endearing character that fans of the books of Ami McKay and Diane Chamberlain will take into their hearts, as she courageously attempts to bring new light, and life, into an otherwise cruel world.

-FantasticFiction

As well as sharing what life was like in the poverty stricken coal mining region of West Virginia, Harman's book contains a brief sketch of some of the worst mining disasters ever.  This one rates four stars****

-MONA

Death Comes For The Archbishop

Death Comes For The Archbishop, by Willa Cather

Considered one of the best southwestern historical novels of all time I was encouraged to read it in order to flesh out the feeling of the country in the 19^th century, not just the dates of what happened in it.  Cather follows carefully, but with a great novelists enhancements, the historical lives of the two most important catholic leaders of the time. 

 

Her characters, Bishop Jean Latour, the newly appointed bishop of  New Mexico  and his Vicar General Father Valliant (later made Bishop of Colorado) are taken closely from the French-American priests Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Projectus Machbeouf. The official histories of these men are factual enough, but Willa’s story binds them to the land and their people.

 

But while this tale is about Christian faith and Catholic missionary work, it is most about the southwest and the Mexicans and Indians who inhabited it before these priests arrive.

 

The landscapes, the weather, the hardships, dangers, and joys of wilderness life are all so well portrayed by Willa Cather that you will only want to head west yourself to experience this country before what is left of it departs for good.

 

So that’s where we are going as soon as we can make it across the gulf states without the furnace on every day!

-*****

Ken

Two Graves

Two Graves by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

After his wife, Helen, is brazenly abducted before his eyes, Special Agent Pendergast furiously pursues the kidnappers, chasing them across the country and into Mexico. But then, things go terribly, tragically wrong; the kidnappers escape; and a shattered Pendergast retreats to his New York apartment and shuts out the world.

But when a string of bizarre murders erupts across several Manhattan hotels--perpetrated by a boy who seems to have an almost psychic ability to elude capture--NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta asks his friend Pendergast for help. Reluctant at first, Pendergast soon discovers that the killings are a message from his wife's kidnappers. But why a message? And what does it mean?

When the kidnappers strike again at those closest to Pendergast, the FBI agent, filled anew with vengeful fury, sets out to track down and destroy those responsible. His journey takes him deep into the trackless forests of South America, where he ultimately finds himself face to face with an old evil that-rather than having been eradicated-is stirring anew... and with potentially world-altering consequences.

Confucius once said: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves." Pendergast is about to learn the hard way just how true those words still ring.

-FantasticFiction

This twelfth book in the Pendergast series provides the conclusion to the Helen trilogy and is every bit as much of a pager-turner as the others.  Preston and Child earn another five stars*****

-MONA

Cold Vengeance

Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Devastated by the discovery that his wife, Helen, was murdered, Special Agent Pendergast must have retribution. But revenge is not simple. As he stalks his wife's betrayers-a chase that takes him from the wild moors of Scotland to the bustling streets of New York City and the darkest bayous of Louisiana-he is also forced to dig further into Helen's past. And he is stunned to learn that Helen may have been a collaborator in her own murder.

Peeling back the layers of deception, Pendergast realizes that the conspiracy is deeper, goes back generations, and is more monstrous than he could have ever imagined-and everything he's believed, everything he's trusted, everything he's understood . . . may be a horrific lie.

-FantasticFiction

Book 11 in the Pendergast series and book 2 in the Helen trilogy is every bit as much of a cliff-hanger as was Fever Dream which preceeds this one.  Be sure to have Two Graves, the third book in the trilogy, handy when you finish Cold Vengeance!  a definite five stars*****

-Mona

John James Audubon - The making of an American

John James Audubon - The making of an American, by Richard Rhodes

I was SO wrong.  I've always thought Mr. Audubon must have been a sort of wimpy guy who went around chasing Tweety Birds to paint them for his cute portfolio.  Then Mona and I spent some serious time at the Audubon home, Mill Grove, on the Perkiomen Creek last year.  Then I read this book and discovered I owe this man a major posthumous apology.

JJ Audubon was an inventor, businessman, great dad and husband.  Oh, and he could draw and paint pretty well too.  Oh, and he was one of the finest 'natural', not university trained, naturalists in human history. Oh, and he was truly an American Woodsman right up there with the Boones, Crockets and Clarks.  What a guy!

Richard Rhodes does a fine job weaving this story about Mr. Audubon as well.  In fact, after a detail filled and therefore bit slow start, I could hardly put it down.

It didn't hurt that we have been walking in his steps many places in the Eastern United States this year, but I highly recommend this book to learn of the challenges of business failures, distant romantic relationships, crooked or at least mean spirited relatives and former friends, and BIRDS.

-Five Stars *****
Ken

Fever Dream

Fever Dream by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

At the old family manse in Louisiana, Special Agent Pendergast is putting to rest long-ignored possessions reminiscent of his wife Helen's tragic death, only to make a stunning-and dreadful-discovery. Helen had been mauled by an unusually large and vicious lion while they were big game hunting in Africa. But now, Pendergast learns that her rifle-her only protection from the beast-had been deliberately loaded with blanks. Who could have wanted Helen dead...and why?

With Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta's assistance, Pendergast embarks on a quest to uncover the mystery of his wife's murder. It is a journey that sends him deep into her past where he learns much that Helen herself had wished to keep hidden. Helen Pendergast had nursed a secret obsession with the famed naturalist-painter John James Audubon, in particular a long-lost painting of his known as the Black Frame.

As Pendergast probes more deeply into the riddle-the answer to which is revealed in a night of shocking violence, deep in the Louisiana bayou-he finds himself faced with an even greater question: who was the woman he married?

-FantasticFiction

This 10th book in the Pendergast series,  the first one in the Helen trilogy, will keep you on the edge of your seat and when it ends you will be sure to want to have the next one, Cold Vengeance, on hand to continue where this one leaves you hanging!  Definitely a five star*****rating.

-MONA