As someone who struggles with the importance of memories of the past this was an interesting take on the subject for me. What do we remember? Why do we remember certain things and not others? How "real" are the memories we have? In delving into these issues the author leaves the reader with even more to think about. The writing is superb and, as a character driven novel, I understand why there isn't much "action." However, I found myself bored with Tony. He isn't a very likeable character and I began to lose interest in what happens to him as he searches for answers to questions from his past. On the other hand, I wonder if the author chose to use a character who is so ordinary that no one cares for him. Aren't we all a bit like that, though? Who really wants to hear the stories of our lives?

Excellent mystery set in the Saltmarsh, an area off the North Norfolk coast of England. Two children have gone missing ten years apart and when a child's body is found buried in the Saltmarsh, the police call in an archaeologist, Ruth Galloway, from the local university to examine the bones in order to determine if they are modern or ancient. They turn out to be from the iron age, but Ruth is drawn into the mystery of the two missing girls. She develops a bond with the local DCI, Harry Nelson, who is drawn to her independent nature. People from Ruth's past turn up to investigate a timber causeway leading from the iron age body to the timber henge whose excavation ten years before brought Ruth to to the Saltmarsh. Could one of them really be involved in the murders? Interesting book and Ruth Galloway is a totally believable and likeable protagonist. I'm looking forward to reading the following books in the series!

The term exciting does not do it justice. Eskkar is loathed by his fellow soldiers in 2500 AD, he’s considered the tribe’s worst. When they leave for more money, he’s left behind. Yet, the remaining villagers need him to defend them against frequent marauders. How he rises to the challenge is inspiring. With the help of a freed slave girl he becomes not just a better warrior, but a leader who wins victories. With violence, blood, romance and sex, this is the script Russell Crowe should have got; all it’s missing is the Rocky music.

Nefertiti. Her very name means A Beautiful Woman has come. She is niece to the most powerful woman in the two lands, but not politically insignificant at the court of the king. Raised to expect to wed a noble and perhaps dance in temple rites, Nefertiti’s life is about to veer off course.

Thrust into the intrigue and splendor of life at court, Nefertiti was navigate more than the halls of power. While she draws support from some, rivals seek to end her growing influence on the new King.

Some families have a dark side. Some secret they fell the need to keep from the general public but that the entire family knows. Merrick has more secrets than the average young woman growing up New Orleans. Not only is she an African American related to Mayfair Witches, a rather well-to-do family of European decent, she is also a descendant of the Great Family (the human branch of Vampire Legacy). Merrick is about become a lot more up close and personal with the entire sum of her various family trees.

Most of my all-time favorite classic books were written by H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. I read this one, The Jungle book and was transported into a place of talking animals, lush jungles, heart pounding struggles and enduring friendships.

Mother and Father Wolf adopt a human “Frog” from the Man-pack and raise him as one of the people. They teach him to abide by the jungle law and respect those who hunt by day or night. Frog grows to adulthood before the struggle of life and death sets in. The King of Tigers has returned. He sees Frog as a challenger for his position and sets out to exterminate him.

Is Mogli cleaver enough, swift enough to outwit this master of fang and claw? Can a Frog (with a little help from his jungle family and friends) keep the jungle law and still win the right to run with the pack?

Jehanne D'arc, a.k.a “Joan of Arc” was a farmer's daughter, a free spirited, but troubled soul. A bullied little girl, one who took her faith perhaps a touch too seriously? She grew up with death at her elbow and plague just outside the cottage door.

She learned early in life were to place the blame for all the woes of her people. The English, the Goddons, and the Burgundians; (those French traitors!). While other girls her age were trying to find comfort and protection in the bonds of a good marriage, Jehanne listened to the voices of her special messengers. They were her guides, her confidents and mentors in what was to be the most celebrated life a poor country girl might dream of. She wanted to one of them, to work miracles. Armies would rise in her wake to blot out the shame of Agincourt. The people would once again have a strong French King and the English would be driven from the nation after a generation of oppression. All that was required was for Jehanne to lead the way.

Here is her story, told from her earliest days to her most harrowing and final moments. Was she a visionary, a madwoman, or dare I say, A Saint? Read this and decide for yourself.

Valya Harkonnen and her brother Griffin are the great-grand children of the man accused of cowardice at the battle of Corrin against the thinking machines.

The family has gone into exile, and their father has resigned himself to a less than noble fate. Griffin holds the cards to an ambitious return to the former status of his family and is studying for the test that will admit him as a full- fledged member of the Landsraad.

Meanwhile, Valya seeks another more dangerous road to power. She has gone to the school on Rossak where women learn to contral more than their emotions. They learn to control their minds and every muscle in their body. Only a select few are chosen to undergo the dangers of transformation that grant long life and Other-memory. So far all who have tried have died. Will Valya’s fate be any different?

On a world much like earth of the Ancient Greek peroid comes a tale of blood and war.

This one is for the warriors. Rictus was wounded and left for dead but he roused just enough to defend himself and survived. He is a Spartan-style youth whose home village is razed to the ground during a conflict with an invading army. Allowed to escape, he pauses only long enough to bury his dead.

On the road he encounters an another young would-be soldier and the two stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of small band of traders and farmers. In fact, they work so well together that they continue on to the Mecht City and seek employment in the newly forming mercenary army of Red cloaks, a brotherhood like no other.

All is not as clear cut and straight forward as it may seem, and Rictus will have to draw upon all his training as a part of the Famed Iscan Phalanx to survive.

This discovery is a real gem. Part ancient tale, part mystery, and all fantasy. Written in the tradition of the great epics, this story has adventure, intrigue and surprises. The best news is it’s written by an African American, a trilogy, and I can’t wait to read the next in the series.

Now , let’s get to the important matters. Who is Thasren Mein and what is he doing infiltrating the royal City? Let’s just start out by saying he’s on a self-appointed mission and has the training and determination to pull it off. Which brings us to twelve year old Princess Mena. What has she got to do with the business of the Empire when there’s an heir(or two) all prepped and waiting to mount the throne in the event that anything should happen to their father?

Be sure to join me on this journey – it’s going be a wild ride.

This is the review I provided for our book club: It’s 1985 and most people in the Republic of Gilead (approximating the former New England) are relieved of the burden of possibility. If you’re a man chances are you’re some sort of government functionary or attached to one; if you’re a woman you’re a Martha (maid), a Wife, or a Handmaid, whose job it is to bear children. Although written a year after George Orwell’s eponymous novel take place, The Handmaid’s Tale shares many of its fears and motifs: the rise of the machine; the rise of a monolithic, all-powerful State; and the de-humanization of man. With Margaret Atwood’s tale, though, it’s especially women who suffer under this new order. A movement that presented itself as bent on restoring “traditional family values” to America quickly rose to power by machine-gunning most of the Federal government (and blaming it on Islamic terrorists), freezing women’s bank accounts, and forcing all women to leave their jobs in an effort to drag America back to a quasai-Old Testament social structure. Due to rapidly declining fertility rates (among women; men’s fecundity is officially perfect here) those women who can bear children serve as “handmaids”, and join the wives in the bedroom, portrayed in the book in excruciatingly uncomfortable three’s-a-crowd scenes. Margaret Atwood tries to combine two often-distinct genres here, and it doesn’t always work. The first three quarters is a straight-up dystopia of misogyny, totalitarianism, and theocracy; with a few satirical jabs at circa 1985 public figures (readers may notice hints of Andrea Dworkin in the portrayal of the protagonist’s mother; the villainous and tacky Wife Serena Joy is clearly modeled after Tammy Faye Bakker.) The last several pages of the book, however, careen roughly into thriller territory as our main character Offred must evade armed guards and sinister spies, involve herself in an underground resistance movement that may or may not exist, and carry on a torrid love affair, all while hoping for reunification with her long-lost daughter. This is a valuable book, a book to read carefully (if not again and again). As we hear in the very end “Certain periods of history quickly become...the occasion for a good deal of hypocritical self-congratulation.” If the author asks us to judge the society presented here, she also asks us to judge our own.

Gossip has it that this book is a fine read.

This is an excellent, scholarly but readable, book, well researched and well presented, for anyone interested in how Hermetic literature (written down during the several hundered years before and after the birth of Christ,) has influenced Western thinking. One of the most welcome and original takes in this presentation is the chapter on Hermeticism and pietism, a hithero neglected area in lterature accessible to nonscholars. A good book for anyone interested in the subject.

If you like travel books and are interested in the old and new Silk Road, you will enjoy this this book. Tamm, on a low budget and without many connections, retraces the steps of Finnish/Russian spy, politician, anthropologist, book collector and hunter, Gustaf Mannerheim's 1906 journey. Tamm is of the grit, grime and monotony school of travel writing, so the landscape is perfect for him. And between the justified grumbles are interesting snatches of acute observations of an ancient land that is changing and not changing at the same time.

This is a groundbreaking, almost-scholarly work on a too long neglected group of important women artists. This is a readable middle-brow history of a group of women (whose main commitments and intimacies were with women) who in the late 19th, early 20th-century figured out,(with the support of kindred souls,) how to make their own way on their own terms, while retaining all the privileges of respectability and financial prudence. This is the engaging story of 5 practical romantics who, while suffering all the usual discords and trials, nevertheless made for themselves gratifying lives that contibuted wonderful things to the greater community.

In short, this is the story of 4 illustrators/muralists/curators and one housemanager: Jesse Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, Violet Oakley, Edith Emerson and Henrietta Cozens. You may not know their names but their images were ubiquious during their time. They are not more famous because they were women who had to earn a living and fine arts at the time were only possible for rich women.

So read the book and learn what is possible.

Ho hum. I started out really liking this book. I picked it up after hearing Nancy Pearl talk about it on NPR one day. It is well written and the main character has a unique voice. It is set in the 70s, but isn't overly full of nostalgia. There is a good balance between details that place the book in the 70s with the action of the story. Well, action might be an overstatement as I began to get bored as the book droned on and on without a whole lot happening. I wanted to know how the kittens fared after being dropped on the porch of a caring minor character and I thought the end of the book was sad as the main character, whose name we never really know for sure, downs a beer with "Bombs away." Her father is an alcoholic and I fear she will now follow in his footsteps. The book tells her story as she negotiates life as a teenager--boys, popularity, friends, fitting in or not, death, siblings, etc

O what fools we mortals be. Most of Lewis's many excellent books keep this fact in stark but amusing focus, and this book is no different in either theme or quality. Here Lewis goes world traveling to see how different counties with their different cultures reacted to the same stimuli -- the mid 2000s magical thinking of easy money ...forever? Well, as we know, not forever, and so in hangs the fail, or rather, the unique fails as each particular country goes off the rails in its own particular way. Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany and California, each gets its own chapter and haircut. Highly recommended

This book, which claims to aim an insightful zoom lens at the mechanisms behind current celebrity culture, is a fairly simple essay drawn out into a short book. The author's main insight is that the current relationship of the general populace with celebrities makes for a sort of para-religion. This means our attitude towards celebrities functions like an almost religion. There is not much new here but if the subject interests you you might want to read it.

This is a good enough fantasy novel that is intelligent enough to create interest, but not quite honed enough to be the wonder it aspires to. It is a Christianized pagan, mythic, literary adventure (loosely based on characters from Shakespeare and Western Lit in general,) that has too much banter, too much action and no pacing. A leaner, cleaner more intense book wants to emerge from this meandering wrap-up to a 3 part series. Another draft would have made this so much better. As it is, it is still much better than much of the shallow fluff out there. If the reviewer sounds too critical, it is only because the author has the potential to rise beyond her genre.