Did I make it?

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Goodnight Moon

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?

By Eric Carle; Margaret Wise Brown; By Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle

Well in September my daughter was born. I had taken off work about a week before she was supposed to be born. She came about 4 days late. That was good news because it gave me the opportunity to read all day everyday. I was able to get a few weeks ahead in my goal. After she was born I didn’t get much reading in. In fact it was tough just to keep up with my magazines.

So my goal was to read 52 books in a year. I never put a stipulation on the length of the book. So in December my wife and I started to read my daughter books before she went to bed. We cycled though three different books. So by my calculations that adds up to 52 books in 2007!

As for the books?



Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? Well I know they are only 20 pages or so but hey if you read them 10 times a piece well that’s a lot of pages, I guess. Of the three the only one I really don’t care for is the Brown Bear book. I realize it’s repetitive to help kids learn to read and stuff but come on. (Yes I’m complaining about a little kids book. ) How many times can you carry out the same thing with different animals? Apparently quite a few. I like Goodnight Moon because I always notice something new in the pictures every time. As for the caterpillar book. Well that’s just a fun story. It’s like a children’s book for budding competitive eaters.

On a side note the version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar that we got has a CD with the author reading the book. There are two different readings. Well there is only one reading. The second just has a ding when you are supposed to turn the page. As for the reading. A dead person could have read with more enthusiasm than Eric Carle did.

You got to think, someone said:

“Hey Eric, I know a way to make some extra bones reeeeeal easy.”

“Sure I’m all for that. What do I have to do? You know I don’t have a lot of free time, I’m busy coming up with a sentence to repeat throughout my next book.” said Eric.

“Well all you have to do is read your book. “

“Crap! I don’t have time for that. It’s like 13 pages long!”

“No, No, it’s really easy. See I’ll just put a microphone up to the phone and you can do it right now. “

“And you say I’ll really be rolling in the dough afterwards???”

“You betcha!’

Eric sighs “Okay.”

The dude didn’t put any excitement or emphasis on anything! So if this version costs extra (it was a gift) don’t bother. Unless you need a new coaster.

The Soviet Juggernaut

By Time Life Books World War II series

Both The Soviet Juggernaut and Red Army Resurgent dealt with the battles between the Nazi’s and the Soviet Union along the Easter Front. The first volume was more about the Nazi push that ended at Stalingrad while the second profiled the Soviet push to drive the Nazi’s back and then in towards Germany. Even flipping thought the books I remembers bits of each but I thought it would be easier on me to just give a few comments of both together.

I was left with a wonder for the Soviet capacity for loss after finishing these volumes. They threw so many men at the war, millions died in battles, and still men were rushed to the front. You got to wonder what the hell Hitler was thinking taking on the world with only 2 other countries to back him.

There were photo essays that showed the staging of the material leading up to some of the offensives. It was amazing to see pictures of vehicles all neatly lined up that stretched to the horizon. Besides increasing their production, the Soviets also benefited from the lend-lease agreement with the Allies, who sent them planes, truck, tanks, and other supplies.

You always hear about how before the invasion is to begin the invading army would soften up the defenders by shelling them. Either by aircraft, ship or ground fire. Before a few of the offensives mentioned in the books they talked about how in one hour 50,000 shells were fired at the city they were going in to. It’s mind numbing what that must have been like. On New Years my neighborhood goes crazy with the fireworks and for the 10 minutes prior to midnight and about 30 minutes after it gave me the impression of what this might have sounded like. Now the ground wasn’t shaking but there were multiple explosions of fireworks going off at the same time and they were coming from houses all around us. My heart was racing and I wasn’t even worried about getting killed, well I’m always waiting for a fire to start and burn all the houses down but that’s a personal problem.

In Poland the books talked about how after all the park and yard space in the city had been dug up and used as graves, the people started to dig up the sidewalks to bury the dead. This was made easier as most of the sidewalks were cratered from shells anyway.

What more can I say about this volume? I’m left with on more thought. What I love is how when your own civilians are helping to sabotage the enemy in occupied territories they are freedom fighters partisans, guerrillas, home town heroes. But if they are against you - terrorists. WTF? I guess it just goes to show you that everything - even history - is all relative.

Neverwhere

By Neil Gaiman

London above, London below. Okay so I guess I didn’t really understand what the book was about. Seeing that I had just finished Stardust you would have thought I would have been expecting a wilder story than I was. I was thinking more along the lines of Futurama - mutants living under the streets.

It took me a few chapters to orient myself with the London below concept. It wasn’t until I accepted that this was a magical world that I was okay. So I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes, so sue me. I enjoyed the adventure of the story, the descriptions of the locations, I even got into the idea of London below where nothing is as it seems. The names of the tube stations denote who or what is there. There are Friar’s at Blackfriars, and at Earl’s court resides, that’s right, the Earl. Richards companion on his journey, or maybe it’s the other way around, Door, can open doors and just about anything else that is closed. In a way the whole thing reminded me a little bit of the Matrix.

I don’t really like to read into the meaning of stories. At least not in the sense of this is what the Author was trying to say. I remember in high school I had a teacher who told about the time an author came into class to discuss the book he had written with the class. One of the students went on and on about how he liked the symbol of a clock at the end of one of the chapters. After the student was done the Author said, well thank you but really I was just trying to think of a way to end the chapter and the first thing I saw when I looked up was a clock. Classic. That said, I think that Richard Mayhew was just looking for a place to call home, a worlds to belong to. It obviously wasn’t with his fiancée Jessica. The only real problem I had with the story is that in London above, everyone is so mean. The characters, esp Jessica, have one personality trait. Richard feels like he is invisible, letting life go by while he just goes through the motions. Or maybe I’m just thinking of myself here. No pictures in this book but the written images kept me satisfied throughout

Stardust

By Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess



I saw the movie first. And I loved it. So I was pleasantly surprised then I found out that it was a graphic novel. Now I’m not really a fan of comics. I like to imagine the images myself as opposed to seeing them pictured. This may sound weird but the pictures in comics take away from the story. Yeah I know they are there to tell the story, well so sue me. But Stardust is more of an illustrated story. The pictures enrich the tale.

Like every movie made from a book there are differences. The candle comes to mind. The movie is more straight-forward as to how it works - think of where you want to go and the candle shoots you there. In the book it is kind of vague, You walk to where you want to go holding the lit candle and with each step you are traveling a long distance. I really like how the time Tristan and Yvaine spent on the lighting ship was expanded in the movie. An adventure story into a magical land. One filled with all of the mythical creatures that we have proved not to exist in our world, they get pushed to the land of Fairie. What a concept. Taken alone both the book and the movie have just the right qualities that make each magical in their own way. Plus seeing Claire Danes glow after sex, well. . .

Blue Horizon

By Wilbur Smith



So I love historical fiction.

Here we are in the 1700’s, sailing and trading around the Horn of Africa and up to Oman. At 800 pages I expected many characters but the book (thankfully) mostly follows the Courtney family. The travels of the son Jim across Africa in a caravan escaping pursuit, to the uncle Dorin fighting to get back his crown. I loved the detail of the caravan and how they set up camp, hunted the animals, the trackers Bakkart and Xhia. The book is almost 2 separate stories in one. The Courtney’s in Africa, moving houses, running rrom the law, and then Dorian fighting to regain the crown, avenge the murder of his wife and his enemy since childhood.

Of course there is one thing that bothers me. The passage of time. Now it would have made for a dull read (probably) if the caravan journey didn’t jump ahead months at a time each chapter. But the passage of time was not equal between chapters. This normally wouldn’t be a problem but with no dates given at the beginning of each chapter or some way to tell the season, the fact there were jumps between the different characters where the action was happening simultaneously, so you had in fact gone back in time, it ended up frustrating the hell out of me. Enough so that I think it took away from the story and I was constantly wondering how much time had passed. Now maybe this is because most of the books I read end up being written by men.

On a side note I don’t really appreciate having a picture of the author on the back of the book. It kinda creeps me out, esp when they start having detailed sex scenes and it is an old guy writing the book. Would I read another Wilbur Smith book? Sure. It’s a lot more socially acceptable to read one of his books in public than if I was toting around a book on erotica or a picture book of how to butcher a carcass. Did I mention though that I like the detail? As I was saying why is it that in every story the girl is blond, a virgin, like to keep her privates hairless, and horny? Oh well, I guess like my wife says, that’s why it’s called fiction.

War in the Outposts

By Time Life Books World War II series

If ever the fighting man wondered if his individual efforts could change the course of a war, then this volume definitely answers that question. Featuring battlefield stories in Svalbard, Greenland, Ascension Island, the Middle East, Iran, Madagascar, Islands in the South Pacific.

Many of these island bases were used as emergency landing sites and weather stations. In the Middle East there was a camel corps. Run by Bedouins, the camels were taught to knell or lie down while the rider was shooting. To both offer protection for the shooter and to get out of the way. In Madagascar the local opposition would not surrender without a fight. Now when I say fight, they wanted soldiers to take the town/building with a show of arms and shots fired. Sometimes it might have only been a few troops and a couple of shots at no one and then it was all over. Everyone was happy and no one was injured, well except for the insect transmitted diseases.

I will relate the story of the weather outpost in the mining/whaling city of Spitzberg. The weather passing over the island group would hit the European mainland in 2-3 days. Both sides fought for control, but really after the Allies took hold they kept it . The poor soldiers toughing it out near the top of the world probably wondered what the hell they were doing there. What difference could they make? How about this: the combined weather reports from troops in Jan Mayen, a station on the Greenland Ice Cap, and Spitzberg showed a break in the weather system that was long enough for the Allies to pull of the Normandy Invasion.

Now this might sound trivial and it could have occurred before, but I think that War in the Outposts is the first volume to feature full page pictures! No borders! I know, so what. Well I was kinda excited to see this change to one of the photo essays in the book. Thinking back on it I’m not sure why, but it still makes me smile when I think of it.

War Under the Pacific

By Time Life Books World War II series

I don’t really care for the sea but I am a fan of submarines, or Unterseeboot as they were called in German. This volume is mostly about the US side of the war and like the title says, stays in the Pacific. A photo essay at the beginning covers the evolution of the submarine from the civil war to WWII. Very interesting. The chapters cover the sorry state the US submarines were in at the start of the war and the bureaucracy the officers had to cut through to get a working torpedo made and distributed to the front lines.

Japanese submarines and their mariners are covered in another chapter. Reading how successful the US became it is quite a contrast to the Japanese and how they didn’t use their force very well. See Japan at War for more on this.

You also get views from the periscope and learn about skippers who gave their all for the war effort. Like some of the other volumes of Time Life books, this one has a photo essay that is of paintings that were done to depict the submarine battles. Many of the other volumes show paintings done to show air battles, or to commemorate solders or experiences from the war. They are an interesting touch and usually more emotional than the photographs.

At the end of the book is an appendix of all the subs that fought in the Pacific (on the US side) and their disposition. Interesting to flip through.

Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies

By Gunther von Hagens, Agelina Whalley



This is not so much a book you read but a way to relive the experience of the show. Plastination is an amazing process and Gunther von Hagens does wonders with the corpses in Body Worlds. It’s like a real life anatomy book. See the real organs instead of a drawing or photo. The book explains the process and a little bit about how the plastinations are created. The essays at the end about the morals of the whole thing were dry and uninteresting. Or maybe because I don’t see the controversy, I just didn’t care. So skip the preaching and enjoy the pictures.

Across the Rhine

By Time Life Books World War II series

Can you guess what this volume looks at? Well it’s more that just going across a river. This volume covers the build up and initial thrust for the Allies to push into Germany for the final drive towards Berlin. The photo essays in the volume are really amazing. There is one that covers the build up of materials leading to the start of the drive. The amount of goods stockpiled and organized into vast open fields are staggering. On a more somber note the push into Germany exposed the concentration camps and these are also covered in the later pages.

I like it that this series is so long. It gives the editors the ability to cover World War II from many different aspects. I’ve been looking at the titles to come and there is quite a range of more specialized books focusing on smaller battles. See War in the Outposts.

The Nazis

Time Life Books World War II Series

With some 41 books in this series the editors start out by covering specific battles, say the Battle of the Bulge, to more general areas of conflict - air battles, carrier battles. Land areas that get focus are northern Africa, the Middle East, specific countries are covered, and you get the idea. Most of these books that cover a region span from the beginning to the end of the war. There are other volumes covering the home front of the main combatants.

Well The Nazis is a broad overview off, the Nazis. The first couple of books in the series, Prelude to war and Blitzkrieg, helped to explain how the Nazis came into being. This volume covers them from the start of the war with a look at the people involved, namely Hitler. There are picture essays on his speeches, his private life and attempted coups. Luckily for history the Nazis photographed and filmed much of what they did and it has all been gathered for the Time Life books. When I finally get around to the series on The Third Reich (I think it’s about 20 books) I’ll be able to get more detail about the Germans. I’m guessing that that series is why this volume hits only a few of the highlights of the party throughout the war.

Murder on the Orient Express

By: Agatha Christie



I love the movie Murder by Death. It pokes fun of mystery novels and features loose representations of famous detectives from books and movies. Charlie Chan, Agatha Christie characters. My mom also loves this movie as she loves Agatha Christie books. I remember how the bookcase in the garage was filled with Christie paperbacks. I never had any desire to read one.

So I picked this one up at the Country Inn and Suites in Pearl, MS. (See Treasure Island for more on this hotel chain.) I read most of the book during my wife’s labor. Thank you to whoever invented the epidural. The version at the hotel is just like the picture except that is has the logo for the hotel printed on the book cover. Fancy!

I was excited to finally read an Agatha Christie book. This one featured Hercule Poirot. The layout of the book is different than any other I've read. Each chapter is an interview with a different person on the train. . Most are interviewed twice. Just like in Murder by Death, in the final chapters connections are made that couldn’t have possibly been deduced by the reader. Then there are the two possible solution that Poirot deduces. One in which every traveler in the car was connected to the deceased and they each had a hand in the murder (a murder that was really a well justified revenge that Poirot was able to figure out and took sympathy for) or it was done by someone who was able to sneak off the train. Guess which he decides to report?

I was toying with the idea of reading some more Agatha Christie books but I guess I was a little late. My mom got rid of them a few years back. I think they got damp and rotted out. Oh well, it’s probably for the better as I really didn’t care for the style of the book. I guess I stick to Murder by Death.

Weird U. S.: Your Travel Guide to America’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets

By Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman



The book is always better than the movie. True statement. That doesn’t mean the movie is bad but that’s just the way it is. Weird U. S. the TV show is better than the book. The problem? The book is mostly about ghosts and supernatural places told through letters from fans of the author’s. Most, hell all, of these letters are retellings of stories, embellished and lame. It’s like the writers of the letters are trying to outdo each other and you know what they succeed. Succeed in outdoing the lameness of the previous letter. The show features actual visits to the places so you get a sense of what it is really like instead of hearing about it second hand. The part of the book that dealt with odd locations was more to my liking.

Now as most of the stories are only a page or two this is really a coffee table book. Pick it up, flip through until something catches your eye, read, set down. So I can’t do that. I pick up a book and have to read it from the beginning to the end. I read Weird U. S. over the course of a month or so. There were a few places in Houston mentioned in the book. I plan on going to visit the Orange Show someday, which I learned about through the book, one man’s homage to the orange built from scrap metal. Exciting no? Well at least it’s only a buck or so to get in.

The one story that really stood out for me was about the Albino village. When I first read it I thought how stupid. If the rest of the book is filled with drivel like this I won’t be able to finish it. I told my wife about the bit and she pointed out how ridiculous the story was. It lightened up my thinking of the book. So here it is.

You drive down a dead end road that leads into a group of houses. All inhabited by angry albinos. How do you see these angry albinos? Well you wait to drive down the road until after midnight, and then when you reach the houses you honk your horn over and over until they come out of their homes mad and yelling at you. And why shouldn’t these people be upset. I’d be pissed if cars were always driving down my street honking the horn waking me up in the middle off the night. I’m pretty pasty to begin with but at night with the headlights of a car shinning on me; yeah I’d look albino to.

I began to think that most of the places in this book really couldn’t be verified. Places like the albino town and the midget town were listed as “to protect these locations we can’t tell you exactly where they are…” Yeah I’ll take the orange show any day.

Just think, if this was the highlight of the book for me, what’s the rest like? Yeah don’t waste your time finding out.

If you really must see the TV Show. Well I can’t stop you. Looks like there are three sets out so far. Or you can see how the author's got their start, in New Jersey.

Treasure Island

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Have you ever stayed at the Country Inn and Suites? It’s a great hotel. Free breakfast (which means free lunch and dinner), cookies in the evening, oh and free books. Well you check out the books and you don’t have to return them. Which is good because I only go to a Country Inn and Suites a few times a year.

Now I used to go to one in Augusta, Georgia. They had new releases. I remember going when the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out and they had the books behind the counter. The current Country Inn and Suites that I go to is in Pearl, MS. Close to the Jackson Mississippi airport which has some of the worst airport employees around. When I say they are slow, well, it’s an understatement. The hotel doesn’t have as good of a selection or change up the books very much compared to Augusta. Maybe it’s because the bookcase is in the corner and not that many people take the books so they don’t go through the case very fast so they don’t have a need to order new ones. Oh well. I think they also cheap out and buy the least expensive books they can because all their books have their hotel logo printed on the cover.

But as luck would have it last time I was there I picked up Treasure Island and Murder on the Orient Express. I had always wanted to read both books. And hey the price was right.

Treasure Island was written back in 1883. I always thought of it as a little kids book but you know it is a good adventure story. Jim Hawkins gets hooked up with a pirate who dies in the inn his parents run. He finds a treasure map in the man’s chest (his sea chest not his body chest) and gets the local townsmen to help him find it. Except that the crew of their ship turns out to be pirates who are also after the booty. Fighting ensues, treasure is found, generations are left with a vision of what pirates were like, and the parrot screams out “pieces of eight” over and over. Long John Silver enters our mind as the ultimate pirate. Later his name is used at a franchise for a fast food restaurant where the entire menu consists of things that are battered and deep fat fried.

Now I enjoyed this book. I really liked that the book was presented as it was written and the language was not modernized. The problem with this is that the sentence structure is sometimes different. I can’t really give an example but I would read a sentence and the adjectives and verbs would be backwards from where you would expect them to be placed. It didn’t hurt the story but it is interesting to note. Yeah I should probably be giving examples of this but honestly it’s been a while since I read this book. I guess I should have been writing my thoughts down as I finished each book on the list, it really would have made everything much easier. Oh well, there’s always 2008.

Cell: A Novel

By Stephen King



Stephen King is like a less sick Dean Koontz. Or maybe Koontz is a sicker version of King. I first read about Cell in a review in USA Today. I was intrigued. So I was pleasantly surprised when I went to visit my sister-in-law and she had Cell. She let me borrow it. Her husband had read it and really liked it. I was excited. Then she said it was a zombie story. I’m not that into zombies. But I gave the book a go. Here’s the story.

A pulse causes everyone who uses a cellphone to go crazy with rage and become a mindless zombie. The zombies mutate, well the pulse mutates and creates different kinds of zombies as more people use their cellphones. They mutate to the point where the zombies can use mind control over the normal people. Eventually the normies make their way up to a safe area. But the zombies are using mind control to turn them into more zombies. The hero of our story Clayton Riddell helps destroy a zombie Cell, finds his zombified son and on a theory that the normies have (that the mutation of the pulse can reverse the affect) puts a phone to his son’s ear and hits the send button. The end.

Pros: You get to imagine what happens to the son.

Cons: You had to read the whole book to get to that point.

Okay so Cell wasn’t that lame. I really liked the parts about how the normies stocked up on food and lived as society crumbled around them. Not the most macabre or gruesome Stephen King book I’ve read. But I think I like the short stories better. One zombie book a year is enough for me. Look out for I Am Legend in 2008? Who knows.

Promise Me

By Harlan Coben



Found this one at the airport. I should have left it there.

About halfway through I realized that I knew the characters. Yeah I’m guessing that Harlan Coben needed some easy coin, so after seven years he resurrected these characters and wrote a new story about them.

The story was alright. Myron helps find a runway, or is she really a runaway? Who knows? Better yet, who cares? And his partner Win, this guy is the ultimate fighter, driver, gunman, etc, etc. There were some freaky bad guys and lots of twists and turns. So many that I twisted between wanting to finish the book so I could add it to my list or giving up and picking up something I’d really enjoy.

Promise me that unless you’re a big Harlan Coben fan and just need to read another Myron Bolitar Mysteries novel, hey you know you could always write your own fanfic and be a lot more satisfied, or if you’re just a huge big Cindy fan, you’ll stay away from this fluff piece.

What Life was Like

In the age of Chivalry

In the realm of Elizabeth

On the banks of the Nile

At the dawn of Democracy

When Rome ruled the World

By Time Life Books

When I set out to read 52 books in a year I knew at some point I’d have trouble finding books of interest, or the money to buy more books. Then I realized that I had a goldmine in the closet. Hey doesn’t everyone keep their extra books in boxes in the closet? Well mine is full of Time Life Books. Starting a few years ago I got carried away buying them on ebay. I always want to start reading them again but I never seem to make the time. Well 007 was the year to start reading what Time Life had to offer!

The only problem with the Time Life books is that they are all hardback and oversize. They are also heavy. This makes it difficult to pack one into my suitcase and lug around for half a week when I go to work. Hell my bags already weigh 35 pounds, each, and I have two. That’s almost half my body weight. Anyway I got interested in the What Life Was Like series when I was looking for some books on life in the middle ages a few years ago. There are more books in the series than I have but I bid on a set that had 5 of the titles. After getting the books I quickly read In the age of Chivalry, then set the rest aside and never made time to read them. What was I thinking? These books are great! They seem to be written more for a high school or younger age level. They’re short, around 170 pages and contain lots of pictures. What I really like about them is that they tell a story through examples of real people with pictures of paintings and artifacts. In the beginning of each book they have a timeline so you can get an overview of the civilization being covered. These books help take you through the time frame in living color. But don’t confuse them with the Time Life books series called Time Frame. I’ve flipped through one of these once but I don’t remember much about it.

The books that I bought cover what life was like…In the age of chivalry, In the realm of Elizabeth, On the banks of the Nile, At the dawn of democracy, When Rome ruled the world.

Okay so I didn’t read In the age of Chivalry in 2007 but seeing that I’ve only got a sentence or two to say about each I’ll tell you a little about it also.

In the age of Chivalry talks about how the common people lived. Monks, knights, villagers. A short chronicle of the crusades, life around a manor and in a town. There is a focus on tools people used with pictures of everything talked about. A good beginning book on the time period. Well all of these books really are an introduction to the age, so that you could have something to look for if you what to know more about any of the chapters.

In the realm of Elizabeth was kind of a disappointment. If you’re interested in royalty and the politics behind the throne then this is the volume for you. For me, not so much. The later chapters talk about life in London, the rise in popularity of books and pamphlets, plays. There are highlight sections of recipes of the time and cures for ailments. When read in the language of the time I wasn’t able to make much of them but the book helps to explain everything. The last chapter talks about advances in science and Sir Francis Drake and his explorations.

On the banks of the Nile is about Egypt. Pharaohs, tombs, religion, it’s all here. Also there are examples of the tools craftsmen used. From building a pyramid, to making a mummy, to the simple hand tools used to make a chair inlaid with precious stone. Learn about a Meskhenet or a confinement chair. Where a women can brace herself for the rigors of child birth. To aid conception the old fashioned way? Try squatting over a steaming mixture of frankincense, oil, dates and beer. Or use a mixture containing crocodile dung to prevent getting pregnant. Who knew?

At the dawn of Democracy there is talk of the Greek gods and the festivals held in their honor. The Olympics are mentioned but also how the average Greek lived. The Greeks and Romans used what looks to me like a teapot to feed babies. So now you know what they did before rubber and plastic were invented.

When Rome ruled the World also talks about the Gods. But only in one of the essays. Learn about how the Caesar’s ruled, the struggle for power among them would be rulers. For some reason this was a little more interesting than reading about Elizabeth. The Colosseum and the games held in it compose a chapter. But the best parts of this volume are the pictures. The photos of the mosaics the Romans created are amazing. It’s amazing that they have lasted this long but here they are here for you to see.

Each book also has a glossary of time specific terms at the end. This is a nice touch, though while reading there is no indication of which words are further defined in the glossary so unless you flip through it on you own it’s not very user friendly.

I really like this series and I’d be interested in maybe reading more. I say pick and choose which of the volumes interest you and give it a go. I wasn’t very excited to read about the Greeks and the Romans but I enjoyed the books all the same.

Pillars of the Earth

By Ken Follett



After reading many books about the Middle Ages this book puts it all together. I was turned onto this book by a guy I worked with. As he put it, “I love it when a good book it really long, that way you can enjoy it for a while.” Pillars of the earth is historical fiction at its best.

To say I like this book is an understatement. It ties together everything I had been reading about the time period, the 12th Century and adds a compelling story than spans two generations. There are many characters but the book manly follows a monk, a family lead by Tom Builder and his children, a mysterious witch women and her son, the family of a deposed lord and the family that is trying to take away his title. Whew! But in 992 pages there is plenty of room for them all.

Ken Follett really recreates the time. From building the church, to the layout of the town. How busyness what done at the fairs and markets. The daily lives of the characters are covered from how they slept and cooked to how they quarried the stone and transported it to the building site.
I can talk and talk about the crappy books, nit picking them, telling you everything that is wrong with them. But the good ones? Well it’s easier to tell you to just read them.

I really can’t say enough good things about this book. So what are you waiting for? An endorsement by Oprah? Well she’s given it. Now just hope that they don’t make this into a movie and ruin the whole thing. Oh and if you like Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett came out with a sort of sequel at the end of 2007, World Without End. Yeah once I get around to reading books in 2008 this one is definitely on my list.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

By J.K. Rowling

My wife was really excited to get this final installment. So excited that she wanted to preorder the book in case the stores ran out. Hell event the supermarket carried the Harry Potter books when they came out. So she freaked when she realized that we would be in CA when the book was delivered and not in TX. The solution? Change the shipping address.

When the 4th Book

came out I reread the first ones to refresh my memory. Not so much with the rest. Oh well. Seeing that the time between books only increased this wasn’t the best idea. My wife reread 5 and 6 right before book 7 came out so she was able to fill me in on all I had forgotten. That and http://www.hp-lexicon.org/.

I’ll be honest. I don’t remember much about the Deathly Hallows. It’s not that I wasn’t interested. It’s just that I didn’t remember the details of the books, only the general story, so it was hard to follow along with all of the story lines. So what do I remember about book 7? The epilogue where Rowling tells us what happens to Harry and the gang after they grew up. It was a nice touch. I can say that I’m looking forward to rereading these in another decade or so with my daughter. Until then, I’ll keep the fond memories for first 4 books in my mind.

The Hunt for Red October

I guess you either like Tom Clancy novels or you hate them. The only previous book of his that I have read is Rainbow Six. I loved it. That book and The Hunt for Red October were both found at work. One in the hotel and the other at the airport. Man I love finding books at work!

This might be a rare case where the book and the movie are both good. Well I've never seen the movie all the way through in one sitting. I think I've seen the whole thing but always in bits and pieces. The book goes into more detail but the two are pretty close together. I don’t really have much to say about the book. I mean I love reading about submarines during WWII. In this most of the action takes place in one with a little information on how they operate.

This was the first of the Jack Ryan books published, though apparently not the first in the series. So give it a go. Plus as a bonus, every time you hear the Russian sub commander Ramius talk you can think of Sean Connery.

Red Army Resurgent

By Time Life Books WWII Series

Growing up I remember seeing commercials for Time Life Books. Usually it was for Mysteries of the Unknown (their best selling series), but I also remember seeing one for The Old West. Anyway fast forward to High School and one of the few times that I checked out a book from the library (yeah I wasn’t that much of a reader until after college) and I read a couple of the books from the True Crime Series. Fast forward another decade or so and to the first time I visited my Mother in law’s house. What do I find in the bookcase? Time Life Books. She had about 4 different series in varying completeness. My wife and her sister told me how they remembered getting the books in the mail yet no one had ever told me. Well I guess I had never really brought it up, I had forgotten about them.

Now travel to 2001 or 2002 (I forget) and what have I found? EBay. That’s right, you can not only find Time Life Books on EBay but you can usually get them are really good prices. Instead of the $19.95 a book, try around a dollar or two when you buy a the books in lots or complete sets. I went a little crazy and bought a handful of sets, enough to keep me satisfied for almost 3 years when I figure that I would only read a book a week. Well I quickly read through the Epic of Flight series (my grandfather had actually given me one book, The Jet Age, as a birthday gift many years ago) and started in on the WWII books.

At 39 books I knew it would take a while to read through. Well I read the first 3 or 4 and then time went by and before I knew it it had been a couple of years and I was only a little over halfway through the series. I was starting to forget the early books.

This year I ended up reading 7 books from the WWII series. I guess it could have been more but I switched over to the What Life Was Like in the Age of ______ books. I guess I used those to jumpstart my interest in the Time Life books again.

Seeing as how I’m reflecting back on my reads for 2007 many months since I read most of the books on my list; that and as history books they don’t lend themselves to a review, I’ll try and relate any interesting bits from each one but don’t always count on it. For my impressions of Red Army Resurgent go to The Soviet Juggernaut. Two books about the eastern front close together kinda combined into one in my brain.