Ah, Ken Follett. Writer of decent spy books, and sweeping historic epic novels. I have no idea how he gets these things done, they’re so bloody huge. So, this is the first of what Follett is calling the “Century Trilogy.” It follows five families through the 20th century, this book covers 1911 through 1924. We’ve got World War I, the Russian Revolution, women’s suffrage, mining strikes, and also just general life stuff like unwed mothers, gays, and religion. The families come from Wales (the poor, […]
What goes up. . . .
This book deserves a better-written review than it’s going to receive from me, since I read it at the beginning of the year, didn’t write a review, and now it’s December 30th. My own damn fault. This is the sequel to Wolf Hall, the story of the rise of Thomas Cromwell (and, at about the same time, Anne Boleyn). The king and Cromwell are staying with the Seymours at their home, Wolf Hall (which made me wonder why the first book was called that, since […]
A refreshing take on a done-to-death subject.
Forty-eighth book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. In India, we are taught about our freedom struggle for almost 5 years as part of the high school curriculum. But the study is just a brief overview of the entire movement and does very little justice to this major event in the history of the sub-continent. It involved millions of people and had several leaders that spanned many generations. While writing textbooks for high school history, the authors tend to concentrate on a few of […]
An Artful Novel
So Dickens chose to write about Oliver Twist, the cherubic little orphan lost in the big bad world. But I think we all know who the more interesting character is – Jack Dawkins, otherwise known as the Artful Dodger. In fact, that’s how the book starts: the preface “reintroduces us to the acclaimed Mr. Jack Dawkins, known to sundry as the Artful Dodger, and laments the inattention paid him as compared to more simpering examples of the day.” The author goes on to explain why […]
A mammoth account of India’s story over the last 50 years!
Forty-sixth book reviewed as part of the 130 Challenge. The history of India in the last 50 years is something that we don’t get to read about. Indians love to live in their past; reminiscing about the glory days of the ancient civilizations that thrived on the sub-continent. We love to boast about how three of the world’s major religions started in here and that at least one, found a major foothold. We are a civilization that accepted foreigners with open arms and our hospitality […]
More like drums of melodrama.
And so concludes another installment of the madcap adventures of that time-traveling Highlander clan, the Mackenzie-Fraser whatevers. This was the least weird, but most melodramatic of the books so far. It was wacky and I enjoyed it, despite some issues. In 1767, Claire, Jamie and Ian are fresh from being shipwrecked off the coast of Georgia. In 1969, Jamie and Claire’s grown daughter, Brianna, grows closer to Roger Wakefield, the only other person who knows her family’s secret: they are time-travelers. And Roger, too, is a […]
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