While the link is for the entire Musashi saga, this review is of the first paperback volume which seems to be out of print or otherwise unavailable from Amazon directly. There are five or six volumes of the paperback version of the story. One of the first RPG videogames I ever played was Brave Fencer Musashi on the original Playstation. While the game was fun and lighthearted, I learned from a video game store employee that Musashi was actually an iconic Japanese figure. I wanted to learn more, but […]
Ladies Who Paint
When I first started reading The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, by Dominic Smith, I was pretty sure I didn’t like it. The first chapter felt like it was about dissatisfied rich people and I was not in the mood for that nonsense. Happily, it is not about dissatisfied rich people, nor is it about the theft and forgery of a Dutch painting, which is what I thought it was about after I decided it wasn’t about rich people. Really though, it’s about three […]
You could do worse than this fictionalized primer on the War of the Roses
3.5 stars Philippa Gregory is a giant in her corner of historical fiction, which seems essentially “Aristocrats and Nobles of 15th and 16th century Britain (particularly Women).” Even though I had never read her books, I had a detached respect for her as a well-researched author whose fictionalizations garnered generalized interest for the history her books cover. That impression holds true, and I still appreciate her doing her thing. I get that because she’s working from a record of stuff that actually happened, she can […]
In which I take another step toward beatific acceptance of my plebian taste
This probably qualifies as another lit-fic fail for me, by which I don’t mean that the book was a failure; I mostly likely just failed to appreciate it. It’s one of those oniony books that has a lot of layers, and characters who relate to each other on levels both appropriate and otherwise. Set in the 1960’s, there’s a story of a young woman who finds out she is of European Jewish descent, and finds herself digging into her history by way of trying to […]
Back at sea with my imaginary BFF’s
Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series is one of my favourites of all time. Despite initially not having much of a clue what the many, different sailing terms meant, somewhere in the first instalment I fell hook, line and sinker for the characters – particularly for the delightfully grumpy Stephen Maturin – and since then, whenever times have got tough and I need a pick-me-up, I treat myself to a little holiday in their company. As O’Brian is deceased and the series numbers twenty books, I’ve been […]
The good ones are often controversial…
Roots is a work of historical fiction written in 1976 by Alex Haley. He begins with the life and eventual capture of his great-great-great-great grandfather Kunta Kinte in Africa. In what follows is a mostly fictional story, except for possibly a few details and Kinte’s lineage. Fiction or not, Roots is an amazing saga of nine generations. The most intriguing part of the book, for me, was the beginning, which focused on Kinte’s life. After Kinte was transported to America to be sold as a […]
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