I just wanted to thank all of you who have been checking out this blog. We have gone international. The early traffic has been mostly from the US and Canada. Over the past several weeks the visits have expanded to countries such as Australia, Brazil, China, Turkey, United Kingdom and several more. Let's see if we can keep adding more countries.
Not many of you are leaving any comments. Please don't be shy. There are a lot of readers out there and I would really like to know your opinion(s) of the books I blog about and/or the blog in general. Also your suggestions for other books we may all like to read are most welcome.
Thank you again and keep on reading.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Page 34: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell is a literary work of historical fiction that is set in Japan in the early nineteenth century. Jacob de Zoet comes to Dejima, a small Dutch East India Company trading post on an island adjacent to Nagasaki, in 1799. He is a clerk whose superiors want him to inventory the vast quantities of merchandise found in the various warehouses, as well as discover how much has been stolen due to the corruption of those assigned to oversee the trading operations.
The huge cast of characters includes his fellow Dutchmen, foreigners hired by the Dutch to work at the trading post, and the various Japanese they interact with while there. The Japanese include interpreters, servants, high officials and one very special Japanese woman Jacob falls in love with. Orito Aibagawa is a midwife studying with Dr. Marinus the company physician. Jacob, even though he is engaged to his fiance back in Holland, falls madly in love with her. Unfortunately for Jacob, his love must cross the very strict barriers established by the Japanese for relationships with foreigners. The lessons Dr. Marinus teaches the Japanese students are a fascinating aspect of this novel. There is plenty of other material in the story that includes detailed descriptions of Japanese culture during the period. Japan was still a feudal society at the time, and Mitchell portrays the relationships between rulers and subjects, and within classes quite well.
Jacob soon learns to be wary of everyone until he decides who he is able to trust, those he cannot, and the ones he is just not sure about. Before the ship leaves for Batavia, the major trading city on the island of Java, Jacob is asked to sign a manifest of trading goods. He is offered a higher position and other perks, but he refuses to sign since he knows the manifest is false. His own superiors have used Jacob for their own profit and demote him on the spot when he refuses to sign. He is left on Dejima in disgrace to face a new superior who is no friend. But this is when the story becomes much more interesting and the plot shifts to Aibagawa and how she is treated when her father dies and she is sold to the local feudal lord. She is sent to an abbey controlled by the feudal lord. The abbey is located high on a mountain and surrounded by walls. In addition, it is guarded around the clock. She finds herself in a prison where the inmates are the sisters, and the male monks main duty is to father children with the sisters. This part of the story includes an escape by Aibagawa, an attempted rescue by her former love interest, and the startling revelation of the main purpose of the abbey.
When a Dutch ship does not return to Dejima the men left behind find themselves in a very bad situation. They must depend on the Japanese for help while they wait for a ship. A ship does eventually come, but it is English.
Read the book to discover all the details for yourself, and what happens to Jacob, Aibagawa, and Dejima. As usual, here is a review of the book. This one is from Amazon.com by Tom Nissley:
"David Mitchell reinvents himself with each book, and it's thrilling to watch. His novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas spill over with narrators and language, collecting storylines connected more in spirit than in fact. In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, he harnesses that plenitude into a more traditional form, a historical novel set in Japan at the turn into the 19th century, when the island nation was almost entirely cut off from the West except for a tiny, quarantined Dutch outpost. Jacob is a pious but not unappealing prig from Zeeland, whose self-driven duty to blurt the truth in a corrupt and deceitful trading culture, along with his headlong love for a local midwife, provides the early engine for the story, which is confined at first to the Dutch enclave but crosses before long to the mainland. Every page is overfull with language, events, and characters, exuberantly saturated in the details of the time and the place but told from a knowing and undeniably modern perspective. It's a story that seems to contain a thousand worlds in one."
Here is another review from Publishers Weekly:
"Mitchell's rightly been hailed as a virtuoso genius for his genre-bending, fiercely intelligent novels Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas. Now he takes something of a busman's holiday with this majestic historical romance set in turn-of-the-19th-century Japan, where young, naïve Jacob de Zoet arrives on the small manmade island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor as part of a contingent of Dutch East Indies officials charged with cleaning up the trading station's entrenched culture of corruption. Though engaged to be married in the Netherlands, he quickly falls in hopeless love with Orito Aibagawa, a Dutch-trained Japanese midwife and promising student of Marinus, the station's resident physician. Their courtship is strained, as foreigners are prohibited from setting foot on the Japanese mainland, and the only relationships permitted between Japanese women and foreign men on Dejima are of the paid variety. Jacob has larger trouble, though; when he refuses to sign off on a bogus shipping manifest, his stint on Dejima is extended and he's demoted, stuck in the service of a vengeful fellow clerk. Meanwhile, Orito's father dies deeply in debt, and her stepmother sells her into service at a mountaintop shrine where her midwife skills are in high demand, she soon learns, because of the extraordinarily sinister rituals going on in the secretive shrine. This is where the slow-to-start plot kicks in, and Mitchell pours on the heat with a rescue attempt by Orito's first love, Uzaemon, who happens to be Jacob's translator and confidant. Mitchell's ventriloquism is as sharp as ever; he conjures men of Eastern and Western science as convincingly as he does the unscrubbed sailor rabble."
The huge cast of characters includes his fellow Dutchmen, foreigners hired by the Dutch to work at the trading post, and the various Japanese they interact with while there. The Japanese include interpreters, servants, high officials and one very special Japanese woman Jacob falls in love with. Orito Aibagawa is a midwife studying with Dr. Marinus the company physician. Jacob, even though he is engaged to his fiance back in Holland, falls madly in love with her. Unfortunately for Jacob, his love must cross the very strict barriers established by the Japanese for relationships with foreigners. The lessons Dr. Marinus teaches the Japanese students are a fascinating aspect of this novel. There is plenty of other material in the story that includes detailed descriptions of Japanese culture during the period. Japan was still a feudal society at the time, and Mitchell portrays the relationships between rulers and subjects, and within classes quite well.
Jacob soon learns to be wary of everyone until he decides who he is able to trust, those he cannot, and the ones he is just not sure about. Before the ship leaves for Batavia, the major trading city on the island of Java, Jacob is asked to sign a manifest of trading goods. He is offered a higher position and other perks, but he refuses to sign since he knows the manifest is false. His own superiors have used Jacob for their own profit and demote him on the spot when he refuses to sign. He is left on Dejima in disgrace to face a new superior who is no friend. But this is when the story becomes much more interesting and the plot shifts to Aibagawa and how she is treated when her father dies and she is sold to the local feudal lord. She is sent to an abbey controlled by the feudal lord. The abbey is located high on a mountain and surrounded by walls. In addition, it is guarded around the clock. She finds herself in a prison where the inmates are the sisters, and the male monks main duty is to father children with the sisters. This part of the story includes an escape by Aibagawa, an attempted rescue by her former love interest, and the startling revelation of the main purpose of the abbey.
When a Dutch ship does not return to Dejima the men left behind find themselves in a very bad situation. They must depend on the Japanese for help while they wait for a ship. A ship does eventually come, but it is English.
Read the book to discover all the details for yourself, and what happens to Jacob, Aibagawa, and Dejima. As usual, here is a review of the book. This one is from Amazon.com by Tom Nissley:
"David Mitchell reinvents himself with each book, and it's thrilling to watch. His novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas spill over with narrators and language, collecting storylines connected more in spirit than in fact. In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, he harnesses that plenitude into a more traditional form, a historical novel set in Japan at the turn into the 19th century, when the island nation was almost entirely cut off from the West except for a tiny, quarantined Dutch outpost. Jacob is a pious but not unappealing prig from Zeeland, whose self-driven duty to blurt the truth in a corrupt and deceitful trading culture, along with his headlong love for a local midwife, provides the early engine for the story, which is confined at first to the Dutch enclave but crosses before long to the mainland. Every page is overfull with language, events, and characters, exuberantly saturated in the details of the time and the place but told from a knowing and undeniably modern perspective. It's a story that seems to contain a thousand worlds in one."
Here is another review from Publishers Weekly:
"Mitchell's rightly been hailed as a virtuoso genius for his genre-bending, fiercely intelligent novels Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas. Now he takes something of a busman's holiday with this majestic historical romance set in turn-of-the-19th-century Japan, where young, naïve Jacob de Zoet arrives on the small manmade island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor as part of a contingent of Dutch East Indies officials charged with cleaning up the trading station's entrenched culture of corruption. Though engaged to be married in the Netherlands, he quickly falls in hopeless love with Orito Aibagawa, a Dutch-trained Japanese midwife and promising student of Marinus, the station's resident physician. Their courtship is strained, as foreigners are prohibited from setting foot on the Japanese mainland, and the only relationships permitted between Japanese women and foreign men on Dejima are of the paid variety. Jacob has larger trouble, though; when he refuses to sign off on a bogus shipping manifest, his stint on Dejima is extended and he's demoted, stuck in the service of a vengeful fellow clerk. Meanwhile, Orito's father dies deeply in debt, and her stepmother sells her into service at a mountaintop shrine where her midwife skills are in high demand, she soon learns, because of the extraordinarily sinister rituals going on in the secretive shrine. This is where the slow-to-start plot kicks in, and Mitchell pours on the heat with a rescue attempt by Orito's first love, Uzaemon, who happens to be Jacob's translator and confidant. Mitchell's ventriloquism is as sharp as ever; he conjures men of Eastern and Western science as convincingly as he does the unscrubbed sailor rabble."
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Page 33: Ford County: Stories
I have been meaning to read this book since it came out. I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago to South Carolina to visit family, and picked up a copy of this book at the airport shop and started reading on the plane. John Grisham is one of my favorite writers. He is not only a very good writer, but a great teller of stories. This departure from the novel to short stories is a real joy to read. Each story is a gem. They all take place in Grisham's Mississippi and capture the good, bad, and ugly of any small town. I will not try to pick a favorite story from the seven since they are all that good. There is something special about the south when it comes to stories, and Grisham has mastered his own sense of place in Mississippi.
Pat Conroy, another great writer of novels set in the south, has high praise for Ford County. Here it is.
"Ford County is the best writing that John Grisham has ever done. One of the many things I've admired about his books is his intimate chronicle of Mississippi life in the generations following William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. Grisham writes equally well about the plantation south, the black south, and white-cracker south. Over the years he has used the legal system as an instrument to illuminate the world of mansions and sharecroppers and everything in between as he not only defined Mississippi but also staked it out as his home fictional territory. His short stories were a surprise to me. All of them are very good; three of them, I believe, are great."
Pat Conroy, another great writer of novels set in the south, has high praise for Ford County. Here it is.
"Ford County is the best writing that John Grisham has ever done. One of the many things I've admired about his books is his intimate chronicle of Mississippi life in the generations following William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. Grisham writes equally well about the plantation south, the black south, and white-cracker south. Over the years he has used the legal system as an instrument to illuminate the world of mansions and sharecroppers and everything in between as he not only defined Mississippi but also staked it out as his home fictional territory. His short stories were a surprise to me. All of them are very good; three of them, I believe, are great."
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Page 32: The Craft (Published)
My book, The Craft by Thomas Talbot, is now available for purchase on the iUniverse web site. Right now the book is available in hardcover and softcover. The ebook will be ready in the near future. The book is also available on Amazon (see link at the left), Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books A Million.
I am in the process of having a web site developed so I can keep everyone up to date on how the book is doing and obtain feedback from readers. I'll let you know when that is ready.
Thanks you for following my blog and reading the book.
I am in the process of having a web site developed so I can keep everyone up to date on how the book is doing and obtain feedback from readers. I'll let you know when that is ready.
Thanks you for following my blog and reading the book.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Page 31: The Craft (A Preview)
Yes, I have written a book that will be published in the very near future. I don't have a definite date yet, but will let you know when it is available. I just finished approving the final edits. The book is historical fiction in genre and is entitled The Craft. The story takes place in 1826 and features secret government agents working for President John Quincy Adams. They are trying to find William Morgan. Remember him, the scoundrel who wrote a book revealing the secrets of Freemasonry? His disappearance at the hands of Freemasons in upstate New York touched off a national scandal that year.
The premise of The Craft is that Morgan was a spy for the British during the War of 1812. The president's agents have found most of the spies from that era, but the one who has eluded them is William Morgan. A man who knew Morgan during the War of 1812, Matthew Prescott, is recruited to assist the presidential agents in their search for Morgan. Their charge from the president is to find Morgan, and bring him back to Washington for trial and punishment. Of course, the task turns out to be not quite so simple.
The action begins in Washington and moves to New York City, Albany, and various locations upstate such as Lewiston, Fort Niagara, Rochester and Batavia. A few others are included, but read the book to find out. Several historical personages find themselves caught in a very dangerous and far reaching plot hatched by rogue British agents. The book even provides my own version of what may have happened to Morgan.
Stay tuned. More information will be forthcoming. Leave me your contact information in the comments section if you would like to know where to purchase the book. It will be available in hardcover, paperback, and in ebook format.
The premise of The Craft is that Morgan was a spy for the British during the War of 1812. The president's agents have found most of the spies from that era, but the one who has eluded them is William Morgan. A man who knew Morgan during the War of 1812, Matthew Prescott, is recruited to assist the presidential agents in their search for Morgan. Their charge from the president is to find Morgan, and bring him back to Washington for trial and punishment. Of course, the task turns out to be not quite so simple.
The action begins in Washington and moves to New York City, Albany, and various locations upstate such as Lewiston, Fort Niagara, Rochester and Batavia. A few others are included, but read the book to find out. Several historical personages find themselves caught in a very dangerous and far reaching plot hatched by rogue British agents. The book even provides my own version of what may have happened to Morgan.
Stay tuned. More information will be forthcoming. Leave me your contact information in the comments section if you would like to know where to purchase the book. It will be available in hardcover, paperback, and in ebook format.
Page 30: True Blue
OK, this is the second book in a row I have 'read' in audio format. However, my Kindle is not languishing unused. I am reading another book on the device and even have a real hardcover book waiting in line. I must confess, though, I like listening to books from Audible.com while I am doing other things around the house that don't require any concentration. My favorite device is my very portable iPod Touch that now has a great Audible app.
True Blue by David Baldacci is the first book in a new series that features the Perry sisters. Beth is the DC Chief of Police and her sister Mace has just been released from prison after being framed for crimes she did not commit. The book is typical Baldacci. There is plenty of action, a fast-paced plot, good characters and government conspiracy aplenty.
Mace is trying to get her old job back on the DC police force, but as a convicted felon it is a stretch that it will every happen. Her sister has been watching Mace's back while in prison and finds a job for her as a research assistant to a professor at Georgetown. It is an understatement to say that Mace is a loose cannon, and does not like people telling her what to do including her sister. This adds to the story line and makes it much more interesting. Mace teams up with a lawyer from a Georgetown law firm to help solve a murder. Roy, the lawyer, is the one who finds a colleague in the break room fridge. So much for Roy's motivation. Mace just wants to solve a high profile crime in order to get her old job back.
This may not be the best book David Baldacci has written, but it is good just the same. If you like thrillers, plot surprises, non-stop action, and believable characters this is the book for you. As usual here are a couple of reviews.
The first is from Publisher's Weekly
"This promising first in a new series from bestseller Baldacci (First Family) introduces Beth Perry, chief of the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police, and Beth's younger sister, Mace Perry, a former police officer dubbed the Patty Hearst of the twenty-first century after she was seized by bandits, drugged and taken along on a series of armed robberies around Washington. Mace, who's just getting out of prison after serving a two-year sentence, is willing to risk everything to clear her name and reclaim her life as a cop by cracking a big case on her own. The rape-murder of a powerful lawyer as well as the killing of a prominent U.S. attorney provide Mace an opportunity to vindicate herself. While Baldacci draws his characters in bright primary colors, and some of the action reaches comic book proportions, he delivers his usual intricate plotting and sets the stage nicely for highly competent Beth and impulsive, streetwise Mace to take on more bad guys. (Oct. 27)"
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
This review is from Amazon
"Mason "Mace" Perry was a firebrand cop on the D.C. police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything-her badge, her career, her freedom-and spent two years in prison. Now she's back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major case on her own, and prove she has the right to wear the uniform. But even with her police chief sister on her side, she has to work in the shadows: A vindictive U.S. attorney is looking for any reason to send Mace back behind bars. Then Roy Kingman enters her life.
Roy is a young lawyer who aided the poor until he took a high-paying job at a law firm in Washington. Mace and Roy meet after he discovers the dead body of a female partner at the firm. As they investigate the death, they start uncovering surprising secrets from both the private and public world of the nation's capital.
Soon, what began as a fairly routine homicide takes a terrifying and unexpected turn-into something complex, diabolical, and possibly lethal."
If you like thrillers and have never read David Baldacci, try this book. I think you will be checking out the web for more of his work. Enjoy.
True Blue by David Baldacci is the first book in a new series that features the Perry sisters. Beth is the DC Chief of Police and her sister Mace has just been released from prison after being framed for crimes she did not commit. The book is typical Baldacci. There is plenty of action, a fast-paced plot, good characters and government conspiracy aplenty.
Mace is trying to get her old job back on the DC police force, but as a convicted felon it is a stretch that it will every happen. Her sister has been watching Mace's back while in prison and finds a job for her as a research assistant to a professor at Georgetown. It is an understatement to say that Mace is a loose cannon, and does not like people telling her what to do including her sister. This adds to the story line and makes it much more interesting. Mace teams up with a lawyer from a Georgetown law firm to help solve a murder. Roy, the lawyer, is the one who finds a colleague in the break room fridge. So much for Roy's motivation. Mace just wants to solve a high profile crime in order to get her old job back.
This may not be the best book David Baldacci has written, but it is good just the same. If you like thrillers, plot surprises, non-stop action, and believable characters this is the book for you. As usual here are a couple of reviews.
The first is from Publisher's Weekly
"This promising first in a new series from bestseller Baldacci (First Family) introduces Beth Perry, chief of the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police, and Beth's younger sister, Mace Perry, a former police officer dubbed the Patty Hearst of the twenty-first century after she was seized by bandits, drugged and taken along on a series of armed robberies around Washington. Mace, who's just getting out of prison after serving a two-year sentence, is willing to risk everything to clear her name and reclaim her life as a cop by cracking a big case on her own. The rape-murder of a powerful lawyer as well as the killing of a prominent U.S. attorney provide Mace an opportunity to vindicate herself. While Baldacci draws his characters in bright primary colors, and some of the action reaches comic book proportions, he delivers his usual intricate plotting and sets the stage nicely for highly competent Beth and impulsive, streetwise Mace to take on more bad guys. (Oct. 27)"
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
This review is from Amazon
"Mason "Mace" Perry was a firebrand cop on the D.C. police force until she was kidnapped and framed for a crime. She lost everything-her badge, her career, her freedom-and spent two years in prison. Now she's back on the outside and focused on one mission: to be a cop once more. Her only shot to be a true blue again is to solve a major case on her own, and prove she has the right to wear the uniform. But even with her police chief sister on her side, she has to work in the shadows: A vindictive U.S. attorney is looking for any reason to send Mace back behind bars. Then Roy Kingman enters her life.
Roy is a young lawyer who aided the poor until he took a high-paying job at a law firm in Washington. Mace and Roy meet after he discovers the dead body of a female partner at the firm. As they investigate the death, they start uncovering surprising secrets from both the private and public world of the nation's capital.
Soon, what began as a fairly routine homicide takes a terrifying and unexpected turn-into something complex, diabolical, and possibly lethal."
If you like thrillers and have never read David Baldacci, try this book. I think you will be checking out the web for more of his work. Enjoy.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Page 29: The Rembrandt Affair
Daniel Silva has done it again in The Rembrandt Affair just released July 20th. Gabriel Allon is back with his wife Chiara and a cast of supporting characters including the wonderful Julian Isherwood. This time Gabriel is not after a terrorist or assassin, but a painting. I listened to the audio version of this book and found it to be a very unique experience. The reader was very good at accents and made the characters come alive. I don't get this when I read a print book, although reading a print version is still my number one choice for a book.
The book opens in Cornwall where Gabriel is trying to retire while Chiara heals from her horrible experiences in the previous novel at the hands of a Russian oligarch. Of course, Gabriel is unable to stay retired and agrees to find a lost portrait by Rembrandt that is stolen from an art restorer in Glastonbury, England. The restorer is murdered during the theft. Since Gabriel is one of the best art restorers in the world, known only to a very few, as well as an agent of Israeli intelligence, he is convinced by Chiara to find the portrait for Julian.
Gabriel starts searching for the painting by investigating its past. What he finds is a trail of greed and evil that includes the sole Holocaust survivor of a Jewish family that once owned the painting, an SS Officer who stole the painting and was taken on the underground escape route out of Europe that was run by the Catholic Church, an art thief in Paris and a very wealthy Swiss businessman.
Daniel Silva does not disappoint in this book. It is well written, has great characters, and moves at race car speed to its conclusion. For me, each book in the Gabriel Allon series is like becoming reacquainted with an old friend.
Here are some reviews of the book.
"Of those writing spy novels today, Daniel Silva is quite simply the best."
-The Kansas City Star
"The perfect book for fans of well-crafted thrillers ... the kind of page-turner that captures the reader from the opening chapter and doesn't let go."
-The Associated Press
"Filled with remarkable twists and turn of plot, and told with seductive prose, The Rembrandt Affair is more than just summer entertainment of the highest order. It is a timely reminder that there are men in the world who will do anything for money."
-Amazon
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