This is a fascinating book, well-written and extremely well-researched.  I was amazed at how well the author could reconstruct events that occurred so many years ago.  I couldn’t help compare his work to The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan which I had recently read.  In that book the author apparently had the opportunity to interview many of the participants in that particular piece of history and did a poor job of bringing those insights to his book.  In the case of Larson’s book, he did not have an opportunity to interview many of the persons involved in his book because almost all of them are deceased.  Nevertheless, he did a much better job of relating the events that occurred.

Another aspect of the book that I appreciated was that the author didn’t attempt to over-embellish the narrative.  He just describes the events and lets the reader react.  All too many times an author seems to try to pound home his or her particular views (e.g., Stacy Schiff in Cleopatra and Doris Kearns Goodwin in Team of Rivals.  I much prefer Larson’s style where he leaves it up to the reader to react and form opinions.

It is chilling to read about this period of time in history when almost an entire population of a so-called civilized county was highjacked by a ill-educated megalomaniac and his henchmen.  In current times where there are very real dangers in our own country that require extra vigilance (i.e., surveillance) by our government of individuals’ actions, it behooves us to ensure that adequate processes and protections are in place to ensure that a similar result never occurs.

This is an incredibly good book given that it doesn’t have much of a plot and it was written by a Polish person whose English was a third language for him.  The beauty of this book is definitely in the use of the English language.  His sentences are terse, the words are sparing, but each additional word he uses is perfect in its cont

As I mentioned, the plot isn’t great.  It’s about a sailor, Marlow, who is hired by a company to go into the Congo and find out what’s going on with its agent, Kurtz.  Marlow accepts the job, goes in and gets Kurtz, listens to him tell his life story on the way out before he dies, and then returns home.  That’s basically it.

The beauty in the story is that Marlow is spinning his yarn to his fellow shipmates as the ship sits on the Thames.  The storytelling is absolutely spellbinding.  The reader in this production. Frederick Davidson, also does an outstanding job of portraying the storyteller.  I felt as if I were sitting there myself listening to Marlow telling his tale and that he was looking right at me while he was talking.

I attended a book lecture this winter in Naples by Elaine Newton where she compared Anne Pachette’s book, State of Wonder to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, implying that some of the same themes were employed in both books.  That may be true, but what she missed, I’m afraid, is that Heart of Darkness is a true work of art;  State of Wonder is only a pale imitation.

This book was very disappointing, primarily because it was so repetitious.  There were over sixty pages devoted to objections by various individuals to Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech.  Many of the objections were repeated numerous times in the book.  Our book club selected the book for the month of May, but many participants said they didn’t bother to finish the book.

I was further disappointed when I read the acknowledgements at the end of the book.  The author interviewed numerous individuals who were involved in the events depicted in the book.  He also spent a number of months in Berlin studying.  The disappointment is that he brought so little from those interviews and studies to the book.

Did I say that there was a lot of repetition?  In case you missed that part, I have to mention that the author repeated a lot of information, much of it over and over and over again. 

This is a refreshing Christmas story about a ten-year-old kid in a parochial school in 1964.  The author does a great job in reading, particularly the accent of the Russian girl and her parents. There are some hilarious moments as they perform the Christmas program and the rest of the book is fairly humorous.  All the characters were good and the story was enjoyable to listen to. 

We listened to this book on the way from Florida to Rhode Island in the car and we were pleasantly surprised at how good it was.  The plot was a bit thin, but the characters were engaging and believable and it was easy to follow.  The plot is basically about a President who has a penchant for young girls and has them murdered to cover up his transgressions.  The book is quite a contrast from the Vince Flynn books I had been listening to where the here, Mitch Rapp, was always killing or torturing someone.  It has evil individuals but the good ones were at least human.  The reader was also pretty decent.

If you are looking for a good read at the beach or a way to while the hours away on a long trip, I would recommend it.

This one is quite a bit better than Honor Bound from 2009, which was pretty boring.  This  one has a pretty interesting plot and one that is fairly plausible.  I still get a bit tired of Mitch Rapp and his heroics, however.

I had a little trouble getting my arms around this book.  The book is very readable and I think the methodology the author employed, which consisted of alternating entries by the husband and then the wife in this unusual marriage, was extremely effective.  These texts enabled me to understand the depth of the disconnect between the two individuals.

I can also relate to the effects of each spouse having such different backgrounds, he from a family of modest means from a small town in the Midwest, while she was from a fairly affluent family, growing up in a world of privilege in the East.  The differences become really apparent when they move back to his hometown.

There are also some twists and turns in the plot that made it enjoyable to read..

What didn’t I like about the book?  The ending, or lack of one.  After spending a considerable amount of time reading through the book, I naturally got hooked on where it was headed and where it would end up.  I was, to put it mildly, disappointed.  I won’t go into the details here, but if you read the book yourself, be prepared for what isn’t coming.

Shakespeare seems to have perfected the concept of ”denouement” which is defined as:

1. the final resolution of the intricacies of a plot, as of a drama or novel.
2. the place in the plot at which this occurs.
3. the outcome or resolution of a doubtful series of occurrences

In addition to the actual definition, an author usually builds excitement and holds interest by building up to the denouement.  My issue with this book is that it is absolutely missing anything close to a denouement.  I would suggest that Ms. Flynn delve into some of Shakespeare’s plays to see if she could possibly apply this concept to her next book.  It would have really helped in the case of Gone Girl. 

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book.  I was expecting another fairly dry (no pun intended) description of the devastation wrought by this super storm.  Instead, I got a collection of well-written vignettes of what happened to certain individuals during the storm, along with some pretty well-researched description of the impact of the hurricane on a macro level.

The author, R. A. Scotti, is apparently also a mystery/suspense writer.  She utilizes these skills well in her telling of the stories in this book.  I am reminded of how well Ken Follett applies the skills he utilized in writing adventure stories to his more recent work (he managed to keep his readers’ interest while telling a story about building a cathedral, which should be a bit like reading about grass growing).  I think that many of the authors today who write popular fiction tend to be stuck in their groove and aren’t able to do anything different (e.g., James Patterson, et. al.).  I guess one reason is that once they start raking in the money doing what they are doing, there is little incentive to try anything new.

Anyway, I have digressed a bit.  As I have stated, I think that this book is extremely readable and interesting and my only criticism is that she may have devoted a bit too much discussion as to what happened to the school bus passengers on Jamestown Island.  Possibly, too much information here.  Other than that, I recommend this book, especially to anyone who has lived or spent any amount of time in the areas affected (which is just about all of the Northeast U.S.)

This is the story of two female velodrome Olympic cyclists and their relationships.  The story is somewhat interesting in that it portrays the stresses inherent in the lives of Olympic athletes.  The novel, unfortunately, is only somewhat interesting and not really interesting.  It just somehow doesn’t seem to rise to the next level of excitement.  It’s not a bad story, however.

I guess I just didn’t get this book.  To me it was a redefinition of the word, “dithering.”  The heroine, Ann Elliott, is in love with a naval officer, Captain Wentworth, and wants to marry him.  Unfortunately, a family friend intervenes and puts the kibosh on the marriage.  She encounters Captain Wentworth seven years later and, after many chapters of not much happening, he expresses his love of her again.  They become happily engaged.  End of story.

This book doesn’t seem to create the same level of tension between two would-be lovers that Pride and Prejudice does.  I suspect that Jane Austen was failing in her later years to come up with something fresh and original.  I don’t feel that she accomplished that in this, her last, novel.