What Are You Reading?

I finished the 3 book series based on a true story by Dale Cramer about the Amish father who moved his family to a place called Paradise Valley in Mexico because he was forced to send his children to public school in his home state of Ohio. I thoroughly enjoyed this series #1 Paradise Valley, #2 The Captive Heart, and #3 Though Mountains Fall. When the books I read can draw me in and make me feel the characters emotions, and like I'm right there living their lives right along with them, etc. that's when I consider a book a really good one. All three books in this series brought me right along to those places.

Paradise Valley was a real Amish settlement that David Luthy wrote about in his book The Amish in America: Settlements that Failed, 1840-1960. And Dale Cramer wrote his series based upon this Settlement. I'm going to check with my Library to see if they have a copy of David Luthy's book as I am hoping I can find out what happened to Paradise Valley in the end.

The Amish people and their way of life has always been of great interest to me as I have often wondered how these people could stick to their convictions and live in the world while not becoming a part of it. In Dale Cramer's books I found some answers to this.

 

I have been reading the Great Expectations but I have to say that it is a quirk of mine. Despite my age, I still love to reread the classic stories I used to read when I was a child.

 

William Tecumseh Sherman by James Lee McDonough is my current volume. I had already read The Memoirs of W T Sherman some years ago so a lot of this book is already familiar, but is still very interesting and worthwhile. Over the years I have read a lot about the American Civil War and find that it never grows boring, whether about the Generals or the ordinary soldiers, northern or southern, Irish, German, Anglo, whatever, it is endlessly fascinating to me. I had ancestors on both sides in the battle of Shiloh, so it has been of the most interest to me.

 

I just finished reading "Dear Senator," by Strom Thurmond's daughter.

 

Right now I'm reading the second Novel in the St. Simons Trilogy by Eugenia Price titled New Moon Rising. Although Eugenia Price died in 1996 she wrote many historical fiction books and this Trilogy is just one set of them. This Trilogy is about Georgia history, and the settlement of St. Simons Island. The people in this Trilogy were real residents of the Island from the beginning of its settlement.

Eugenia Price loved St. Simons Island so much that she moved there from Chicago and lived out the rest of her life on the Island.

 

This past week I've been reading another Triology of books that are Historically accurate. These were authored by Lisa T. Bergren and this time the historic accurancy takes place in Europe. The books follow the life of a young woman who finds out her real father is a wealthy businessman who decides to claim her as his daughter and send her along with his other children on a Grand Tour of places in Europe. It is a passage of rite allowing the children of wealthy parents to grow to young adulthood while obtaining knowledge of the History of the World they live in while mingling with others of their Class in the European Countries.

The author made me feel like I was right there experiencing everything with the characters and learning what each of them was learning while also feeling all their emotions. This to me is always the sign of a good writer.

 

I just finished Crucifixion Creek by Barry Maitland, for my Crime & Mystery Book Club. It is the first of the Harry Belltree trilogy and I will not read the others, as the detective operates outside the law too much for my taste. It is set in Sydney, which I enjoyed, but otherwise not enjoyable. His other series is very good, however, the Brock & Kolla series, set in England.

 

I just finished The Last Star by Richard Yancey. It is the last in a sci-fi trilogy in which aliens took over humans by planting an egg which would "hatch" at puberty but still the human body would remain as is. So people did not know which was human or alien.

The first two books in the series were excellent, the third kept you going till the end....unfortunately I did not like the ending and if the author had been in the room I would have thrown the book at him.

 

I'm reading The Immortal Irishman by Timothy Egan. It's a well-written book about a fascinating man who lived in exceptionally interesting times on several continents.

 

Timothy Egan is 62, so he qualifies. Here is a link to his NY Times opinion page, https://www.nytimes.com/column/timothy-egan.

Another good book he's written is The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Highly recommended.

I'm fascinated by Ireland after The Immortal Irishman and am moving on to Edward Rutherfurd's The Princes of Ireland.

 

I've been reading several of the Alex Cooper series by Linda Fairstein.