The Lady of the Rivers vy Philippa Gregory

The Lady of the Rivers

by

Philippa Gregory

What is most enjoyable about Philippa Gregory’s The Lady of the Rivers is the rich British History she brings to life. This novel’s compelling history-as-fiction approach summons forth the imagined adventures of Lady Rivers, the Dowager-Duchess of Bedford, the noble Luxembourg Princess Jacquetta, married at 15 to Duke of Bedford, the brother of Henry the IV and acting King of England during the childhood years of the rightful Heir, or perhaps “Error,” Henry V. Though some have blamed Gregory in the past for historical inaccuracies, average readers are not likely to notice, and Gregory’s telling is full of entertaining surprises. Her background as a PhD in History and Women’s studies is apparent throughout.

This is the first book of her Cousins War Series, but according to Wiki, it is not the first published book in the series; I believe it is the third. Anyway, it is the first in the chronology. The cover is an excellent pre-Raphaelite style of painting, depicting Jacquetta, as a beautiful nubile woman.

The novel is set at the end of France and England's 100 Years War and the beginning of the War of the Roses, the domestic spat about who should rightfully sit on the throne, the Lancaster or the decedents of York.

It begins with the imprisonment of Joan of Arc. The Joan story is so bleak and Gregory does such a good job of relating it in the early pages it sets the tone for the rest of this page-turner. Joan is removed from chains in Luxembourg by Jacquetta's maternal aunt, and the crazy French peasant girl wiles away her time becoming insane with thoughts of her captors, confessing to heresy and debating the value of martyrdom. Jacquetta is there to witness it all, and we get to share it.

Finally, as Joan is burning at the stake, and Jacquetta and her family, who are loyal to the British Governor running British controlled France, stand and watch the martyr burn. At this point, Jacquetta relates what the women present are thinking as they watch their hero, even if they can't admit as much out loud, burn to death. "This is what happens to any woman who challenges men," Jacquetta thinks, sharing silently for all conscious women at the execution.

The reasons Jacquetta had such an interesting story to relate has a much to do with British royalty and the maneuvering of the royals in court as it did the movement of troops in the French and the English countryside.  The book is a compelling dramatization of the career of the Duchess of Bedford, her steadfast and strong character playing a major role in the governance of England during the War of the Roses, in the face of stupid, ugly men and women.

Betrayal by Gregg Olsen

    

Betrayal -- an Empty Coffin Novel
by
Gregg Olsen

What I wanted when I picked up Betrayal, was a page-turning thriller, and I got that, along with a few horrifying adolescent voices that left me a little uncomfortable. This book works for YA kids who like a realistic mysteries with authentic evil.

It is a compelling read. We pick up on the continuing adventures of Hay-Tay, Hayley and Taylor Ryan, the identical twin Nancy Drew Club-like detectives featured in Olsen’s Empty Coffin Series. The crime in this book is the murder of a high school foreign exchange student, Olivia Grant, a native of Great Britain. Naturally, the kids must reach up into the mature world of adults when their joint ESP powers goes off like a Spidey sense, compelling them to nose around the investigation. Olivia Grant is the girl depicted on the book’s cover. She’s murdered in the home -- in the very bedroom -- of Brianna Connors, one of the haughtiest rich kids in Port Gamble. It shocks everyone when Brianna blows off the murder of her friend as "You don't even know how gross it was, but if you really want me to tell you..."

Like in most mysteries, the police are incompetent, and that leaves the Hay-Tay twins up against a pretty powerful antagonist. Though the identity of the killer is not completely known until the end, the killer’s presence is felt throughout the book, in many instances in the visions the twins share with each other and the readers. That’s probably why we keep turning the pages.

Of course, the book is part of a series, and in the series we find most of the causality that remains a mystery still, even as the book ends. Why the twins become so passionately involves usually involves a personal story arc that spans the entire series. Though the law of physics eventually brings the criminal to justice in the end of this installment, the continuing mystery for the Ryan twins will keep readers looking for the next book.

The Official Preppy Handbook

The Official Preppy Handbook
By
Lisa Birnbach, et al 

Millions of people read The Official Preppy Handbook in the 1980s, and if they didn't hide under the porch, they set off into the world of college to experience the life so irreverently described in this book.

If the jacked-up online price is any indication, The Official Preppy Handbook has either become a classic, a collection of essays about a strange world, or a primer from those who believe this book sums up colleges on the whole. Colleges only skew in the direction of this model occasionally, and the book dismisses the vast majority of American colleges as decidedly non-prep. Published in 1981, the famous satire of Ivy League colleges is full of anecdotes, caricatures, absurd lists, illustrations and photos aimed at lampooning Ivy League self-consciousness and enlightening everyone who has had the sense to stay away. How it morphed into a book about college in general is a mystery.

The humor is undeniable. That's evident in the number of knock-offs that followed in its wake, enough to rival Elvis imitators. The list includes The Official Politically Correct handbook, The Official Sexually Correct Handbook, The Official Stockbroker's Handbook, a Yettie Handbook, even a British version, The Sloane Ranger Handbook with a photo of Princess Di on the cover and onward. Today, The Official Preppy Handbook has been handed down to today's kids, and the question of who takes it seriously as a college primer, and who treats copies as collectibles is difficult to gauge. When parents want their kids to attend a liberal arts college, their kids receive it as a primer.

If the kids are smart, they'll see the market value and flip it on the Internet. It won't teach you a darn thing about college. It's a revenge book. Preppiness offends the authors -- the book makes preppies look like the eunuch monks of a Ming harem. Like any kiss-and-tell book, it's chock full of reasons to deplore these people, but it's a complete pumpkin-head book, full of bondage and confusion.The irony of selling a high-priced college education in the age of free information is lost on many people. The crowd of applicants for entrance to status colleges is big and their anxiety is superfluous. Since knowledge is free, are these colleges selling Smoke and Mirrors? Maybe that accounts for the popularity of The Official Preppy Handbook. It's irreverence is appealing.

 

D-Day with the Screaming Eagles

The Screaming Eagles
by
George E. Koskimaki

The best way to understand a war is to read the accounts of the guys who fought -- in other words, get the view from the battlefield. I've read a couple accounts like that,like Russell Miller's Nothing Less than Victory and Waterloo: A Near Run Thing by David Howarth. Both books proved to be engaging page turners that related the experiences of ordinary soldiers on the battlefield.

I picked up The Screaming Eagles looking for a better understanding of the airdrops behind enemy lines during the D-Day Invasion and discovered this book had been written in the same vein. The Screaming Eagles relates the account of the parachute landings on top of DZ areas in the hedgegrows on D-Day. My closest reference to this part of the D-Day Invasion is the Spielberg movie, Saving Pvt. Ryan, where the character, Pvt. Ryan, played by Matt Damon, is part of the airborne 101st.

The book shares the accounts of the parachutists, pilots and support people in the incredible logistical  nightmare of dropping an army behind the defenses of Hitler's Fortress Europe and the tasks they tackled supporting the following beach invasion. The author offers short one and two paragraph narratives from the GIs who jumped, starting with the angst of delayed take-offs and through the first day of the Normandy Battle.

The Screaming Eagles is full of anecdotal stuff that fleshes out this highly secret invasion. Like the predecessors of this kind of narrative, George E. Koskimaki puts the reader right down on the ground with the soldiers rather than taking a homing pigeon's view of the battle. In the big picture, what's fascinating about the D-Day Invasion was the scope of the operation, with thousands of ships crossing the channel and hundreds of planes towing gliders full of personnel and equipment.I was knocked over by how these individuals accounts shed light on such a big operation.

There are so many facets to the D-Day battle plan, so many parts that had to come together. This book sheds light on this inexhaustible subject.