Wednesday Challenge

This weeks challenge is authors I wish more people knew about.

My blogging buddy Berthold Gambrel. He's a work in progress, but he's growing by leaps and bounds. His latest work is proof of this.

The wonderful lady who enlightened me to these challenge posts and expanded my reach to other authors. Lydia Schoch. 

If you're into H.P. Lovecraft Audrey Driscoll has taken a minor character from his writing and had written a series of books on him 

If you're into erotica Javan Tenebrae has a number of anthologies right up your alley.

Tena Stettler has some good books on witches.

Fall Books

Today the topic is books that were published in the fall or are about to be published this fall.

Hot off the press and I've given a review in a previous post.

Reviewed by Berthold Gambrel and next on my to read list.

This is one I've been waiting for three years. It's the sixth book in Robert's Chronicles of Kastania, which I've posted about recently. I just re-read the first five books to get ready for this one.

Just released as you can see this is the 51st book in the Eternal Mercenary series started by Barry Sadler. Tony Roberts has now done the last 28 (I think) of them. I finish these books in about half a day, but the history is spot on.

This was a free reads book from this month, but audio is not ready, and I plan to listen to it.

Another free reads I'm waiting for the audio to be ready.

Favorite Authors: Clavell

I'm starting a weekly post of my favorite authors. I've already written about Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov,  and James A. Michener. Next in line is James Clavell. 
Most of the populace knows these stories as either movies or min-series. I've made a point to read the book before I watched them. That way I know how Hollywood either honored the author or mucked the story up.

1600's an Englishman is washed ashore in Japan and becomes a samurai. Loosely based on a real person. The setting is the civil war that results in the Tokugawa shogunate.
Boy was it hard to find the original cover of Shogun on Amazon! I had seen this book on newsstands for a couple of years and thought about buying it. When it was announced that a blockbuster mini-series was scheduled for the fall of 1980, I bought it at a paperback exchange for cheap and knew I only had about a month to read it. 
I went on a vacation trip to Nebraska to visit my wife's brother and family with her parents. This gave me time on the drive to read, and during down time. I was hooked on reading Clavell. 
The complexities of the social, economic and political make up of Japan are explained and all social strata are fleshed out in detail.
The mini-series did an admirable job of a very complicated story.

Other books by him I devoured:

King Rat: 
Setting is a Japanese POW camp during WWII. The king rat is an American hustler running a black market underneath the Japanese and stuffy British officers noses. Movie Empire of the Sun uses the same premise.
This was his first book and the shortest. It was turned into a black and white movie with George Segal. Kept very close to book.

Tai Pan: 
The setting is China in the 1830's and 40's. Dirk Stuan is The Tai Pan or supreme leader of a trading company. He trades opium from India for silver and then buys good from China to send back to England. After what are referred to as the Opium wars, Hong Kong becomes the trading hub for the China trade.
My favorite of all of of Clavell's books. It was made into a dreadful movie. It was a knock off using the sets and props of The Last Emperor. In the book Struan was given money to save his shipping business by Chinese merchants. He was given four half-coins and required to do whatever was asked of the person who gave him one of the half coins. They left this out of the movie. The most important plot point of all and they skipped it.

Noble House: 
Setting early 1960's Hong Kong. Struan's is facing a run on it's stock from a rival company. An American corporation comes in to get a slice of the market. The whole plot is complex and convoluted, dealing with cut throat business, espionage between the British and Communist China. Add hundreds of characters of all types fleshed out to make a wonderful read.
Fantastic book. Turned into a mini-series with Pierce Brosnan. Did a fair job. No way to tell all the complexities of the book. The half coins are important in this one.

Gai-Jin: Interesting read about the opening up of Japan after the U.S. opened up their trade. Struans is present here and it picks up with the descendants of Dirk Struan in tumultuous times. The weakest of all his books.

Whirlwind: An oil company getting it's drilling machinery out of Iran after the fall of the Shah. An expanded story partially based on H. Ross Perot's actual feat of getting property out in the time period. Again, Clavell brings the lives of everyday people alive while all the conflict is happening around them.

Teufelvelt

Good friend Berthold Gambrel's newest book is now available at Amazon for only 99 cents.

Rachel Pounsett is starting a job as an assistant to a mysterious professor at Leviathan University. She's recently divorced with a teenage daughter beginning her first year at the university and trying to make ends meet.
She enters into office politics working for one professor who doesn't need her services and only speaks to her to say hello and goodbye. The other one Roderick Teuferlvelt (pronounced Toy ferl velt) is in Europe doing research and communicates by e-mail.
Slowly she learns about the previous assistant who was murdered on campus.
Berthold does an excellent portrayal of how a woman responds to the problems she faces. The reader is readily sympathetic to Rachel and her plight. Describing Roderick's house and all the contents was well done.
When she meets Roderick they gradually become romantically involved. The more she gets to know him the more mysterious he becomes and she slowly learns of his past and what happened with his last assistant. The revelation when it comes after they're married was not a surprise. There were too many obvious clues when the truth comes out.

My Superpower

From Long and Short Reviews.

Hummm, my superpower. Thinking, thinking, thinking....

I'd say it's my ability to focus. To tune out all the distractions around me and just write.
The first book I wrote was way back in the 1990's. 

I wrote this book for the Ted Turner Tomorrow awards. I only had the summer to write it and was using a 286 PC with 51/4 in floppy discs without a hard drive. BankStreet writer was the word processing program. My son was around ten and my daughter was three.
My wife would leave for work around 7:30. My father would pick up the kids around 8:00 and take them on field trips. He was a retired teacher and loved taking them to the zoo or different museums.
I had the house to myself and the computer. I would get started and then my wife would walk in the front door with the kids; having picked them up from Dad on the way home. I would turn around and ask what she forgot, thinking she just left only to find out it was after 5:30.
She'd get mad because I was supposed to have dinner ready.
I've always had the knack of when I get writing I get lost in the story and hours seem like minutes.
I hit 50,000 words, and printed out my story on a daisy wheel printer that didn't have a paper feed. The pages would slip slightly and every four pages we had to stop the printer, readjust the paper and start it again. Whoever read it must have thought the printer was drunk. I didn't win the prize.

Eat and drink

This week is the top ten things I like to eat or drink while reading.

1. Ice water -- I have to drink lots of water for my diabetes. It also lets me have a break every so often to get rid of it.

2. Hot tea. Not just any hot tea, though every now and then a good English Breakfast tea with lemon and honey is nice. In the mornings I take my pick from Twinings: Lady Grey, and Sweet and Spicy. From Bigelow I like Constant Comment, Lemon Lift, Earl Grey, Plantation Mint, then for herbal Bigelow is orange spice, peach and mint medley. I am not a coffee drinker.

3. Diet A & W root beer. If I'm being bad this is my guilty pleasure.

4. Peanuts.

5 Cashews

6. Almonds

7 Pecans

8 Mixed nuts

9 Pay Day bars, sometimes I can be really bad if my blood sugar is low.

10. Twizzlers, my wife always has a big bag of them and it's like leaving booze lying around for an alcoholic.

End of the age

Matthew 24:3
And as he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, "Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be he sign of Your coming, and the end of the age?"
This is how Rapture theology gets everything wrong. They totally misinterpret the whole chapter.
In chapter 23 Jesus weeps over Jerusalem and condemns the city and all in it. In chapter 24 He and the disciples are on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem and the disciples are naturally concerned about what he just said. They ask him three questions.  Rapture theology or RT, treats them as only one. It's a compound question, just like the ones your English teacher gave you for homework and on the tests.

First question: When will these things be?
He doesn't answer it directly. He tells of  wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes etc. He sums it up with "and that is not the end." further he says this is just the "birth pangs."
In other words Jesus says this is situation normal for humanity. RT bases it's fear of the future on these situation normal happenings. That's why they think the Rapture will happen at any moment. Groups have sold everything and gone up on mountaintops waiting for a rapture that never comes.
Second question: What will be the sign of your coming?
Major misunderstanding of the word sign here. RT thinks this is the Rapture that Christ will call His believers into the sky and they'll be spared tribulation and great tribulation.
A sign is not a person. A billboard may have a picture of a car or boat or person, but it is not the actual car or boat or person.
The sign Jesus mentions is persecution for believers, betrayal, false prophets, lawlessness, lack of empathy, "but he who endures, he shall be saved." And "The gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached to all nations, and then the end will come."
Jesus is saying when His kingdom reaches all nations then the end will come to Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. After the stoning of Stephen and subsequent persecution, this is what happened. The believers were scattered throughout all nations or at least within reach.
In verses 24-29 Jesus forewarns his believers to flee for their lives when it becomes like the days of Daniel and the abomination. There's no mention of meeting Jesus in the sky here!
The abomination mentioned here is the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple being destroyed.
There will be many false prophets, claiming to be the Christ, showing signs and wonders, the believers are not to follow them.
There were many false Christs, they were the ones who stirred up rebellion and led to the destruction.
Verses 27-28:
"For just as the lightning comes from the east, and flashes even to the west, so shall the coming of the son of man be. Wherever  the corpse is, the vultures will gather. 
Again lets be clear, the coming of Jesus or the Son of Man is the coming of destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. The metaphor of lightning going from east to west is the sign this destruction. 
Rome had spaced out through the empire what we would call forts. They called them castellums. Every forty or fifty miles these outposts would be manned by a cohort or six hundred men. They also acted in case of invasion or rebellion by lighting fires the message that something bad was happening. The neighboring castellums would pass on the message all the way to Rome. That is the lightning Jesus is mentioning. When the Jews rebelled against Rome in 67 Rome destroyed it three years later.

Third question: "and the end of the age?"
Finally here is where Jesus mentions His returning. The others mention the coming of His kingdom.
Verses 29-31 Here is the mention of Him coming in the sky. It's not to evacuate the believers it's to bring complete and total destruction.
He then tells the parable of the fig tree. It is here that things get messed up. Jesus refers to the damage of Jerusalem being fulfilled in this generation. Then he refers to the end of the age which is left unknown. 
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words will not pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angles of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."
He mentions it will be like in the days of Noah and the flood. Then He says: "So shall the coming of the Son of Man be."
In chapter 25 Jesus then tells the parable of ten virgins and the talents as further warning to be vigilant for His coming.
In verse 31 He tells of the judgement.
"But when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angles with Him, then he will sit on His glorious throne."
There's no mention of a physical thousand year reign or millennium. The millennium is the symbolic term to mean the time from Jesus's ascension and the beginning of his spiritual kingdom on earth, to His return to destroy the world. That is the end of the age.  
Instead of looking forward to a rapture we should be working for the kingdom of Jesus to spread His love. Not his judgement and fear. 
I digress,The word raptura is translated as being caught up. Rapture is not used in the bible. The root word of raptura or rapture is rape. It is used in this context as in time of war where the populace is caught up and enslaved. The various references to two people walking and one being taken is in reference that usually half the population of a country conquered are enslaved.

How silly is it for those waiting to be snatched against their will? How unimaginable that for those espousing RT to consider if you don't believe this way you're not a Christian.

Galatians 1: 8
But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.

For all of Christian history and theology there was no mention of a rapture or all the nonsense associated with RT. Need I say more.

End times part 3

Last post I mentioned amillennialism. Which is what I've interpreted Revelation by since that time. When I wrote Human Sacrifices I have a character explain this as succinctly as possible. I'm a bit radical even for amillennialists. I place Jesus returning at Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit is Jesus returned in that form. That was not the coming of Christ as mentioned in Matthew 24. I'll address that in my next post. 

Starting in 1996 I started writing Optimus: Praetorian Guard. I didn't get it published until 2006. The novel is about a Roman soldier who was a guard for the apostle Paul while he was in Rome. He is converted and joins with members of the Flavian family who are Christian. They have the only two heirs to Domitian. 

I end the book in the early part of Domitian's reign when he starts going off the deep end thinking he's a god. Optimus has been seriously injured fighting with members of the Praetorian Guard. He is to be exiled to Patmos.

The sequel so far I've titled Stephanus, the oldest son of Optimus. In this story Stephanus becomes a freedman for Flavia Domitia, Domitian's sister, who many consider to have been Christian. Her husband was executed for refusing to offer sacrifice to the emperor. She is charged with atheism tainted with Judaism. 
History records that it was a servant of Domitia's that was the first to strike a blow in the assassination of Domitian.

While Stephanus is being installed in the imperial palace, his younger brother Sextus joins the legion in Greater Germania and fights on that border and against the Scythians.

Optimus takes up residence on Patmos acting as a scribe to the apostle John while he is writing Revelation.

I have the two brothers storylines mostly done. I've bogged down on Optimus and Revelation. Worth is the Lamb, didn't have enough story telling value.

Recently I found another book that has broadened my understanding of Revelation and end times. I may have solved dilemma. 

Eberle and Trench present what was the protestant view of end times and Revelation before Rapture theology erupted in the nineteenth century. 
Two texts helped me place certain prophesies into context.

Daniel 10: 24-27. This is the prophesy of 70 weeks. The weeks are understood to represent years not literal weeks. The first seven weeks would equal 70 years. The prophesy was that the Jews would be back in the promised land by this time. They were. Add the first seven weeks to the other sixty-nine and that equals to 490 years. From the writing of Daniel to the first century AD it is pretty close.
For the first 69 weeks Rapture theology and historical belief agree. It is the last week where Rapture theology goes nuts. It is pulled out of chronological order is thrust into the future where it begins with the Rapture, then there are 31/2 years of tribulation and 31/2 years of great tribulation. During this time the Beast and AntiChrist (remember not mentioned in Revelations) will form a world wide empire of evil. Then will come Armageddon.

Eberle and Trench put the last seven weeks in the historical time period. Those seven years begin with the beginning of Jesus's ministry. He preaches for 31/2 years and is crucified. What is prophesied is that sacrifices will stop and "on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate." Ch 10:27.
When Jesus died there was a great earthquake and the veil in the temple was rent in the holy of holies. The abomination was the son of God being crucified and the sacrifices stopped as God no longer recognized them. The 31/2 years of great tribulation coincides with the coming of the Holy Spirit. The growth of the early church and ends with the stoning of Stephen.

In chapter 6 of Acts Stephen is charged with blasphemy. In Ch 7 he gives his defense which in a summation of all the history and prophesy of Jesus explaining to the Jews why and how Jesus is the son of God. In verses 54-60 he's stoned to death. It is at this event that salvation becomes available to non-Jews. That's the end of the seven years the Jews' faith was on trial.
In Ch. 8 Saul begins to persecute the church. Starting in verse 4-39 Phillip converts the Samaritans, then he converts the Ethiopian Eunuch. In Ch. 9 Saul is converted. In Ch. 10 Peter converts the Roman centurion Cornelius. The spiritual Kingdom of Jesus or His church begins at this time.

My next post on this topic will deal with Matthew chapter 24 and the coming of Christ at the end of time.

End times part 2

My freshman year at Wayland broke the hold of premillennialism and much of fundamentalism. Take away the rapture and most of the Bible has to taken literally fades away. I also give credit to Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Jamar, my English professors who developed my ability to analyze and discover metaphor and symbolism in the stories we were reading and applying it to the Bible. Here is where I left behind (no pun intended) the childish understanding of the Bible and moved from Piaget's concrete operations to abstract thought.  
Over that summer I spent time with my brother and talked about end times. His father-in-law also our pastor gave him a book to read and he gave it to me. It was Worthy is the Lamb by Ray Summers.

This introduced me to amillennialism. The premise of the book is that for any book of the Bible, but especially Revelation it must be understood in the context of to whom and when it was written. The fancy term for this is hermeneutics. A lost subject at today's seminaries and Baptist universities.
The first half explains apocalyptic literature. Books like Daniel, Ezekiel, and others in the Bible that were written symbolically. Also was the Book of Enoch, not in the Bible.
The purpose of these books was to express and instill hope in a time of despair. Daniel and Ezekiel predicted that God's people would leave their captivity and return to the promised land.
The second part is a detailed interpretation of Revelation. He explained much of the imagery and symbolism and when placed in the context of the Christians living in the Roman Empire.
The imagery of "The Beast" and "False Prophet" he explained as Emperor worship. This is what the Christians of that day were being persecuted and died. They refused to offer sacrifice to the emperor. Christian don't have a temple and offer sacrifice. Christ was the ultimate sacrifice and it is no longer needed. To offer sacrifice to the emperor was to deny Christ and His sacrifice.
Note: There is not mention of the "Anti-Christ" in Revelation. The only passage where that is mentioned is in I John and concerns a leader of the Gnostics.
Summers explains that Revelation was intended like all other apocalypses as a way to encourage the believers to hold true to the faith, that emperor worship would end and Jesus would prevail.
The battle of Armageddon took place on the cross, when Jesus defeated death. It's not something that will happen in the future, but has already happened and that is why believers should keep the faith. The victory is already won. The thousand year reign is not intended to be taken literally, but figuratively as infinity. The Kingdom of God is eternal and Jesus is at his right hand. If you die for your belief you will be with Jesus who is with His Father.
Note: the Rapture destroys the intended purpose of John's writing. Instead of encouraging believers into holding steadfast to their faith through a time of trial, they are evacuated and sit out the tribulation. 
The ending of Revelation give the imagery of the Great White Throne Judgement, and heaven with streets of gold. Much of this imagery was written a hundred years earlier in the book of Enoch.
Here is the hope and glorious future for all believers. This is the purpose of John's vision and his writing.
Summers believe Jesus will come again. Again as mentioned in Matthew: "No one knows the time."

End Times part 1

The study of end times is called eschatology. All my life I've lived with this fixation on the rapture, tribulation, great tribulation, Armageddon, the second coming and the millennial.
Growing up in Southern Baptist Churches in Pueblo, CO, Albuquerque and Farmington, NM all the preachers except one preached this form of end times. It's called premillennialism. Most of the preachers when I was young didn't dwell on it.
My first encounter with this doom and gloom was a free pamphlet entitled 1975 in Prophecy. from a radio evangelist by the name of Herbert W. Armstrong. He had a nationwide broadcast and a college in California. All his material was free. There was a monthly magazine named The World Tomorrow, books and pamphlets.
This pamphlet laid out what is now being called Rapture Theology instead of premillennialism. Brother Herbie predicted the rapture would happen in 1975. I was reading this in 1965 at the age of twelve. According to him the world would end in ten years. It didn't scare me. It pissed me off. Why was my life going to end so soon?
The 1960's was a time of revolution. It's been said there was as much social change in that decade as the French Revolution. Civil rights, Vietnam, political assassinations, race riots, the space race, women's lib, the beat generation evolving into the hippies. Add Elvis, The Beatles and subsequent British invasion of music. Just about every preacher thought the world was coming to an end. They all started prediction the rapture was coming. None of them gave 1975 as the due date. After all Jesus said "No one knows the date and time."

By the time I reached high school I pretty well figured out that the rapture wouldn't happen in 1975. Then Brother Hal Lindsay wrote a huge blockbuster. By the time I left for college as a newly licensed minster of the gospel. I would have preached out of this book. The only problem was that he didn't come right out and say it, but the way he interpreted the Bible, the rapture would come in one generation after the founding of a new Israel. Do the math. Israel was created in 1948. A generation is forty years. 1948 + 40 = 1988. Golly Gee Brother Hal added 13 years to Brother Herbie's prediction.

Due to the success of LGPE everybody and their dog started writing rapture books. The most notable are the Left Behind series by Timothy Le Haye. He's put out novels, children's books, movies, even a board game. There's money in spreading doom and gloom.

The problem was that I grew up in what we today would call a bubble. I didn't know there was any other interpretation of Revelation and end times.

I went on to a typical Baptist college -- "forty miles from the nearest known sin." As Grady Nutt said.
Almost all of us preacher boys considered LGPE as next to the Bible in authority. In History of the New Testament (required as well as History of Old Testament), Dr. J. Iveloy Bishop was covering the trial of Jesus before Pilate. He asked a simple question when we got to the part where Jesus said, "My Kingdom is not of this world."
Dr. Bishop said, "If the kingdom of Jesus was spiritual then, why would he change it now?"
It was an epiphany. Clearly to me, He wouldn't. Rapture theology and the whole thousand years reign of Christ on earth fell apart like a house of cards. When I examined the timeline of rapture theology it became clear there was the second coming of Christ or the rapture, then the third coming at Armageddon, then after the thousand year reign, Satan would be released and he would have to come a fourth time to finally set the Great White Throne Judgement.

My dilemma was what should I believe now concerning the end times. All I knew was the premillennialism wasn't it.

I've been fooled redux

I mentioned this in the last TTT. I went back to 2007 to resurrect this post. Of all the posts on this blog it has the most hits, but not comments. I titled it I've Been Fooled.

We bought the latest DVD package of The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Yesterday in the afternoon we watched the movie for the millionth time and daughter played some of the games in special features. The rest of the evening we listened to Christmas music on Satellite and I started reading the book that came with the DVD. It starts off with a lengthy set of introductions by Goldman explaining how he spent a long time recovering from Pneumonia as a child and his father reading the story to him and it had changed his life. How when his own son turned ten he wanted to get a copy of the book as his birthday present and there is an interesting story in tracking down a copy and how his son hadn't liked it so he read it himself and decided it needed to be abridged from the original by S. Mortgenstern. He gives a detailed account of all the problems in getting a studio to make the movie, his failed marriage and then taking his ten year old grandson to Florin City for a visit. They walk through the Mortgenstern Museum looking at the sword made for a six fingered man, a mold of Fezzik's hand twice the size of Andre the Giant's, going into the study and looking through Mortgenstern's diaries and going on and on about how these people actually lived and that the story was true. He even places Florin and Guilder as two small countries between Sweeden and Germany. I read the first hundred and fifty pages of the story, where he talks about deleting an entire chapter because it was just about the argument of Humperdink and his cabinet about marrying a commoner and him making her the Princess of a small area of the Kingdom, what it took to teach her court etiquette. There are chapters on Inigo Montoya and his father, the life of Fezzik and so on and so forth.
Now I knew a Florin was the money of Florence durring the Renaissance, and a Guilder was the Dutch currency which created Capitalism during the Reformation. But the way Goldman interspersed such personal detail in his introduction he had me believing that there actually were countries called Florin and Guilder, that there actually was a S. Mortgenstern and that Goldman had only abridged the original story.
So having pricked my curiosity I Googled Florin. No surprise most of the entries were about the currency, and a number of cities in the United States with this name, but I did come across a link to Florin City. I followed that link anc came across some critiques of the novel. LOW AND BEHOLD the introduction and abridgement were all made up! I think Goldman must be getting a perverse pleasure as people for the last thirty-five years have fallen for his hoax and he laughs his head off at the gullibility of the reading public.
Wikipedia explains the allegory hidden in the story (It's about economics). I found it fascinating and read it to my wife.
She was not impressed. "It's just a story, don't try to make so much out of it."
I argued back, "You could say the same thing about Jonah. It's a story most children can relate to and understand, but at that level it's little more than a just a story, but when you look at it as allegory with Jonah representing the Hebrew nation, Nineveh the Gentiles and how Jonah refused to deliver God's message to the Gentiles he flees and is swallowed by a big fish, with the big fish being the Babylonian Captivity. That Nineveh repenting representing Christianity and salvation being open to Gentiles. The story makes much more sense. There's no need to try and find a fish big enough to swallow a man -- that wasn't the point of the story!
wife moaned and said,(referring to Princess Bride) "It's just a story, don't make so much out of it.

Books I keep putting off

Wednesday challenge
Books I keep putting off reading.

I have a box set of the Divine Comedy by Dante. On the left hand page it's in Italian and on the right in English. I read Inferno, which helped a few years later in world literature in college. I've put Purgatorio on the back burner and never got around to it.

Same goes for the third book of the trilogy. 

Another book I bought and somehow have never gotten around to reading it. I love the two movie rendition with Charleston Heston, Michael York and Geraldine Chaplin. I've always wanted to know how close they were to the book.

Every month I get to pick two free books from Amazon. This looked interesting, but before I started reading it I came across other books and it's dropped off my radar.

Late Top Ten Tuesday

I know, it's late Wednesday, but I was out of town without my pc. Wife says it's not a vacation if I bring it along. TTT this week is top books on my reading list I'm avoiding.

I bought the book, but before I had time to read it Patrick Stewart starred in a mini series of it. It was so well done I've put off reading it.

I started it many years ago and got bogged down in all the letters. After Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein I most likely couldn't read with a straight face anymore.

One of those books I picked up at Barns and Noble's for cheap and keep putting it off.

I started reading this after picking up a package of book and DVD on 10th anniversary of the movie. Talk about a shock about what they left out of the movie. Sometime I'll get back to it.

Great historical conspiricy books

I'm a Tudorian buff. Movies and tv series like: A Man For all seasons, movie with Paul Schofield and TNT play version with Charleston Hesston. Numerous Mary Queen of Scots movies, I love the one with Glenda Jackson. Anne of the Thousand Days with Richard Burton and Genevieve Bujold.  Elizabeth R, the BBC series shown on PBS with Glenda Jackson. HBO's Henry VIII series.  The list is quite long.
I've read numerous books in the time period. The Last Plantagenets by Thomas B. Costain (last of the 4 volume set). Naked Before Mine Enemies by Charles W. Ferguson, The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George. My Enemy the Queen by Victoria Holt. Elizabeth the Great by Elizabeth Jenkins. And many others.
I did a major paper on Cardinal Wolsey in college. In my trilogy of Fletcher Family Battles, the third one is the Battle of Flodden which has Wolsey as the Kings Almoner before he become Chancellor.
I recently came across two books set in the forgotten part of Henry VIII's reign. It deals with his 5th wife Catherine Howard. The second one history records as beheaded.

The Catherine Howard Conspiracy by Alexandra Walsh.
The book starts off in the present day with Perdita Rivers archeologist working one a sunken ship dating from Tudorian times. She's pulled away from the site because her long estranged grandmother dies. She and Piper, her twin sister, are named as sole heirs of Pembroke shire, her estate in Wales.
Her grandmother, Mary Fitzroy, had been a well known author on the Tudors and other parts of English history. Going through her papers and unpublished manuscripts she finds Mary came across of number of anomalies concerning Catherine Howard. Not wanting to spoil things too much, but history records that along with Catherine, Thomas Culpepper was her lover and was executed as well. His tombstone has him dying six months before the execution. Food for thought.
 She came to the conclusion that the fifth wife of Henry VIII did not die, but lived in hiding at the ancestral home of her dead cousin Anne Boleyn, namely Pembroke shire.
Thus begins the great what if? that fuels the story. What if Catherine didn't die, but escaped and history records as being executed to hide the fact. What if when she fled her mentally ill and abusive husband she was pregnant. What if she delivered twins, a boy and a girl. If this became known how would it have changed history? How would it change the present if this became knowledge?
The story has two time periods, the present where Perdita and Piper are going through historical records to prove their hypothesis while a mysterious government agency is trying to stop them at all costs.
The past that tells the story of a frightened fifteen-year-old girl thrust into a marriage by her power hungry uncle that's head of the Howard family and want to join the Howard with the Tudors.
Each time periods is an interesting story in itself, what I enjoyed is how the present day scholars conclusions as the read the documents and examine the artifacts are sometimes right and other times way off what actually happened.

    There is also the second book, with a promised third on the way.
If you accept the premise that Catherine Howard wasn't executed and was the mother of a girl and a boy. What happened to them?
In this book the head of the mysterious government agency that was trying to stop their research is replaced as he overstepped his authority. A cousin of Perdita and Piper has twin daughters. The inheritance of Pembroke shire can only be passed down to daughters. This cousin tries to kill Perdita and Piper so his daughters can inherit.
Meanwhile they dig even deeper into Pembroke archives searching for any clue that in the time period Catherine lived there and there were two infants. This leads them to another startling conclusion as to who really was Mary Queen of Scots.
Oh the intrigue in both past and present. Oh the possibilities, oh the probabilities. I can't wait for the next book.

An aside on how good these books are: I recommended these books to my mother. She lives in a senior living facility. She wanted me to pick her up and go shopping. When I arrived she said she couldn't go as she didn't get any sleep that night. And it was my fault because she couldn't stop reading the first book.

Tough Topics

Tough Topics today. Hmm

From yesterday's post:

Daughters of the West Mesa and Suzanna by Dr. Irene Blea

The anti rapture theology. A common sense approach to the second coming of Christ. Placed in historical context of the scriptures and what it meant to those it was originally written.

Fellow Wayland Baptist College alum. He and my brother's dissertations were on the philosophy of Paul Riccour. Writing this book cost him his position as professor at Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary.

This is book deals with divorce, remarriage, fundamentalism, education, and politics. At amazon free with Kindle unlimited or .99

Books outside my comfort zone

Top ten Tuesday, books I read outside my comfort zone. I found all enlightening. For others click here.

This one caught me by surprise. I liked it, but it was disturbing. It was the first book I read that mentioned a girl's reaction to learning about menstrual cycles.

This one I didn't enjoy. It took a bit to finish it and I decided that was all it wanted to read. Didn't go on to next ones.

This one caught my curiosity as it was heavily promoted. It gave me an insight into a woman's mind. I found it was mostly complaining about being a woman and how horrible it is. The idea of a zipless fuck was interesting, but when the moment arrived she turned it down.

I was teaching 7th and 8th grade Language Arts and literature. All the girls were reading this book and sniggering about it among themselves. APS had a number of parents insisting the book be removed from the libraries. Librarians automatically bought Ms. Blooms books because they were wonderful young adult stories. I naturally decided to read it to see what all the fuss was about. 
To me was a rehash of Fear of Flying. 

Irene Blea is a close friend. We met at Southwest Writer's Workshop and Writer's 2 writers. This book is based on the discovery of women's bodies buried on the West Mesa in Albuquerque. Seven women and one fetus were subsequently unearthed. No one has been charged with these crimes. She spent years meeting the families of the women. She wrote this story in honor of their mothers and the deceased. 
In Old Town Treasure House Books allows authors to have book signings. Whenever  Irene holds one it is wall to wall people. When signing this book a number of the mothers were there and it was very emotional.
This book is about a mother with a daughter she's not heard from in over a year and doesn't know how to contact her. Behind her back wall is where the women are discovered and the city starts excavating the mesa behind her house. 
The mother spends the rest of the book worrying that one of the bodies might be her daughter and then relives all the choices she made while raising her. It was difficult to read the continued angst, but the women who's daughters bones were discovered most likely understand every word of the story.

This was Irene's first novel. It's based on her aunt's life. Before this Irene wrote textbooks for women's studies.
Set in early 1900's in rural New Mexico Suzanna is a thirteen year old girl whose family sells her to a wealthy landowner to be his wife. It wasn't easy to read about a child having to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather. I rooted for her as after having as much abuse by him as she could she takes a leap of faith and leaves him not knowing what her future will hold.

Six of Crows

Over the past few weeks doing the top ten Tuesdays and Wednesday challenges a few books kept popping up as favorites. One of them was Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. It peaked my interest.
It takes a lot for me to buy an e-book, but sprung for it and even added the audio. It was a wise move. I don't like to do a play by play of book and give my impressions of it. Other reviewers are good and going into an indepth plot development. It's hard to do that without spoilers.

I started reading it, but it was before my cataract surgery and I bogged down. After the surgery I started listening to it. It went much faster. I know its a common technique in literature to break up the story line with back story, but it bugged me while reading. It was easier to listen to it. Once the back story of each character is done and the group is doing the mission impossible trying to abduct a man from an ice prison things start to make sense. Each of the six crows are intriguing and compliment each other as they face obsticle after obsticle. The ending setting up the next book came as a surprise. I enjoyed the story and plan to do the same with the sequel.
From what I can gather an 8 episode series is in the works on Netflix.

Top ten books I liked from literature class

Okay, here goes: Junior high and High school in the late 60's early 70's. Woodstock generation. I was a jock, not a hippie, but my teachers were.

1. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien, read Lord of the Rings on my own summer after 8th grade.
2. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis. Read the rest of the series on my own, went on to read Screwtape Letters, Surprised by Joy and others of his.
3.  The Pit and the Pendulum, The Purloined Letter and other Edgar Allan Poe short stories.
4.  My Shadow Ran Fast by Bill Sands. Autobiography of an abused boy who became a convict and his rehabilitation.
5.  Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. 
6.  Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
7. The Passover Plot by Hugh J. Shoenfield, this was in sociology class. The class had very lively discussions.
8. Hiroshima by John Hersey
9.  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
10. 1984 by George Orwell, read Brave New World and Animal Farm by Huxley on my own. 

Top Ten Books I'd like in my library

1.  Issac Asimov's histories. They were library use only and have been long discarded before the electronic age.
2.  No Rusty Swords, Letters from Prison by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Had them at seminary and foolishly let them go.
3. Norton Anthologies. College literature books in American and World. I kept the Modern Poetry one. It came in handy when I was wooing my wife way back in the day.

My eyesight has been so poor that I've stopped reading hard copy books. Kindle lets me set the size of the font and puts less strain on them. I've had one eye's cataract removed and will get the other one done in a few weeks. I can tell the difference already and may go back to reading regular books. The biggest problem is room for new books. I have a one side of my garage full of books and the books cases in my house are overflowing.