Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 19

The World of J.R.R. Tolkien by Dimitra Fimi

The World of J.R.R. Tolkien by Dimitra Fimi

I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings while in the sixth grade. Since then, I’ve reread the main books a great many times and read The Silmarillion at least four or five times. I’ve also picked up and enjoyed a handful of the other books published after Tolkien died. I always enjoy learning more about Middle Earth and how Tolkien came to write it and that’s what this Great Courses series does. It tells you a lot about how Tolkien came to create the best-known fantasy world in all of literature and focuses mostly upon those other books of Tolkien lore (not that she ignores the main four). If you enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, this is a must-read series of lectures. I’m sure I’ll read it again one day myself.

 

The Paid Bridesmaid by Sariah Wilson

The Paid Bridesmaid by Sariah Wilson

Rachel runs a business in which she manages a bride’s wedding for her, playing the role of bridesmaid, and generally making certain that every part of the wedding celebration goes as planned. She’s a sweet, dedicated, and a very hard-working woman who has developed a few rules to keep men from interfering in her business. Since she works all the time, that means her rules keep men out of her life.

 

While managing a wedding for a bigtime social influencer, she finds herself very attracted to Camden, the groom’s best man. Camden also seems to be super interested in Rachel (although the blurb gives away the fact that he actually fears she’s a corporate spy), but his many questions threaten the confidentiality clause in her contract with the bride—the clause in which she must keep the fact that she and the bride are not actually best friends a secret. This leads to a metaphorical dance in which Rachel has to fend off both Camden’s interest and her own developing feelings for him.

 

If that was all the novel was it would have been a lot of fun, but Wilson has created a cast with quite a lot of depth and their little quirks and secrets add an extra layer of interest to the story. I’d also be willing to bet that Wilson has been to a very large number of weddings because she has figured out absolutely everything that can go wrong from jealous sisters and alcoholic mothers to evil ex-girlfriends and…that’s really just the beginning.

 

This is a very sweet tale as a romance should be. For my taste, Rachel was losing her self-control a bit quickly (chapter one) but within a few chapters she and Camden have had enough interaction to make the banter and the second guessing feel natural. If you like a feelgood book with a lot of humor, you ought to give The Paid Bridesmaid a chance.

 

Fade to Black by Robert Goldsborough

Fade to Black by Robert Goldsborough

This time, Wolfe and Archie are hired to determine who is leaking critical information from one marketing firm to another. As Archie begins their investigation, we learn just enough about the cast of suspects to be interested when a murder ups the ante all around. I figured out the leaker and murderer almost from moment one, but never had anything remotely approaching evidence to support my suspicions. Wolfe manages to come to the same conclusion I did also without evidence, although at least he constructed a logical chain of events to point to his assumed culprit. Everything concludes in a classic Wolfe confrontation scene but without the bang we usually get from a Stout or Goldsborough novel. This is an enjoyable book, but it’s not one of the best.

 

The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickinson

The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickinson

I read this book in high school and stumbled across it again in audio format and decided to give it another read. I had very good (but limited) memories of the novel. A guy gets stuck in a dragon’s body when he tries to follow his fiancé through a science experiment gone bad. After that, it’s pretty much a fantasy adventure with some scientific understanding thrown in.

 

Second time around, I still enjoyed it. It’s a pretty good adventure story which, forty years ago, would have felt fresher than it does today. There are a number of good characters and a decent problem to be resolved. I may give the sequels a chance.

 

Summer of '85 by Chris Morrow

Summer of ’85 by Chris Morrow

This is a fascinating account of two important events that occurred in Philadelphia—one heinous and one inspiring. The bombing of MOVE by the mayor of Philadelphia continues to be utterly shocking. Law enforcement bombed a townhouse in Philadelphia containing MOVE members and their families and killed 11 people including 5 children. The mayor then refused to let the fire department contain the fire and 65 more houses burned to the ground. At the same time, LIVE Aid was coming to Philadelphia to raise money for starving people in Ethiopia. This highly interesting book walks the reader through both events that happened a few miles and a few weeks apart.

 

Perfect Timing by Brenda Jackson

Perfect Timing by Brenda Jackson

This was a genuinely interesting romance novel which, after a slow middle, dealt with some serious issues in the latter part of the story. The book is nominally about two best friends, Maxi and Maya, who drifted apart after high school, leading the reader to think that getting the two back together will be a major subplot of the story. (It wasn’t. It took one chapter and probably wasn’t worth mentioning in the blurb.) What was more interesting is that Maxi’s life has fallen apart after the death of her fiancé while Maya’s marriage to her high-school-sweetheart-turned-NFL-player is threatening to hit the rocks. Their troubles seem to be reaching a crescendo when they both agree to go on a high school reunion cruise.

 

That cruise was the weakest part of the story and takes up most of the first half of the book. Maxi is accidentally put in the same cabin as her high school crush, Christopher, who happens to have the same last name as her. This happened because they both, separately, ordered single cabins and the cruise line decided on its own that they must be married because they have the same last name so they would put them together. Then the cruise line refused to fix the problem arguing that since they had been in high school together it must be okay. For the record, this is totally unbelievable and was equally unnecessary to the story. The only thing it accomplished was to make it easier for the author to continually thrust these two together. Unsurprisingly in a novel with so much sex in it, there is a lot of thrusting in that cabin.

 

The only other thing the cruise accomplishes is to bring Maxi and Maya back together—something a phone call should have accomplished ten years earlier—and to drive home the fact (made before the cruise started) that Christopher was not respected in high school (and of course no one knows he is now super successful and super wealthy). It also leads Christopher, who has extraordinary commitment issues, to offer to father the child Maxi desperately wants before she has to get a hysterectomy.

 

Okay, so the book has a lot in common with some of the crazier soap operas, but stick with it because there’s a lot of good too. When Maya and Maxi get back to their lives, things continue to fall apart for them—and it’s in dealing with these problems that Jackson shows her strength as an author.

 

In the first plot, Maxi wants Christopher’s child, but she’s frustrated that he’s not part of the deal—as in marriage. Of course, he’s around for making the baby. (And yes, the sex is too good for them to seriously consider invitro fertilization.) Christopher clearly wants her too, but there are those very profound commitment issues.

 

In the second plot, Maya’s husband has strayed—not completely, but enough that any self-respecting person would be hugely upset by his actions. This is really the strongest storyline in the novel because it is the easy for readers to imagine themselves having to deal with similar problems. There is a lot of pressure on Maya to simply forgive her husband including from her minister, but she’s upset enough that I couldn’t predict how the story would end.

 

The minister brings up another subtle strength of this story. These are people for whom religion and prayer are important parts of their lives. They are not preachy in your face zealots. They are everyday Americans who believe that God and religion have a place in their families. I thought this was a very well-done aspect of the story.

 

The narration was also very well done. Leon Nixon reads a good book, but I must admit to being surprised that a man was chosen as narrator when two of the three POVs were female. It makes me wonder if for the author, the Christopher storyline was the most important.

 

And I think that’s the key to why I liked this book so much, even though I have poked a bit of fun at it in this review. As I listened, it made me think—not deep profound thoughts—but about what was going to happen and whether I could imagine my high school class doing things like this. And when I am wondering that much about what a character should do, it tells me I’m really enjoying the book. I think you will too.

 

 

Three Witnesses by Rex Stout

Three Witnesses by Rex Stout

This collection holds another three great stories featuring Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. In the first, The Next Witness, Wolfe has been subpoenaed to testify in court about his meeting with a client he rejected. While listening to the testimony of the witness ahead of him he realizes that his almost-client is innocent and decides to do something about it. What follows is one of the most delightful Nero Wolfe stories as he can’t go home (because there is a warrant out for him for not showing up in court) and so he must actually investigate himself and then figure out a way to get the truth admitted into evidence. It’s a wonderful, if atypical, look at Nero Wolfe.

 

In When a Man Murders, Wolfe is brought into the sad case of a woman who has remarried after her husband was reported dead in the Korean War, only to have him come home and get murdered Her new husband is arrested for the crime, but Wolfe thinks he’s innocent and the culprit must be one of the dead man’s heirs. It’s an intriguing little puzzle handled with Stout’s usual finesse.

 

Finally, Die Like a Dog is the rarest of rarities—a case in which Wolfe had no hope of being paid. He gets involved in the murder case because Archie and he are mad at each other and using a stray dog to irritate each other. Only the dog isn’t a stray—it’s the key to a rather unusual murder case—unusual even by Wolfe’s standards.

 

Island of the Lost by Joan Druett

Island of the Lost by Joan Druett

This is two adventure tales in one—each with very different outcomes. Both involve shipwrecks on Auckland Island, one of the most desolate places on earth. In the first shipwreck, the crew pulls together, survives, and eventually escapes the island. In the second, the crew fights among itself, turns to cannibalism, and eventually dies—all within twenty miles of the other crew. (Neither group of castaways knew the other existed.)

 

What happened is extraordinary. Unfortunately, the book is a little dry in relating these events.

 

Dark Treacherous Hearts by Gilbert M. Stack

Dark Treacherous Hearts by Gilbert M. Stack

The second volume in my Young Tavistock series is now available for pre-order at a 66% discount from the cover price. Young Tavistock is the tale of how the greatest knight and most highly respected lord in Winterhaven got that way and if you thought he had serious problems to contend with in the first volume of this series, you haven’t seen anything yet.

 

Here’s the back of the book blurb:

When Willem returned to Tavistock to claim his inheritance, he thought he only needed to convince his uncle to stand down and then prove his own value to his vassals on the field of battle. Unfortunately for Willem, his unexpected return interfered with too many other peoples’ plans. He belatedly realizes that if they can’t remove him face to face, they will find a less honorable way. As the young swordsman struggles to take a firm grip on the reins of power, he must discern who is truly loyal to him and which smiles conceal Dark Treacherous Hearts.

 

You can pre-order Dark Treacherous Hearts for 99 cents at:

 

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Treachero...

 

The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Married at last, Tarzan and Jane have settled down to life in England, with their infant son, Jack, when Nikolas Rokoff, villain of The Return of Tarzan, returns with a nefarious new plot to pay Tarzan back for constantly frustrating his villainous aims in the last book. The plot involves the kidnapping of Tarzan and Jane’s son as the first stage in a trap to hurt Tarzan. Within a few chapters, Tarzan and Jane are both also prisoners, and Rokoff has laid out his plan to have the infant raised by cannibals.

 

Then Rokoff makes one of his many mistakes, stranding Tarzan on an island so that he could feel more helpless. Tarzan, of course, is never helpless, and on the island he befriends a tribe of apes and a panther and then captures a visiting native chieftain and begins a journey to the mainland via giant canoe with all of his new friends.

 

What follows is a very exciting series of adventures in which Rokoff threatens Tarzan and eventually flees from him. For a novel, it sometimes felt a little strangely structured, but these short repetitive adventures make great sense for a serialized story such as this novel was when first published.

 

As the book continues, Jane has a chance to stand up for herself and the infant. For the most part, she is both smart and brave, although she does inextricably forget she has a gun during one of her confrontations with Rokoff.

 

This is another exciting adventure from beginning to end. While I don’t think it achieves quite the heights of the first two books, it is definitely worth reading for anyone who likes the character, Tarzan.