News of the World in Reading with Style

Apr 25, 2018 Krista rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction-usa, setting-usa, time-1850-1899, audio-book-cd, fiction, native-american, large-print, setting-usa-tx, cari-2017, fiction-award-nominee

What a great book! It has some tense, but yet comical scenes; and the dialogue is fantastic. You've just GOT to love Captain Jefferson Kidd as he travels through Texas after the Civil War (1870) reading the news of the world to audiences in small towns.

Then his world is turned upside down when he agrees to take a former Kiowa captive back home to her family. Johanna was captured at 6 years-old, and is now 10, and a fully fledged Kiowa. This is the story of adventure, danger, pathos, empathy and ...more

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Nov 30, 2017 Joanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, historical-fiction, bookclub-grasslands, 2017-read

I wrote a long review, but GR ate it. So, short version - listened to this during a long drive and really enjoyed the contrast between my safe travel on an interstate compared to the perilous journey in a wagon that these characters had.

Slight complaint about the ending suffering from Epilogue Syndrome, wherein the author doesn't know how to end and decides to just give the rest of the life history of the characters condensed in ten to fifteen pages. Not awful, but not great either.

Audiobook nar ...more

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Feb 14, 2017 Teddie rated it really liked it

This is a lovely gem of a book.

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May 25, 2020 Sam rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, books-of-2020

This book was just what I needed! I used to be a big historical fiction reader, but I got away from the genre in the last few years and haven't read much. I felt the itch to ease myself back into it, and News of the World was the perfect re-introduction.

The history and landscape here are richly woven, but not so much that I felt bogged down by the historical details. It was just enough to really give the reader a sense of time and place, and build up Captain Kidd's character, without becoming o ...more

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Oct 31, 2018 Chinook rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: america

I really, really enjoyed this. For a short novel, it really creates an amazing sense of both time and place, without those details getting in the way of the plot. Of all the genres, Westerns may be the area I’m the least well read in, which is sort of funny because as a kid I was obsessed with any story with people in covered wagon trains. I’ll have to dig around in the genre a bit and find some others that I like.

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