Book Of The Week 7/26/13: The Women Of The Cousins War

The Women of The Cousins War

The Duchess

The Queen

and the 

Kings Mother

by

  Phillipa Gregory

David Baldwin 

Michael Jones

This non-fiction book is a companion book the series The Cousins War.   It clears up which parts of Phillipa Gregory's novels The While Queen,  The Red Queen and The Lady of the Rivers are parts that are fact and which parts are conjecture.  Reading the non fiction accounts of these women also helped make some connections between family lines that I had missed when reading the novel because the medieval royal and aristocratic families are very intertwined.  I will admit that I had trouble staying focused on the non-fiction approach and enjoyed the novels much more.  Never the less this book was a good fill in and clarifying tool to use while I waited the couple weeks I had to wait for the fourth book in the series to be released.  The White Princess was released yesterday and I started listing it to it last pm.   Please follow the links in the titles and author's names to learn more and enjoy watching the videos that follow.

Movie Night

I was about an hour late in getting away from Wilmington Ohio Sunday evening because Bruce and I decided to watch a movie.  I had read the book Eat, Pray, Love a few years ago but never had watched the movie.  I enjoyed it and I think he did too.  In this case I think the movie is better than the book.  I do disagree though that a year was long enough for her to be single.  In my opinion, she needed a decade.

Book Of The Week 7/15/13: True Detective, Nathan Heller by Max Allan Collins

True Detective:

Nathan Heller

by

Max Allan Collins

This book was recommended to me by my brother and while I enjoyed reading the descriptions of the Chicago neighborhoods in the mid 1930's overall I would pigeon hole this book as a guy book.   I do read mysteries from time to time but they are not my favorite genre because I usually know half way through the book how it will end.  In this story that is not the case.  It had a good strong ending that totally caught me off guard.  The novel is about the gangster era in Chicago around the time of the worlds fair and a private detective who is hired to keep the mayor of Chicago from being assassinated.   He not only fails in this but the assassination is concealed as an attempt to assassinate FDR instead of the mayor of Chicago.  Heller also has a second case of trying to find a missing person.  Most of the book I was confused as to why these two separate cases were in one novel until I got to the shocker ending.   If you are a fan of Dick Tracey type books then I recommend this book to you.  I may read more of this series myself because I want to read the one about the Lindberg kidnapping.  Please click on the title and the author's name above to follow the links to more information.  And enjoy the video that follows.

Book Of The Week 7/10/13: The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory

The Kingmaker's Daughter

by

Philippa Gregory

This novel is the fourth in the series that Philippa Gregory calls The Cousin's War Series  and it is the fourth one that I have read.  I have thoroughly enjoyed this series.  The stories are all centered around The War Of the Roses in the late 1400's and takes place in  England.  Each story is told from a different woman's point of view but covers most of the same events.   In this manner one gets a sense of all sides of the story in this time when two families were trying to obtain or hold the throne and willing to go to any extreme to do so.   The women are pitted against each other and do not like each other so that the heroine in one book is the hated one in another.  Anne Neville is the heroine in The Kingmaker's Daughter.   She is the wife of King Richard III.   Philippa Gregory paints Anne as a very admirable person in this novel.   Anne's father is Richard Neville who places King Edward IV on the throne by teaching him many things and helping him win the battles that over throws King Henry VI.   Richard Neville has only two daughter's and therefore does not have a son of his own to put on the throne.  His goal is to have his daughter marry a  king and in this manner make his future grandson a king.  Only King Edward IV marries who he pleases and messes up Richard Neville's plans.  As the complicated relationships play out through out the novel,  Richard Neville's two daughters end up each one married to one of King Edward IV's brothers and Anne's husband ends up king after the death of Kind Edward IV.   Both Anne and King Richard III are painted in this novel as people who hold themselves to high standards of honor.  Never the less a good amount of head lopping off and poisoning goes on in the book.  There is a lot of treachery with people having ambitious goals and not so many scruples about how to achieve them.  It occurs to me that part of the reason for insanity in the royal lines back then might be more than cousins marrying too closely related people.  It may well be that the sociological environment did not foster good mental health.  To be as isolated as they were emotionally within a court where every one acted like friends on the surface but tried to destroy each other in reality had to be difficult.  One never knew if any one was a true friend or not.  And no one ever knew who the real father was of anyone so they would just have parliament declare an heir to the throne invalid because they decided to call the Queen  unfaithful and then place themselves as next in line to the throne.   There was also the accusation made more than once that one couple or another didn't complete marriages quite legally so their offspring didn't count either.  Amidst this plotting the theme of how women were used back then to obtain alliances and secure agreements is made clear along with the fact that women had no choice in the matter.  They were required to obey their father and then later obey the husband that her father decided was best for the father for her to marry.   Anne and King Richard III ran off and eloped when they were hardly more than children so their marriage was a love story.  The novel also contains some rather graphic descriptions of child birth along with other word pictures that describe the daily life of gentry in the late 15th century.   Click on the links on the title, author's name and in the first line of the text above and watch the video below for more information. 

Dinner And A Movie Last Weekend

Last weekend Bruce and I went out to dinner at Triangle Park and after some shopping at Target, Sams and Lowes came back to the condo and watched a comedy romance called Hope Springs.  I always think Meryl Streep does a great job in any movie I have seen her in.  The movie is about a couple who have been married a long time and want to add some spice back into their marriage.  Enjoy the video below of the official movie trailer to Hope Springs.  Also click on the gray texts above to follow the links for more information.

Cloud Atlas: The Movie

Cloud Atlas

The Movie 

This past April I  posted a blog about the novel Cloud Atlas which can be found HERE.    In the blog I mention that I wanted to watch the movie to see if it made the story lines any clearer.  A few weeks ago Bruce and I watched it.  I really liked the movie although Bruce said he was glad he didn't pay to see it at the theater.  It is a very complicated movie as the links you will follow to if you click on the titles above indicate.  It may be helpful to see who is who in the various time frames the movie encompasses.  A chart can be found HERE with that information.    The various levels of meaning are clearer since I have seen the movie although I would not have wanted to try and follow it without having read the book first.  In fact,  reading the book and watching the movie several times might be helpful to grasp it all.  I still didn't absorb all that is there.  Enjoy the trailer that follows.  I recommend the movie.  I liked it and and it is a book and movie that will stay with me for years to come.