Finished: Agent 6 (Smith) The third book in Smith's trilogy about Russian secret police agent Leo Demidov. In this book, it is ten years after Leo and his wife, Raisa, saved their rebellious, adopted daughter, Zoya, from her own destructive path of revolting against their Russian lifestyle. Now, their 17 year old younger daughter, Elena, has been seduced and recruited by a wily Russian agent to help get American communist, Jesse Austin, out of retirement to speak in America, rousing the people to revolt against the U.S. Raisa, Elena and Zoya travel to the U.S. without Leo, much to his dismay, to perform in a joint Russian/American chorale concert to show the world that the two Cold War rivals can perform together and be "friends". Raisa has no idea that Elena will use this opportunity to get in touch with Austin. Years before Austin had visited Russia and then traveled back to America, extolling the virtues of Communism and Russia through his soulful, jazz music, and through many a rousing public speech. Inspired by the innocence and exuberance of Elena, Jesse agrees to meet her on the street corner near the United Nations building, where the choirs are singing, after the concert to give his speech. Meanwhile, the FBI is constantly tailing all the Russian students and especially Raisa and her daughters. One agent in particular, Jim Yates, intimidates Elena and Raisa. As Jesse Austin begins to speak, he is gunned down and the gun is planted on Elena! Raisa arrives during the chaos to shield her daughter and puts the gun in her own pocket. Raisa is then accused of killing Jesse Austin, and Austin's widow goes to the police station and shoots her! Rather than save her life, Jim Yates lets her die a slow death on the police station floor so they can concoct a story that there was a sordid love triangle and Raisa killed Jesse out of jealousy. In reality, at first you think the FBI wanted Jesse Austin killed, but in reality, it is the Russians who decided that if they had Jesse Austin assassinated and made it look like America's FBI had him killed, then maybe the country would rise up and revolt and become communist. OK, that's a far stretch to me, but that was their motive. Anyway, Leo is obviously devastated by the death of his beloved wife Raisa, and sixteen years later, he's still devastated. He's also out of touch with both his daughters who are now married and living in Russia. He's an opium addict and he's been assigned to the worst position a former Russian secret police agent can be assigned to...he's now a Russian advisor in Afghanistan during the occupation  of Afghanistan by Russia! He dreams of making his way to America so he can figure out who killed Raisa and exact his revenge. Long story short, Leo does finally find out that even though Agent 6, aka Jim Yates, didn't kill Raisa, he did let her die a slow, painful death. After realizing that this doesn't bring Raisa back, Leo goes back to Russia a traitor to await his certain death sentence. He finally gets to see his two daughters after several years while he's in prison, and that's where the story ends. Leo is a traitor because to bargain his way to America, he offers the FBI a deal to give them intel about what Russia is doing in Afghanistan so the U.S. can decide whether of not to enter the war. I've left out lots of details but that's the gist of the story. The book was a good wrap up to Leo's story, but out of all the books, I think I liked the first one, Child 44, the best! I just might read more of Tom Rob Smith's work though! :-)

Finished: The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh (Milne) "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred."  Pooh thought for a little.  "How old shall I be then?"  "Ninety-nine."  Pooh nodded.  "I promise," he said.  Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt for Pooh's paw.

Sigh, I just love Winnie the Pooh, always have. I know I've read all of these stories at different times over the years...mostly to my own kids, and I'm sure when I was younger too...but I've never sat and read the entire illustrated tales. Oh how I love every character! Not much more to say than that. I'm just going to bask in the innocence and love of Poohness right now. :-)

The Namesake (Lahiri) A very good, but very sad book. Not sad in the way of death and destruction or sick children, anything like that...just that the main character's life is not at all happy no matter what decisions he makes. The story is about a man, Ashoke, and a woman, Ashima, from India and Bengali who both marry in the traditional Indian way...set up by their parents. Ashima moves across the world from her family in Calcutta to live with her new husband who teaches in Boston. They are steadfast in their marriage, but not in love. They have two children, the first being a son, in 1968. We get a little back story about Ashoke and find that when he was in his early twenties, he loved the Russian author Gogol, and in particular, his famous short story, The Overcoat. On an overnight train trip one evening, he was the only person in his sleeping cabin who didn't climb in his berth and go to sleep. Instead he stayed up to read Gogol. When the train derailed, buckled and crashed, killing many of the people aboard, all of Ashoke's cabin mates were killed, except for Ashoke. Ashoke saw this as a further sign for him to be enamored of Gogol. Flash forward to 1968 when his son is born. Ashima and Ashoke decide to again go with Indian tradition and wait for her grandmother to name their son. A letter is in the mail from India. However, the hospital will not release the mother and child until there is a name on the birth certificate. Not really understanding that this will be his permanent name, Ashoke gives him the name Gogol, planning to change it to the name the grandmother picks as soon as it arrives. Of course, fate steps in the way and the grandmother has a stroke and Ashima's father dies, so they must travel quickly to India. Gogol is the official name written on the baby's passport, and the name he is stuck with for the rest of his life. Gogol and his sister grow up in American schools, with American friends and customs. They never quite appreciate it when their parents force them to leave school for weeks at a time to travel to India to see relatives...India, where they don't have any of the things they're used to. Yet, at school, despite having some friends, they are still considered just enough "different" to be on the outer fringe of being included as well. Caught between spending weekends with his parents' friends, who are all people of Indian and Bengali descent who they have met in America, and between trying to keep up with his American friends, life is not the happiest for Gogol. On his twelfth birthday, Gogol's father gifts him with a copy of Gogol's short stories, including The Overcoat. He does not tell Gogol how he almost died and had to relearn how to walk and how much the name Gogol means to him. Gogol is pretty much a brat, hates his name, and doesn't do much but stick the book on a shelf, never even seeing the inscription his father has written. As he grows into a typical teenager and then goes to college, he exhibits the fairly typical behavior of ignoring his parents, even lying that he needs to be at school for a project when he really wants to spend time doing the things he enjoys instead of going home every weekend. He's a good student at an Ivy league school. He shows a talent for drawing at an early age and has decided to become an architect. One of the first things he does when he's of age is officially change his name! He picks the name Nikhil, which is what his parents had finally decided to call him when he entered kindergarten, but ironically, five year old Gogol had thrown a fit, so his teachers stuck to his official name and kept calling him Gogol. So, in college, everyone gets to know Gogol and Nikhil....but as we read the book, he's always referred to as Gogol. Anyway, Gogol meets an American girl, Maxine, that he falls for, and she for him, and his parents are devastated that he won't be picking an Indian girl to have a traditional marriage with. He doesn't give too much thought to their feelings and ends up spending more and more time with her and her family, who he comes to love. Suddenly, Ashoke drops dead of a heart attack at the age of 46 and Gogol's life does a complete change. He goes back home to help handle things and even though Maxine is very understanding at first, she doesn't understand why many months later he is still mourning, regretful and wanting to spend so much time with his mother and sister. Maxine and Gogol break up and Gogol goes to work at an architecture firm in New York. He deeply regrets that he didn't speak to his father more and spend more time with him. In one of their last conversations, Ashoke had finally told Gogol about the train wreck, and why Gogol the author meant so much to him...but it was long after Gogol had changed his name to Nikhil. Finally, when Gogol is nearing 30, his mother asks him to call up the daughter of an old friend from India...actually, a girl who he used to hang out with as a youngster on all those Indian/Bengali get togethers. Just to appease his mother, Gogol calls up Moushumi and they meet for drinks. Moushumi is every bit as independent and "Americanized" as Gogol Actually, she has also spent quite a bit of time in France, growing up there first before moving to the U.S., so she's even a bit more worldly. However, despite  their insisting they won't, they actually fall for each other and have a traditional Indian wedding which makes Gogol's mother and Moushumi's parents all very happy! The happiness doesn't last long, however. As a matter of fact, they are not even married for two years when Moushumi starts having an affair with an older man who she met and fell for as a teenager, who is now back in New York and in her life! It's so sad. :-( Gogol doesn't do anything wrong....but also, it's not like they are madly in love with each other...they are more just comfortable. But, they do care for each other and Gogol is blindsided by the affair. He ends up divorced from Moushumi by the time he is 32 and he travels back to his mother's house in Boston for one more Christmas before she moves from his childhood home, which she has just sold, to travel to India. When Gogol makes his way upstairs to grab a camera, he sees that most of his old things have been packed away. His mother wants him to go through them before she leaves. His eyes fall on the old copy of Gogol's short stories, which Gogol had never read! Gogol opens the book to see a very sweet inscription from his father, and realizes with even more regret that his father must have known all those years that Gogol never even gave the book a second glance. Gogol sits down and starts reading the book and the story ends. See? Not an earth shattering sad story, but just very sad in terms of Gogol never really finding happiness. He seems to fight all his life trying to fit in between his Indian/Bengali roots and his American upbringing. Lahiri writes very straightforwardly and nicely and really pulls you into the story and the feelings of each of the characters! This is my second Lahiri book and I just might have to read more. Here's a passage near the end that I really liked:

     In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another. It had started with his father's train wreck, paralyzing him at first, later inspiring him to move as far as possible, to make a new life on the other side of the world. There was the disappearance of the name Gogol's great-grandmother had chosen for him, lost in the mail somewhere between Calcutta and Cambridge. This had led, in turn, to the accident of his being named Gogol, defining and distressing him for so many years. He had tried to correct that randomness, that error. And yet it had not been possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name. His marriage had been something of a misstep as well. And the way his father had slipped away from them, that had been the worst accident of all, as if the preparatory work of death had been done long ago, the night he was nearly killed, and all that was left for him was one day, quietly, to go. And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end. 

Finished: Finders Keepers (King) A thoroughly page-turning book, the sequel to the equally page-turning Mr. Mercedes. In Mr. Mercedes a psychopath stole a Mercedes and ran down a bunch of people standing in the early morning hours in a job fair line, killing several and wounding more. He was then pursued throughout the book by retired police detective Bill Hodges, and his unlikely assistants, yard boy Jerome, and highly functioning savant, Holly. The trio ends up saving the day when they prevent the psychopath, Brady, from blowing up a concert full of teenyboppers. However, rather than kill him, they only put him in a coma after hitting him in the head. Doctors say he will never again think cognitively, but in Finders Keepers, he has come awake and sits for hours staring. Bill Hodges visits him often to see if he can illicit any kind of a response, but only weird things happen, and usually after Hodges leaves so he doesn't witness the weird things....like Brady looking at a picture of him and his equally psycho and now deceased mother and making it tip over. That's just a very tiny bit of the Finders Keepers story, though. This story focuses on the family of one of the victims of the vehicle nightmare, Tom Saubers, who was maimed horribly, having to relearn how to walk all over again. Already out of a job, hence the job fair line, and with a school teacher wife, Linda, a thirteen year old son, Pete, and nine year old daughter, Tina, the marriage of Tom and Linda Saubers is disintegrating, and vocally, right before the eyes of their angst-ridden kids. One day hiking in the woods behind their house, Pete finds an old buried trunk full of moleskin notebooks and quite a bit of money...$20,000 to be exact! He thinks about turning it all in to the police, and then realizes that if he sends the money to his parents a little bit at a time from an anonymous source, maybe it will help them get back through the rough financial times and back on their feet...and sure enough, it does! What Pete doesn't know is that that money and the moleskin notebooks were stolen from famous author John Rothstein thirty years before. In a horrific opening scene of the book, we read as three young hoodlums break into Rothstein's remote cabin, antagonize him into giving his safe combination, and then kill him before taking the money and the books. What two of the hoodlums don't know is that it's only the books that interest psychopath Morris Bellamy. Morris is obsessed with John Rothstein's character Jimmy Gold, from his famous trilogy, The Runner series. (Rothstein and The Runner sounds alot like Updike and his Rabbit, Run series to me!) Anyway, apparently in the first two Runner books, Jimmy Gold has defied convention and his parents and become quite the f.u. rebel. But, by the third book, he's given in to what everyone else has and is married with children and living in a :::gasp:::suburb. This changing of his favorite character has sent young Morris Bellamy over the edge and he decides to kill Rothstein for it...but not before getting his hands on whatever else the recluse has been writing for the past twenty years. So, Morris does all that, and then he kills his two partners who both thought they were just there for the money. Morris has a friend, Andy, who works at a bookstore who has bragged that he could sell any Rothstein writings that came about for quite a bit of money some day. Morris takes this to mean they have a plan, and proceeds to kill Rothstein and steal the notebooks. When Morris goes to Andy, Andy is appalled, screeching at Morris that John Rothstein's murder is all over the news and that he was never part of his plan. Besides he wouldn't be able to sell anything by Rothstein until he had his own shop, several years from now, and especially now that Rothstein was just murdered.  Because of Andy's paranoia, Morris is certain that the police will be on him any minute, so before he can even read any of the moleskin notebooks, he lines the old trunk he bought in plastic and buries the books and money in the forest. Then, as fate would have it, he goes out, gets drunk, blacks out and violently rapes a woman, getting himself sent to prison for 35 years!! Fast forward 31 of those years and we come to the night that Tom Saubers is hit by the Mercedes. A few months later, Pete finds the old trunk that Morris buried out in the woods behind the house that Morris also used to live in, that is now occupied by the Saubers family!! So, thirteen year old Pete starts sending his parents the mysterious money, $500 a month for four years, until it runs out. It really does help keep them on their feet while Pete's dad is able to recuperate and learn to walk all over, and finally start establishing a bit of a business in real estate. Meanwhile, Pete reads all the John Rothstein notebooks and realizes that he's reading two additional novels about Jimmy Gold from The Runner series, a book he had to read in school. In the two new novels, never published of course, Jimmy Gold apparently reverts back to his old self and ways. Pete falls in love with Rothstein's writing almost as much as Morris did, but not in a psychotic way. When Pete is seventeen, a junior in high school, a great student, especially in English Lit, and thinking of colleges for the next year, the money finally runs out. He thinks they'll probably do okay now as a family, but his sister Tina is dying to go to the private school that all her friends do, and her parents can't quite swing that. Pete begins to toy with what he could possibly do to make his sister's dreams come true and contacts a seller of old books...Andy! That's right....35 years later, Andy has his own book selling shop. He's also got a reputation for doing things not exactly above board, which is what young Pete will need if he's going to try to sell a novel from a man that he now knows was murdered and his work and money stolen. Pete thinks he would be in major trouble now for giving all the money to his parents, so he doesn't want to go through proper channels. Well, it just so happens that right as Pete is trying to sell some of the notebooks to Andy...Morris Bellamy is finally getting paroled! He's been in prison for 35 years and is now 59 years old, and he still has only one thought on his mind....go get his moleskin notebooks and read them. For 35 years he's dreamed about what John Rothstein could have possibly written about. Was there more Jimmy Gold? So, the first time he can duck his parole officer, Morris makes his way to where he buried the books and he's thrilled to dig up the trunk. However, when it comes up empty, he's shocked and then enraged. Who in the world has stolen his notebooks??? The only person he can think of who even knew he had the books was his old pal Andy, so he makes his way to Andy's bookshop and pays him a visit. Andy is shocked to see Morris out of prison. Before Morris brutally kills Andy, he makes him tell him that Andy has been making a deal with the real person who has the books...a teenage boy, Pete Saubers. Morris leaves the dead Andy in his book store office, puts the "closed" sign up, takes his car and goes to stake out the Saubers family. Of course, it all makes sense to him when he sees they live in his old house! Meanwhile, Pete has been suffering and nervous and is becoming fidgety and thin. Tina is very worried about him and turns to her best friend Barbara, who was one of the teenyboppers who was saved from being bombed at the concert in Mr. Mercedes. She also happens to be Jerome's little sister! So, Barbara gets in touch with Bill Hodges, who is now working as a private detective with Holly, while Jerome is off at an Ivy League college getting his degree. Tina breaks down to Hodges and Holly and tells them she thinks Pete is in serious trouble. As a matter of fact, she thinks her brother is somehow the one who sent their family the surprise money for all those years, but where could he have gotten the money? Jerome comes home for the weekend, and Hodges, Holly and Jerome hop right on the case. Pete, however, can see them coming a mile away after a brief discussion with Hodges, and he loses them on the day he goes to finalize his deal with Andy. Of course, it's not Andy waiting for him in the shop, it's Morris Bellamy! As Pete sees Andy's decaying body and with Morris' gun pointed at him, he realizes he won't make it out of there alive if he tells Morris where the notebooks are. Pete, being younger and more agile, throws a full decanter at Morris' head, dodges his bullets and runs from the bookstore. Meanwhile, Hodges, Holly and Jerome have figured out how much danger Pete is in because they've figured out that Pete has John Rothstein's old notebooks and they put two and two together about Morris Bellamy being out of prison. Anyway, Pete and Hodges finally talk by phone and Pete indicates that he's worried about his mom and sister at home...that "the bad guy" (Morris Bellamy) knows where they live because he lived there when he was a kid!! Before Pete OR Hodges can get to the house, of course Morris Bellamy gets there first and he shoots Pete's mom. :-( Then, he takes Tina to the old abandoned Rec building near their house and calls Pete. He wants the notebooks traded for Pete's sister! Little does Morris know that the notebooks are right under his own nose!! Pete has hidden them at the Rec building! Pete high tails it to the Rec building with a lighter, some lighter fluid and a plan. With a gun pointed at his tied up sister, Pete threatens Bellamy that he will burn the pile of notebooks, which Pete has poured out on the floor in front of Bellamy's stunned eyes, if he does not release his sister. Morris is crazed with curiosity and can't take his eyes off the notebooks as Pete knows exactly how to hit him where it hurts by letting him know that there are in fact two more Jimmy Gold novels in there, referencing an old girlfriend of Jimmy Gold's from the first book. Don't you want to know what happens? Just as it looks like Morris may give in, he raises the gun like he's going to shoot and Hodges comes down the stairs swinging. The gun goes off hitting no one, but the shock of the sounds makes Pete accidentally drop the lighter on the pile of notebooks!!! Morris screams in horror as he watches his beloved books go up in flames! It's been 35 years and he still never got to read one word! As Hodges and Pete struggle to get Tina untied before the building burns down around them, Morris keeps diving into the burning pile of notebooks trying to save them. The last thing the trio sees as they escape out the window is Morris' charred body still groping for the books. Whew! They make their way back to Pete's house where Holly has stayed until an ambulance comes for Pete's mom...yes, she survives. Yay! I really thought Stephen King was going to kill off the mom, but wait....that's Disney that always kills off the mothers isn't it? ;-) So...in the end, there are no charges against Pete for doing what he did as a young teen. Instead, he's the only person in the world who has read the final two novels belonging to Rothstein, so he gets to actually write his own article for The New Yorker about it! In the last chapter, Hodges once again visits Brady, the killer from Mr. Mercedes, and needles him to try and get a reaction. Hodges just knows that Brady is looking at him, but he can't prove it. After Hodges leaves, Brady concentrates really hard and the water in his hospital bathroom turns on and off, and the picture of he and his mother once again falls over face down. doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo doo-doo! I think the third book of the trilogy most likely will be Brady waking up and/or causing some kind of telepathic havoc, no? :-)

Finished: Interpreter of Maladies (Lahiri) Fascinating collection of short stories about people of Indian, Pakistani and Bengali cultures living in America and/or in their native countries in this Pulitzer Prize winning book by a first time author! Each story deals very poignantly with the traditions and beliefs, or lack thereof, of these people who have either moved from their native country to America and are struggling to balance their traditions with a totally different environment, or grown up in America not really knowing their cultural roots at all, or grown up in America still embracing their culture wholeheartedly. Basically, there is someone in each story who is thrown into the sphere of the main character's life, who is fascinated by that person's traditions, or beliefs, or calmness. We sometimes see the depth of the character through that outside person's eyes, but most often the story is from the viewpoint of the Indian, Pakistani or Bengali person and is extremely compelling, moving, and thought-provoking. I think I particularly liked When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine. This was the story of a man from Pakistan in 1971 who was in America at a University on a work grant, but whose wife and seven young daughters were still in Pakistan. Unfortunately, civil war breaks out in his country. Because he lives in a dorm room at the university where he works, he has no way of cooking and very little access to television news. We meet ten year old Lilia, whose parents are from India and are teachers at the same university. Lilia's parents invite Mr. Pirzada to their home every single night for dinner and to watch the evening news, as he hopes to catch a glimpse of what has become of his wife and children. Mr. Pirzada is in America for a year before he does finally receive a letter from home telling him that his wife and daughters are safe. He returns to them, and though they grew close, Lilia never sees him again. What was very eye-opening about this story was that Lilia was learning all about the America Revolution in school, and knew nothing of any civil wars or history of her own culture. She even tried looking at a book about Indian history one day in the library and her teacher scolded her and told her to stick to her book report topic about the American Revolution. It just made me sad to think about children of any background other than American possibly never learning about their own heritage in school. Anyway, I found myself with each short story wanting that story to turn into an entire novel, and wondering what became of the people in each story! Luckily, I have another Lahiri book to read and it's a novel! :-)

Finished: Cold Comfort Farm (Gibbons) An actual book with happy endings all around for once!! Even though it's supposed to be rather a satirical send-up of the drama filled British literature, it was nicely lighthearted for me. :-) Flora Poste is a young woman in England of the upper crust whose parents die. Because she was practically raised in boarding schools, she doesn't really mourn them much....but is left with "only" 100 pounds a month income after all her father's debts are paid. She decides to leave her socialite life and go visit her cousins (her mother's older sister's children) in the country in Sussex on Cold Comfort Farm. She mysteriously hears from her relatives that they wondered when they'd finally hear from her, since she had rights she'd been cheated out of. When she arrives at the run down, dreary farm, no one is very receptive to her. The Starkadders are all farm people, deeply ingrained in routine, and with an iron fist held over them by the fake-crazy matriarch, Aunt Ada Doom. If any Starkadders ever think of leaving the farm, Aunt Ada Doom has a "fit" and wails on and on about how she witnessed something awful in the shed when she was a young girl...so they all back off and kowtow to Aunt Ada. Flora can see right through Aunt Ada's act the first time she sees it, but she deals with Aunt Ada last. First, Flora spends several months helping each of her cousins and their children realize their dreams...even if it means leaving the farm! Aunt Ada's son, Amos Starkadder, though he runs the farm and toils each day, really longs to be a traveling, evangelical preacher! Flora encourages him to go ahead and travel, thus leaving the farm to his nephew, the beleaguered Reuben, who is the only one who wants to really make the farm succeed. Reuben is the son of Judith, the daughter of Aunt Ada. Judith fawns over her other son, Seth, the good-looking cad of a lady's man, and pretty much ignores Reuben. Judith is totally under her mother's thumb, and spends most of her time depressed. Flora also sees through Seth and when he tells her that he loves the "talkies" aka movies, she introduces him to a movie producer friend of hers who happens to be looking for the next Clark Gable, and voila....Seth is off to Hollywood! Reuben, who mistrusts Flora at first and thinks she's there to claim the farm, comes to respect Flora when she finally makes him believe she wants nothing to do with the farm and wants him to run it like he has always wanted. Elfine, a flighty granddaughter, who I'm not sure of her parentage, is in love with a rich neighbor boy...but Elfine has been raised in almost a Bohemian fashion. Flora takes Elfine under her wing and in a month's time, has given her a makeover and taught her to be more refined, so that when they both go to the 21st birthday party of the boy, he realizes how much he is also in love with Elfine and, after she wins over his mother, they are married. After Seth leaves, Judith drops into even more of a depression and hangs little black veils all over her son's pictures. Flora insists that Judith accompany her to London one day and introduces her to her psychiatrist friend who redirects Judith's interests to old churches, and he whisks her off for a six month tour around Europe! Finally, Flora heads back to Cold Comfort Farm and spends an entire day locked in the bedroom of the formidable Aunt Ada Doom. When she finally reappears, she insists to the remaining relatives that Aunt Ada will not only accept the marriage of Elfine, but will also spring another surprise on them! Sure enough, the day of Elfine's wedding, Aunt Ada Doom comes downstairs, a rarity in itself, all dressed to the nines and actually shocks everyone by enjoying the wedding. She then announces that she herself is off to Paris and that she's going to start enjoying life instead of wallowing at the farm. She entrusts the farm and the money-handling to Reuben and off she flies in a small airplane with a pilot! Her work at Cold Comfort Farm done, Flora finally calls Charles...the young man she had met and got along with swimmingly right before she began her journey. He had told her to call him any time and he would fly HIS little airplane down there and rescue her at a moment's notice. They correspond by letters the entire time that Flora is there, and when she feels her mission is complete, she calls up Charles to come and get her. He lands his airplane and bounds toward her and they fall into a passionate embrace. He asks Flora to marry him and she says yes! Her only regrets are that she doesn't find out what exactly those rights of hers were, i.e., what the mysterious family story was...and she doesn't ever find out what it is Aunt Ada Doom saw in the shed as a young girl! Anyway...Finally, a happily ever after! :-)

Finished: Gilead (Robinson) Pulitzer Prize winner that is one long, thoughtful, mesmerizing letter written by a seventy-six year old man who is dying, to his seven year old son who will never know him as he grows older. The dying man is Reverend John Ames, who has lived his entire life in Gilead, Iowa. He is the son of a preacher, who was also the son of a preacher. John Ames pretty much lays out his life story for his young son, and in the process, gives a moving tale about fathers, sons, religion, beliefs, and struggles. We meet John Ames' lifelong best friend, "Old Boughton", who lives next door and has several grown children. John Ames, on the other hand, had tragically lost his young wife and baby daughter in childbirth and not remarried until he was in his late sixties when his current, and younger wife, walked into his church one day when he was preaching and he fell for her instantly. So, his young son is a product of a second marriage, and comes so late in John Ames' life that he is lamenting that he will never be able to pass along the words of wisdom he needs to. And, being a preacher, he has a lot to say about faith, right from wrong, struggling with one's own conscience, etc. The narrative is completely authentic. I heard an elderly man's voice the entire time I read...and so I seemed to read at that pace, as if he were talking out loud. It reminded me so much of my father, who was brought up in a very religious Baptist family...but then my father didn't grow up to become a preacher, lol. Anyway, John Ames recounts the story of how his "force of nature" grandfather moved his family from Maine to the midwest so he could battle abolition. He preached ferociously for young men to go and join the battle against slavery, and then preached to the widows' young wives and mothers. Heartbreaking. His own son grew up as a pacifist and even became estranged from his own father for a time because, even though he was also a man of the cloth, his beliefs on war were the complete opposite. It's such a compelling story to see what made each of these men tick. Then, during the story, Boughton's youngest son comes home. In his early forties, John Ames Boughton, named after John Ames, and the Godson of John Ames, has an extremely troubled past, and troubled present to be honest. Young Boughton forms an instant bond with Reverend John Ames' wife and young son, and the Reverend worries what influence young Boughton will have over his wife and son after he dies. Young Boughton and Reverend Ames have a few tense, uncomfortable talks...but eventually young Boughton tells John Ames what is going on in his life...an estranged African American wife and mixed race son, in the 1950's, and no job to support them. John Ames feels guilty for the feelings he had towards young Boughton and is finally, sincerely, able to come to terms with his feelings and bless young Boughton before he leaves town for good. John Ames gets weaker as the story ends, but he doesn't die. I can only imagine getting such an amazing missive from a parent who passes away when a child is at such a young age. I look forward to reading another of Marilynne Robinson's books!

Finished: Winter of the World (Follett). The second book in the epic trilogy which spans from 1933 and the rise of Hitler to 1949, and centers on the children of the main characters from the first book. Much of the book shows the extremes of World War II as faced by characters from the main countries involved, Russia, Germany, Great Britain and America. There is alot of espionage involved, and by the end of the book, one of the scientists who worked on "the bomb" for the U.S.A. has secretly given the bomb plans to the Russians and they have successfully built their own plutonium bomb. Volodya Peshkov, the son of Grigori (but true son of his brother Lev) continues to work for the Red Army in Russia as a spy. One of his main contacts is the German, Werner Franck, who is so against Hitler's Nazism that he gets his hands on whatever war plans he cans and sends them to Volodya. This helps Russia turn the tide and begin to defeat Hitler in the war. Volodya is also instrumental in getting the bomb plans back to Russia, and he just happens to be married to Zoya, a brilliant Russian scientist who helps design the bomb for Russia. Towards the end of the book, Zoya and Volodya have two small children and Volodya finds out that his father is really Lev Peshkov, who he had thought was his uncle. Lev's two children, Daisy and Greg, also continues their stories. Daisy wants so hard to be accepted by society that she almost marries someone she doesn't love. When snubbed because her father is basically a gangster, she moves to England and marries Boy Fitzherbert, the son of the Earl of Fitzherbet who had the affair with Ethel the maid in the first book. Fitz has two sons with his Russian wife, Boy and Andrew. Boy is very self-centered and marries Daisy, but then immediately cheats on her and treats her badly. They try to have children but can't. Boy has been sterilized by having the mumps. Greg Peshkov works for the U.S. government, investigating people who are working on the bomb. They want to weed out any spies who may report back to the countries they have left behind. He has a son, Georgy, by Jacky Jakes, the woman his father hired to sleep with him in the first book as a teenager. Greg actually cares deeply for his half-black son and eventually convinces his parents to accept their grandson. He cannot marry Jacky, however, because he wants to go into politics and move up the ranks, which a black wife would not allow him to do. Meanwhile, while still married to Boy, Daisy falls in love with the Welsh, working class, Lloyd Williams, the illegitimate son of Fitz and Ethel. Lloyd fights in the war and comes home to Daisy when it's over. Boy is killed in the war leaving Daisy and Lloyd free to marry. Lloyd wins a seat in the British parliament as a labour representative and has two children with Daisy by the end of the book. Carla and Erik Von Ulrich, the children of Maude and Walter from the first book, are raised in Berlin by their parents and take two different paths concerning the Nazis. Erik falls for the propaganda hook, line and sinker and joins the Hitler Youth. He goes to fight in the war where he eventually sees the atrocities that Hitler is ordering in the open murdering of the Jewish people. He comes home very disheartened after Germany is beaten and he has spent several years in a prison camp. Carla, on the other hand, helps the young man that she loves, Werner Franck, pass secrets along to the Russians so they can end the war and the loss of German lives quicker! Werner is also held in a prison camp after Germany loses, though, and Carla is repeatedly raped by the Russian soldiers who "free" the Germans from Hitler. Carla gives birth to a son, who she names after her father, Walter, who is tortured and dies earlier in the book for his non-Nazi beliefs. She also adopts a teenager girl named Rebecca whose parents were both killed in the concentration camps. Carla is a nurse and by the end of the book has little Walter and Rebecca, who Werner has now adopted when they marry, and also a baby girl of their own, Lili. And, as for the American Dewar family, Gus, from the first book, has two sons, Woody and Chuck. Chuck joins the Navy and is stationed at Pearl Harbor. He is secretly gay and in love with another sailor, Eddie. Woody is following in the political footsteps of his father and is a junior advisor to the president. He's also in love with Joanne, a girl he's loved since his youth, and finally wins her over. They are engaged to be married. When the Dewar family travels to Hawaii to see Chuck, though, it is the day before Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese and they are right in the thick of the battle. Running for their lives, Joanne is shot and killed and the entire family mourns for her. Chuck continues to work in the decoding and mapping division of the Navy with Eddie, but when one of their maps isn't detailed enough and some U.S. servicemen are killed, Chuck insists on going to battle himself to get a better look at the coastlines of the Pacific Islands. He and Eddie are both assigned there, and when Eddie is injured upon landing, Chuck begins to carry him back to the boat on the beach and is gunned down by the Germans and killed, a hero. :-( The family is devastated. Woody joins the military and fights bravely himself. He finally meets another woman he falls in love with, Bella, and they are married by the end of the second book. After the war, instead of going into politics, Woody works as a photographer, a really good one, after selling his Pearl Harbor shots to a newspaper. The whole book is entirely too long to recap more than this, but needless to say, I was once again swept away by the characters and anxious to see how each of their lives turned out! Now, there is one more book left, so I'm sure all the babies born at the end of this book will be the focus in the next. :-) Another great read by Follett!

Finished: Fall of Giants (Follett) The first book in an epic trilogy series about how members of five different families from England, Wales, Russia, Germany and the U.S. cross paths before, during and after the World War I years. This typically long Follet book was great, and a wonderful combination of history, politics and personal relationships. Edward "Fitz" Fitzherbert is an English nobleman who owns and lives on an estate in Wales, the land of which he licenses out to a company for the coal to be mined. Of course, the miners are the local, working-class, much poorer Welshman. Fitz is married to Russian princess, Bea, from the royal family. Her brother Andrei is a prince in Russia. Fitz's sister, Lady Maud, is 23, five years younger than Fitz, and far more liberal. She's all about speaking her mind, talking about politics, socializing with movers and shakers, and working towards the woman's right to vote in England. When Fitz throws a very important dinner party for the King of England, George V, he invites several important people to the party who become intregal players in the story. One of them is German nobleman, Walter Von Ulrich, a former classmate of Fitz's. Maud and Walter fall madly in love, but must keep their relationship a secret since neither Maud's brother, who controls all the money, or Walter's father, a bigwig in the German government would approve. Also at the party is American, Gus Dewar, a young, but super smart, Harvard educated junior advisor to President Woodrow Wilson. We are taken through the detailed events that led up to World War I, as Germany mobilized troops because Russia mobilized troops, etc. etc. Everyone blames everyone else. Walter would much rather see a peaceful solution than a war begin. He doesn't want to see a loss of life for a war that could be avoided. Mostly, though, he knows that war between Germany and England will keep him away from Maud. Fitz is all for going to war against Germany, who is bearing arms against France. Meanwhile, the Russian army, though huge, appears to be less organized and made up of so many uneducated peasants.

Speaking of Russia...we meet Grigori and Lev Peshkov, brothers who are in their young 20's who were orphaned as youngsters when first their father was executed by the father of Princess Bea and Prince Andrei for grazing his cows on the royal land! Grigori and Lev will never forget the haughty faces and attitude of Bea and Andrei as they watched Grigori and Lev's father be killed. Then, a few years later, their mother is shot down by the tsar's police as the people of Petrograd execute a peaceful march on the palace. Grigori grows up taking care of Lev, who in turn, grows up to be a charming lady's man who pretty much cares for no one but himself. He constantly gets in trouble, and just when Grigori has painstakingly saved enough money to sail to America where he can work and send for Lev, Lev commits a murder and begs Grigori to let HIM use the ticket in his place, promising he'll earn money and send for Grigori. Also, Lev leaves behind his pregnant girlfriend, who Grigori had met first and fallen in love with. Lev had charmed her into loving him instead. So, Grigori sends Lev to America and marries the girlfriend, Katrina, so she will have his army wages, and her child his name, before he is drafted into the Russian army to fight against the Germans.

Back in Wales, the Williams family consists of Ma, Da, Ethel and Billy. Ethel is twenty and works as a maid at the Fitzherbert estate. Billy is fifteen and has already been working in the mines for two years. Billy is called Billy Twice because his name is William Williams, lol. He's a really great, brave kid with loads of character, who is always shooting off his mouth to stand up for what is right, which does get him in a bit of trouble at times. Naturally, Fitz puts the moves on Ethel, and actually really falls for her. She falls for him as well and becomes pregnant. Of course, his wife, Princess Bea becomes pregnant at the same time. When Fitz breaks up with Ethel and tries to buy her off, very cheaply I might add, she plays hardball and makes him pay for a house for her in London, where she moves to have her child after being thrown out and disowned by her father. In London, Ethel works hard, has her son, Lloyd, and befriends Lady Maud, who comes down to the working class area at times to help the women and children and encourage them to stand up for women's rights.  Ethel does just that, and eventually becomes a huge voice in England's Labour Party.

As the war gets going, all of the main male players are involved: Fitz, Walter, Billy, Gus, and Grigori all end up fighting in various heartbreaking, futile battles...hoping for an end, but never seeing one. We get to see all their personalities, and to all their credit, each of them is very brave and smart during the war. Well, Fitz is not as smart, but he's certainly brave. Grigori finally leaves the Russian army, as many apparently did, and goes to join Lenin in the Russian revolution. He becomes instrumental in overthrowing the royals, only to end up in a regime that is an even worse dictatorship. Walter survives the five year war, but only sees Maud twice during those years. However, unbeknownst to their families, they are married right before the war and remain in love and faithful to each other through all those years. After the war, when Germany has lost and must concede so much, they live in much poorer circumstances than either was ever used to, since Fitz cuts off the money to Maud and Walter's progress in the German government is stagnated because he married an Englishwoman. They are happy, though, and by the story's end, have two young children. Ethel finally falls for political co-worker and by the end of the story, they have their own child as well, and are raising her nine year old son by Fitz. Fitz and Princess Bea have two sons, so an heir and a spare, which appears to be all Fitz wanted out of Bea. Billy makes it out alive and marries a friend of Ethel's who already has two children, and then they have two children of their own. Grigori raises Lev's child and then also has a daughter with Katerina. Lev, who ended up in America working for Russian mobster Joseph Vyalov, becomes Vyalov's chauffeure, but then impregnants his daughter, Olga and is forced to marry her. He loves working at his rich father-in-laws nightclubs, but he also loves the women still. When caught in an affair, Vyalov forces him to enlist in the U.S. army just as the U.S. is entering the war. Gus Deware also enlists in the military. Gus prooves to be very brave and survies the war and finds love afterwards. Lev, also survives the war, but is stationed over in Russia of all places. He allows himself to be captured by the Russians to he can meet up with his brother. He has actually saved enough money to send Grigori and his family back to America, but by now, Grigori wants to stay and be part of the Boshevik regime. Lev, doesnt' care to meet his son by Katrina, and tells Grigori he will head back to America. Grigori transports him back across the lines so he can do that. Lev ends up going back to Olga and their now four year old daughter, Daisy. He actually loves his daughter, but when it's discovered that he still has a mistress who also now has a son, he has a physical fight with his father-in-law who dies of a heart attack. As the story ends, Lev is taking over his father-in-law's business.

The entire book is very detailed and goes into the working class versus upper class struggles in England, and Russia. And, with a horrific foreshadowing, shows how the impoverishment of Germany after signing the peace treaty was one of the factors that led to Hitler coming into power with such ruthlessness, which we will see in the next book most likely. Since all of the main characters have children that are around the same age, I'm thinking book two of the trilogy will be the continuing story of them as well! :-)

Finished: One of Ours (Cather) This was the 1923 Pulitzer Prize winner, but I think I've liked other books of Willa Cather's more. It's the story of Claude Wheeler, a young man whose father is a successful Nebraska farmer, and whose mother is very religious. He is overshadowed by both his older and younger brothers, but mostly because he's unhappy with his life himself. He wants more out of life than just following in his father's farming footsteps. And, even though he's educated at college, he's not even happy with the college he attends. He envies almost every other person he meets...their ambitions, their families, their happiness, their talents. After Claude realizes that his fate is to run the family farm, he finally convinces a childhood sweetheart to marry him. He becomes disillusioned, however, when his wife is more interested in charity and mission work than in him. When she leaves for China to help her ailing missionary sister, Claude enlists in the army and heads for World War I in  Europe. His family has been following the war closely and he feels that maybe he will find purpose in his life after all by going to help fight the Germans. Claude DOES find purpose. He feels alive for the first time...but he still envies most of the other soldiers he meets. He becomes best friends with David Gerhardt, who was a former violinist. Claude is envious of David's musical talent and resents that he was never given the opportunity to learn something outside of farming. However, he still admires and respects his friends. Towards the end of the book, Claude's unit is sent to fight in a particularly bad location, in some trenches that had been occupied by the Germans. He has fallen in love with France and the people there, and thinks he will probably live here instead of going back home. He never gets the chance, though, as both he and David fight bravely and are both killed in action trying to keep the Germans from retaking the trench. I didn't become particularly attached to Claude since I didn't really relate to any of his angst. However, Willa Cather is a good writer, so I enjoyed the book somewhat...just not as much as a few of her others. :-)