Tome Thursday: Crusader Gold

 

Hello everyone!

 

Welcome back.

 

Tonight's blog post is a bit of a return to my roots, in a sense, because this particular book series was what got me "re-hooked" or, hooked again, on REALLY reading, seriously and furiously.

 

I can still remember randomly picking up the first one at a store, thinking it was going to be some la-la land thing, and ending up devouring it because of how vividly and realistically it was written.

 

Then I hunted down the rest of the then-translated books (I think the first five or six were translated into my language) in my local library and gobbled those, too.

 

After finding out that the author had written more, I got them for my e-reader in English, and am now pretty much almost caught up with the series, but I figured, before I dive into the last few, I'd start it all from the beginning. And every first step is always followed by a second one, so here we are with that tonight!

 

Jack Howard dives again, and honestly? David Gibbins knows what he's doing with these.

 

Crusader Gold is up next.

 

Tome Thursday: Gift of Snow

 

Hello everyone!

 

And welcome to what I conveniently call the mix-up.

 

See, I was SUPPOSED to work on this particular review last week, because that's just how the schedule was set up, and somehow managed to switch it with Serenity Woods' story instead.

 

Never fear, however.

 

I always make sure to review EVERYTHING I read (or, basically everything).

 

So here we are to finish off a series that I started reading ... oh gosh, when was it? A while ago at this point, but that doesn't much matter because the important thing is we made it. This is the end! The final book to show us exactly who, what, and where, and give us a little bit of insight into some of the characters we see during the main storyline in the big five books.

 

Ah, another thing to explain. I'll be brief, but let's just jump in, shall we?

 

Gift of Snow is calling.

 

Tome Thursday: Tre Volte No

Hello everyone!

I have something slightly different for you today.

After taking it up a notch with my Tuesday blog post, I'm going in and keeping it extra real with this one tonight, because every once in a while I reach for a book that's slightly different from anything else I've read.

It also usually covers some sort of war aspect, too.

I've done a couple of these on the blog since I started, but I do feel like I should maybe do a few more as well, given that this is a topic that should never be forgotten, ever.

And one of the best ways to do it is if you know specific authors who write magnificent books about it.

Boris Pahor, one of my fellow countrymen, is one of them.

God bless him for his long, fruitful life. He has a collection of books mostly dealing with World War II era in the Trieste region, and I've read a number of them already.

Tre Volte No is just another in a long, long line.

Saturday Snippet: Victory

Let's try and make it last, shall we?

xx

*image not mine

The Kommandant's Girl (Booktober)

"I had become a foreigner in the place I had always called home."

 

What do you do when your home country is invaded? When your way of life is threatened? When your very existence is about to be erased from the face of the Earth? Those are exactly the kind of questions that Pam Jenoff asks in The Kommandant's Girl, a book that tells the story of how a Jewish girl joined the resistance, pretended to be someone else so that she could get close to a high-ranking Nazi official ... and ended up having feelings for the man other than the hatred she was supposed to feel.

Because in the end, emotions aren't all black and white.

September 1939. Overnight, Jewish nineteen-year-old Emma Bau's world is turned upside down when Germany invades Poland. And after only six weeks of marriage, her husband Jacob, a member of the Resistance, is forced to flee. Escaping the ghetto, Emma assumes a new, Christian identity and finds work at Nazi headquarters. As secretary to the charismatic Kommandant Richwalder, Emma vows to use her unique position to gather intelligence for the Resistance - by any means necessary ...

(from book jacket)

xx

*image not mine

Nemesis (Booktober)

Outlander series (Booktober)

The Conqueror Series (Booktober)

The Lost Symbol (Booktober)

The Host (Booktober)

The Bridgertons (Booktober)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Booktober)

The Infernal Devices (Booktober)

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (Booktober)

Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Booktober)
Broken Sky (Booktober)

The Shadow of the Wind (Booktober)

Dracula (Booktober)

Life and Death (Booktober)

ACOTAR series (Booktober)

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (Booktober)

Sepulchre (Booktober)

Pride and Prejudice (Booktober)

Tempting Autumn (Booktober)

Harry Potter (Booktober)

The Hobbit (Booktober)

Outlander (Booktober)

"Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!"

If there's one thing you NEED in your October reading life - it's time travel. And good time travel at that. The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon delivers that, and so much more, from beloved characters (including but not limited to one Jamie Fraser) to a stunning television show adaptation that's proof there are still hopes out there for adaptations in general. The story of a war nurse travelling two hundred years back in time through a stone circle in Scotland, only to find the love of her life, is bound to be a timeless classic no matter how you look at it.

Add in the constant intrigue and characters like Lord John Grey, however, and you have a winner.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives ...

(from Goodreads)

xx

*image not mine

The Conqueror Series (Booktober)

The Lost Symbol (Booktober)

The Host (Booktober)

The Bridgertons (Booktober)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Booktober)

The Infernal Devices (Booktober)

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter (Booktober)

Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Booktober)
Broken Sky (Booktober)

The Shadow of the Wind (Booktober)

Dracula (Booktober)

Life and Death (Booktober)

ACOTAR series (Booktober)

Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (Booktober)

Sepulchre (Booktober)

Pride and Prejudice (Booktober)

Tempting Autumn (Booktober)

Harry Potter (Booktober)

The Hobbit (Booktober)

Talkie Tuesday: Blood & Treasure (and Cleopatra)

"I thought they droned the guy! - Yeah well, apparently it didn't take."

Hello everyone!

As you may have noticed, we seem to be short on two blog posts on this page since last Tuesday, and I promise you it has nothing to do with the Game of Thrones season finale.

I mean, it might. I'm not sure!

The thing is, my computer of ten years decided on Wednesday morning to say farewell, and I needed to sort out my situation before I could get back to posting, which means that I unfortunately had to skip on a few blog posts.

Never fear, however. I'm back!

And since I've been so used to watching HBO over the last month and a half, I'm now trying to figure out what to keep on watching haha.

Thankfully, CBS is hitting it out of the park with its lineup this year, so I decided I'm going to talk about the premiere of their summer show, Blood & Treasure.

Tome Thursday: Shadow of Night

Hello everyone!

I'm continuing my witchy trilogy this Thursday, and remember how I always say the second part in any trilogy whatsoever is always the weakest? 

Basically, it's not an introduction, and it's not the finale, so it's just a bridge leading from one to the other, and as such it will inevitably suffer from writer ennui or something of the sort while readers try to plod on.

Well, not THIS book.

Seriously, when I started reading A Discovery of Witches, I thought I'd seen it all and that nothing could top it. Especially in a trilogy, you have to be extra careful because you go in with such high expectations for the second and third books, and sometimes (a lot of times) they fall flat on their faces like pancakes dropped from high above.

So I honestly opened the second book up with trepidation and a little flutter of hope somewhere.

I needn't have bothered.

Shadow of Night not only meets its predecessor, but it surpasses it with flying colours.

Tome Thursday: The Kommandant's Girl

Hello everyone!

I come bearing the gift of another blog post! And I swear, I won't even cry.

Or, I'll try not to.

See, a while ago I noted down the name 'Pam Jenoff' and the title 'The Kommandant's Girl', but never got the chance to do anything with that note until about ten days ago. At which point I got a copy of said book, and sat down to read it.

Of course I knew what I was getting myself into.

See, the thing with me is that I do my homework, and I research most of the books that I want to read, specifically if they're going to be about a period in recent history. In this case, it meant World War II and the occupation situation in Poland, which included but wasn't just limited to martial law and curfew.

So yes, I knew that whatever I was about to read would probably lead me down a dark road and I'd end up with streaming eyes and a runny nose.

I persevered, however, and although a lot of people do criticise it - which I can understand - I think It's a very good book.

Tome Thursday: Semper Fi

Hello everyone!

I had a bit of a tough time deciding which book to talk about tonight, but then after a few bumps and bruises in RL (nothing too important or even dangerous, don't worry) I figured I needed some cheering up, and what better way than to pick a Keira Andrews book?

The thing with this particular author is that while she does say there will be some trials and tribulations along the way before the main characters get it together and get together (see what I did there?) she's a firm advocate of happy endings, which means that no book of hers is going to pull a Nicholas Sparks on you!

Yes, I just did that, too.

So that being said, when you know the ending is going to be happy, why wouldn't you want to read through and see what the guys are doing?

I think I've read through quite a bit of her books by this point - because once I find an author I enjoy, I tend to devour their work, more or less, whoopsie - but this one remains one of my top two. 

Onwards to a review of Semper Fi!

Talkie Tuesday: The Imitation Game

"We're going to break an unbreakable Nazi code and win the war."

Hello everyone!

So last week, I talked about The Theory of Everything, because I seemed to have known, instinctively, that the particular biopic wouldn't hold a candle to the one I'm talking about in this blog post. 

Don't get me wrong.

I admire Eddie Redmayne for what he did with the role he was given and the Oscar was absolutely deserving. But I've been a Benedict Cumberbatch fan for quite some time now I think; I definitely consider myself part of the CumberCollective!

And so when the first teaser image of The Imitation Game was released, I practically jumped around pumping the air with my fists in glee. Because, not only was it Cumberbatch, BUT it was about a topic I'm hugely interested in despite the political debates it can spawn. AND on top of it all, it's about the Enigma!