#TBT... The Year is 2015

 

It's Thursday and another "Throw Back Thursday"

What was I reading back in... June 2015?

Have your reading habits ever changed? Have you stopped reading a particular kind of book because you were just too tired of the same old story, same kind of detective, same kind of love story? Or did you just fall in love with a different kind of read and put what you normally read aside? Have you even noticed? It's fun to look back and see what you were reading years ago. Sometimes it's fun to imagine reading that favorite book for the first time and the thrill it gave you as you turned the pages. Here's what I was reading in 2015. I had forgotten how long ago it was that I read Natchez Burning. I still remember how much I loved reading it though... Here is my review from 2015...

June 13, 2015

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles.. a Review

I read this book so fast that it wasn't just Natchez Burning, it was the pages of the book burning!

When I was checking out the new books coming out at the end of April, I stumbled upon The Bone Tree by Greg Iles. It sounded like just the thing I was in the mood for at the time… kind of a murder/police procedural with a gung ho ex-procecutor in the heart of the deep south. BUT, then I read that this was part of a trilogy and this was book 2. It's not always a sin to read books out of order, and The Bone Tree seemed as though it was dealing with new circumstances with the same characters, but ultimately I decided to read what was considered the first book in the trilogy, Natchez Burning. And I am so glad I did!… But first let's talk about Natchez Burning by Greg Iles…

The setting for Natchez Burning is Natchez, Mississippi. The book opens in the 1960's, the era of the Ku Klux Klan, where 3 unsolved murders of black men, will remain in the mind of a young white man who grows up to be a journalist and spends his adult life trying to find justice for them.

Greg Iles delves deep to make this an incredible read. Not just for the way he writes about the historical time period, but for the way this book comes alive with such amazing characters that truly breath life into the story. As the pieces of the 50 year puzzle came together, I was literally on the edge of my seat and flipping those pages as fast as I could. It was exciting, frightening, and heart stopping. Good cops, bad cops, surprising twists, bad guys looking for redemption, a swamp you never want to be taken to… and a great start to a planned 3 book trilogy… my only "not so glowing" part of this review is that the ending was a bit monotonous. There are quite a few characters and as the story hit that pivotal moment when all hell breaks loose, it got a bit crowded with too many characters having major parts. But up until that point the book was superbly written. And just because it got a bit muddy at the end does not mean I would steer you away from reading this. READ THIS!

And now, why you need to read this book first and the trilogy in order… Because when I started book 2, The Bone Tree, it started off exactly where book one ended. And for the next 80 pages (give or take a few) the story rehashed the ending of book 1. Now if I had read book 2 first, I would have known what happened and how everything worked out without the thrill of the surprise. It almost seemed as though the first 2 books were really just a huge tome that the publishers had to cut off somewhere because who's going to read a 1700 page book, right?! The first book is about 875 pages and book 2 is about 800 pages. I am on page 89 of The Bone Tree (yes, I had to immediately start book 2 because I am hooked) and waiting for things to heat up again.

If you love murder mysteries, Natchez Burning is right up your alley. It is a kind of police procedural, but not as stringent as you would normally expect. The murders are ultimately revealed and solved as each character reveals their part it either the act or the hunting down of the people responsible.

What Were You Reading in 2015?

#TBT... What was I reading back in 2014?

It's fun to look back and see what books you've read a long time ago. Almost like reading a book you loved for the first time again, reflecting back to a book read a long time ago also sends us back to another time in our lives. What was going on in our lives when we were reading that book? 

February 7th, 2014. The book was Under The Wide And Starry Sky by Nancy Horan, about Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny Van De Grift Osbourne, and I loved it! Here is the original review of Under The Wide and Starry Sky. The book I was reading back in 2014!

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Friday, February 7, 2014

Under The Wide And Starry Sky with Robert Louis Stevenson and Author Nancy Horan… A Review 

I am in love. Not with Under The Wide And Starry Sky by Nancy Horan, but with Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Osbourne. But if not for Nancy Horan's book, I would not have known Louis Stevenson or his feisty American wife, Fanny, so I must admit that I did love Under The Wide And Starry Sky too. How to put into words how good this book is… Just like one of Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure books, Under The Wide And Starry Sky took me to far away places, let me live and breath the South Pacific, and let me peek into the door of the souls of Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny, two passionate individuals who did not want an ordinary life. This book was everything I had anticipated and so much more. It was an amazing love story, an adventure story, a story filled with passion, an artistic journey, a travel journal, a story filled with pain and tragedy, jealousy and unending love. It is one of the few books that I devoured the postscript, afterward and acknowledgements as well as the book itself. The research for this book, along with the keen writing abilities of Nancy Horan, makes this book so beautiful, so full of life. These are not 2 dimensional characters on the page, but living, breathing people, sharing their lives with the reader.

Under The Wide and Starry Sky is the love story between Robert Louis Stevenson, the author who gave us such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Fanny Van De Grift Osbourne, who flees the United States and her first husband to find artistic fulfillment in Belgium. The story develops in such a way that we experience both Louis and Fanny as individuals first. Fanny, full of artistic passion, running away from her philandering husband in America, young children in tow, first to Belgium and then to France. Tragedy follows Fanny to Europe, where she finally settles into a quiet life in France to recuperate. That quiet life erupts as the boarding house she settles in explodes with a colony of artists. This is where she meets the gregarious & passionate man named Robert Louis who falls madly in love with Fanny and wants desperately to be with her. Even though Fanny is 10 years his senior, Fanny succumbs to Louis' passionate, vivacious personality, but is that enough to sustain her and her young children? Torn between practicality and passion, the love story unfolds before your eyes in such an honest heartfelt way, that you are drawn in immediately to their lives and the passion between them. It is a passionate love story that will span decades and continents, and have you blindly turning those pages as you walk through the chapters of their lives.

Nancy Horan has done such a wonderful job of researching the lives of Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife, Fanny. And it's because of the wealth of correspondence, relationships and recorded adventures that this is possible. But making sense of it all, and shaping the story, their story, in such a way as to truly let the reader experience their lives is a remarkable talent. We are lucky that Nancy Horan possesses that talent, because the result is Under The Wide And Starry Sky, a love story, painted with the artists eye for beauty, that may have been lost in the pages of a dull biography just filled with places and dates in the hands of a lesser talent.

The Low Down… I was so wrapped up in the romance between Louis and Fanny. There were so many complications with Fanny being married for one, but also overcoming the prejudice of her being 10 years older. It was such an honest portrayal of a couple who loved each other through the test of time. But I also discovered a lot more about Robert Louis Stevenson than I had known before. I didn't realize he was a lawyer by education, or that he was so sickly throughout his childhood and adulthood. I never realized how much of an adventurer he really was, he really saw the world he wrote about. And the author really gives you the feel for an artist passionate about his art. I would say if you enjoy love stories, historical fiction, and if you are a reader and want to learn more about Robert Louis Stevenson's life, read this book! I learned so much. Though this is a work of fiction, there is so much truth behind the words. You will not be disappointed. Wonderful writing, and equally wonderful story.

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Do You Remember What Book You Were Reading in 2014?

Nancy Horan is a fantastic writer, who went on to write another great book called Loving Frank, about the love affair of Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright. OMG, that book was also fantastic! And Nancy Horan came out with a NEW book this year called The House of Lincoln "which tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's ascendance from rumpled lawyer to U.S. president to the Great Emancipator through the eyes of a young asylum-seeker, fourteen-year-old Ana Ferreira, who arrives in Lincoln's home of Springfield from Madeira, Portugal." And the publishers, Sourcebooks Landmark, sent an eBook to my Kindle so that I could review it! I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into another Nancy Horan book! Look for my review coming soon...