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A focus on a single year, and what a year this was. Thrilling baseball and milestones of flight, a crazy round-the-world race and race to the pole, and the start of the Model T. Was apparently used as a textbook at one point - doesn't read like it.

The story begins with the rich getting away with crimes, how American. These events are the least recognizable to fans of history. In chapters roughly a month at a time, the author details what leads up to events and what happens, with the reason this is impactful. Some events tie into others, and these connections are often used to transition.

The author has said other books have been written about many of these events, and that leads to the brevity here. I think he did a good job summarizing and explaining necessary details. I would have appreciated a brief "what happened after" epilogue, especially after having spent so much time on Harry Thaw.

I read this as an audio book, and no doubt missed out on many pictures. I found a summary article from the Smithsonian that had several, and know the era well enough - wikipedia is also your friend. Overall rating 3½ stars out of 5.

Conservative author Anne Applebaum examines authoritarianism, visible in both parties but predominantly represented by the previous president. She makes some excellent points about current media and historical authoritarians, and reaches a good conclusion.

Authoritarianism is a tendency, held by a percentage of humans worldwide. It takes different forms in different parties and situations. The definition the author settles on -

“Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity: there is nothing intrinsically “left-wing” or “right-wing” about this instinct at all. It is anti-pluralist. It is suspicious of people with different ideas. It is allergic to fierce debates. Whether those who have it ultimately derive their politics from Marxism or nationalism is irrelevant. It is a frame of mind, not a set of ideas.”

Through examining history in Poland, the UK and the US, and finally France (Dreyfus), she looks at both when authoritarianism has held sway and what techniques have been used to promote it. This last is especially interesting in the recent administration and their grip on one news source. This results in a muddled section describing how an ideal candidate is packaged for the masses. This seems a little too easy an explanation, and a bit off track - easier to focus on the authoritarian aspects.

In the conclusion, she does come back to those aspects. The definition of country may be the biggest hook of the authoritarian, who in most cases do not like where they live. The majority of Americans do like where we live, and that unity of people, purpose and history may be the key to keeping authoritarians in the background, at least during this generation. History points out that this can be a largely cyclical effect.

I found the book thought provoking, 4 of 5 stars.

Suspense story with time travel elements that resolves into a pure time travel story. Major plus - the word obdurate never appears in this book.

This is a very character-driven story, and I have read this is a specialty of the author. To date, I've only read the Odd Thomas books, which have solid characters and are enjoyable to read. The main character (and some 30 years of her life!) is fully 3D here, and the other characters are pretty good also.

For the first two-thirds, the plot involves a time-traveling guardian angel. Why is he time traveling, what is special about this would-be Sarah Connor? Not explained, and a little frustrating. No spoilers, but later the answer is given, though it is also not the strongest one. The time travel aspect, weak at first, becomes much more satisfying however. This book is one of several time travel books I am reading in 2021, for a reading challenge. This novel fit the bill nicely.

I plan to return to Odd Thomas, to finish off the series. I've seen enough to want to try another non-series book of his in the future. 4 stars out of 5 for Lightning.

Character driven story of science and scientists. These folks are trying to measure causality violation, aka the result of time travel, and the discussions around that and parallel worlds are more science than fiction.

Nearly the first half of the book is the characters, the science, and some cool near-future world building, from autonomous vehicles to online dating. The characters are unique and interesting, with perspectives on science, religion, race and gender issues. The story moves slowly as history fills in the gaps, then starts to accelerate to a major turning point. After that, it becomes hard to put the book down, and that's more than 200 pages of interest.

This is a "time travel" novel, but not in the conventional sense. It also isn't a conventional parallel world novel, and that's where the title comes in. Like the software archive mentioned in the second half of the story, there can be only one "version" checked in at a time. The method of "choosing" the version comes back to the original experiment of causality violation, through time travel. That said, there is a great discussion of the considerations of killing Hitler.

I really enjoyed the thought put into the world. Green and red outlined license plates, personal messages from the President, "Reagan's" instead of $20's, even the seceding Dakotas - Palmer gives a natural feel to this near-future world. This is realized most when that feel changes partway through the book. The science, when mentioned, is all accurate. No technobabble or Trek speak here. That said, I'd like to know the full story behind one made-up item, Smullin's principle - "Science fiction is a fantasy in which science always works."

While widely acclaimed, this book falls into a gap between "Literature" and "Science Fiction", and it did not receive award nominations in either category. That is a shame, because this is pretty great stuff for those of us who like both.

This is a fairly complete history of the 10th Mountain division, the US "ski troops" from WWII. This book was referenced in one I recently read about the Finnish Winter War, which partly inspired the creation of this corps.

This history spends a lot of time on the logistics of creation and the training in Colorado at more than a mile of altitude (problematic - no battles were ever fought that high, and altitude sickness caused plenty of problems). In addition to skiing, they also trained for mountain climbing, which was somewhat used during the war.

The latter portion of the book covers front-line combat, including adding troops to this division with no actual mountain training. They saw a lot of service in the oft-forgotten Italian campaign, but were mostly underutilized for their specialty. Their greatest impact may have been after the war, contributing to recreational skiing through being instructors and helping found destinations like Aspen and Vail.

Thoroughly researched, but the story was rough in a few patches. A good history with interesting tidbits (e.g. Bob Dole joined the 10th as a reinforcement and was wounded in action). Contains several pictures and a few maps.

Thrawn accepts a difficult challenge and returns to form after a disappointing 2nd book. The storyline fits between two TV story arcs, on Rebels I believe. The epilogue plays to that directly - and is useless to me.

I liked the interactions with Faro. Vanto was a bit confusing - he was in the first book as well, and I'd need to go back and check how the relation was there. A few of the larger plot points carry one from the second book, with Vader playing almost no role. I found the space battle scenes well described.

My reviews keep repeating this, but I haven't seen Rebels. This isn't a point in Zahn's favor here - he uses a lot of characters and situations that the reader may not know. Not good. The epilogue is the worst example of that. The Grysk, bad guys from the last two books, come out into the open and... aren't that scary. Finding the weak points and nightmares of a species hardly seems compelling to me, but it is their major point - often said, never demonstrated.

I found the first book in the series pretty good, 3.5 stars. That makes rating this one easy - better than the first? 4 stars or more. Worse? 3 stars or less. For me, this was the latter. The goodreads ratings of the books in the series (4, 2, 3) average to a 3, but I would knock that back to a 2 also - the books agree but the stories don't really complement - perhaps they should be considered add-ons for the tv show.

If you like the blue guy, there is apparently another trilogy called "Thrawn Ascendancy". Not sure how that connects with these, but I'll wait to see what other reviewers think before diving in.

Loosely the second book in a series. Two story lines taking place in the same location at different times. Was it better than the first book? It falls quite a ways short.

Thrawn as Sherlock continues, with Anakin and Vader unsatisfying as bumbling Watson. Thrawn is too perfect here, never making a mistake and able to deduce perfect information beyond what the reader is shown.

Novels and television have not yet answered the question of how chatty Anakin became quiet Vader. While the author does show how Vader feels about Anakin, the other question remains unanswered. Here Zahn has Vader more chatty, and it is disconcerting at best, annoying at worst. Related topic - have other authors attempted to define how the Force works in combat? Zahn does, and I found it Double Annoying.

I liked Padme at the beginning, though the excuse to gallavant across the galaxy was tissue paper thin. Her reactions and responses were good, and then... she became a minor character once the Boyz arrived. The other side characters were flat and uninteresting. This novel is all about the pair of main characters - the blue one definitely primary.

This book may tie in nicely with television Rebels - I haven't watched it. The storyline may bridge well with the third book - haven't read that yet. This novel may be better than other recent Star Wars books - but I doubt it. I want to reread the earlier Zahn Thrawn trilogy, which I remember as being pretty good. And yes, I'll read the third book here, with friends. If not for them, I'd probably drop this like a cold blue potato.

Challenging myself to read a dozen time travel books this year - Poul Anderson is always a good fit.
In this novel, four people though history are "caught" in a faulty time machine and deposited near the Mediterranean, a year before the Minoan eruption of Santorini (or in this book, Atlantis).

Anderson's historical research comes out in the novel; the time and place are well described. The reactions of 3/4 of the characters to this time and environment is also interesting speculation - the early Mongol discussions of cavalry warfare and the Slav's comparisons between river warfare and early open sea boats. The events of the novel are also well done, though the timed closing feels a little rushed.

The story is really told from the main character's point of view. He doesn't throw many comparisons to his background (a 1970s Seattle architect) and acknowledges that the Minoan civilization is literally ancient history. I wanted to read some comparisons of building styles, alas. His character and that of love interest (and bull dancer) Erissa are fairly well expanded; the other two are quite shallow.

This is a fairly quick read, and I liked it. For a book that's now 50 years old, it holds up pretty well.

A decent first novel, if a little long. Party mystery, part police procedural. I understand this author ranks up there with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, but I hadn't heard of him before this.

The first section is policework, building the case against the shocked addressee of a cask containing coins and a body. In the second half, a defense is built, with another detective covering the same ground but from different angles. In both, the author lovingly describes pre-Great War London and France, going into a bit too much detail on the travel at times.

In addition to being a bit too wordy, the ending is very short. I can't say more without spoilers, but perhaps this was because the mystery genre was still evolving. Certainly some of the deductions were worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

Each year I try to read something from more than a century ago, and while wandering through Project Gutenberg I found this title. I didn't enjoy it as much as Doyle or Wells, but I'd like to try out another from this author - perhaps with his most famous protagonist, Inspector French.

How do you rate a book 4 stars when that brings down the average rating? A dose of high expectations and a dash of weak female characters (hello, 1973), along with a dollop of dialogue that is flatter on the page than in the mouths of the film cast. This book just wasn't amazing.

As you know, the film glosses over the story within a story part, using it both humor and character growth (a reader is born). The book goes much further, with a third character (the author) interjecting (frequently and parenthetically). The added humor in these parts is fun. The stories of Fezzik and Inigo are both told through flashbacks instead of actor dialog, which greatly adds to the story. Of course, Goldman also wrote the screenplay, so as you expect, the best bits were all brought in.

It really was a blessing to find actors who brought the dialog to life. Miracle Max has good points, but Billy Crystal made them sing (along with hilarious ad-libs). The intensity of Mandy Patinkin gives the oft repeated phrase a memorable life. I wonder what it was like to read the book before seeing this? The roundabout complaint here is that most of the words don't sing for themselves. Westley is the exception, getting many of the best lines, with Domingo Montoya a close second.

All-in-all, a five star book is one I will gladly read again. This was good, but I've cracked the cover for the last time. Now the film - get the popcorn, will ya? The film has it all...

Fencing.
Fighting.
Torture.
Poison.
True Love.
Hate.
Revenge.
Giants.
Hunters.
Good men.
Bad men.
Beautifulest ladies.
Pain.
Death.
Brave men.
Coward men.
Strongest men.
Chases.
Escapes.
Lies.
Truths.
Passion.
and Miracles.