Thoughts On 3 Books #10

Hellow fellow Bloggers and beautiful people the world around.  I hope y’all’re doing well and thriving today.  I am <i>so</i> close to being caught up that I can almost taste it.  In fact, I’m using my lunch break today to share some bookthoughts as a reward to myself for my recent hard work.

I already posted these reviews on Goodreads.  If y’all’re interested in reading any of the synopses, just click the linked titles below.  And if you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to hear what you think in my Comments section.  Y’know, way down yonder at the bottom.

Heroes of the Frontier by Dave Eggers.  I rated it 3 of 5 stars, “liked it”, on Goodreads and shelved it there as American, fiction, and literary.

I liked Heroes of the Frontier, finding it a highly believable account of a 40-something mother’s break with reality and resulting epic journey with her young children following the slow but utter collapse of every pillar of her adult life.

I am flabbergasted by the reviewers who state that they do not like protagonist Josie or find her annoying and self-pitying. Josie is the very definition of a person suffering from a variety of legitimate mental health issues, most likely PTSD, some kind of anxiety disorder, and quite possibly dissociative disorder following an unconventional and ultimately traumatic childhood and young adulthood followed by the collapse of her marriage and loss of her career. I found her story compelling and heartbreaking and had a hard time putting this book down before I finished it.

Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few by Robert B. Reich, audiobook version, read by the author.  I rated it 3 of 5 stars, “liked it”, on Goodreads and shelved it there as American, economics, government, nonfiction, political issues, politics, and public institutions.

Reich does a fair job of spreading around blame for the political and economic mess America currently find itself in, but of course he assigns a bit more to Republicans and conservatives since he is a Democrat and unapologetic liberal, er, I mean, progressive policy advocate.

Reich has a pleasant voice and is a competent narrator. He offers a thorough, convincing story of how we’ve arrived at the brink of economic and political collapse, and he details a clear and achievable pathway back to sustainability. As a left-leaning moderate with slightly conservative fiscal ideals, I don’t agree with all of his policy proposals, some of which are so liberal as to be socialist, which is a bit too far left for me.

Fools and Mortals by Bernard Cornwell.  I rated it 3 of 5 stars, “liked it”, on Goodreads and shelved it there as British, fiction, & historical fiction.

Fools and Mortals is a quick & easy read. The characters are believable and relatable even if most are little more than stock characters, and Cornwell paints a very clear, convincing picture of life in 16th-century London. The story is fun and moves at a nice pace. The only thing that disappointed me is that Cornwell portrays Shakespeare as an unpleasant asshole. Being a lifelong, sometimes starry-eyed, Shakespeare fan myself, I much prefer Neil Gaiman’s treatment of him in his Sandman series.

Given his prodigious oeuvre, I don’t know how I’ve managed never to have read anything by Bernard Cornwell prior to Fools & Mortals, but I’ll definitely be reading more. Eventually.

So how ’bout y’all, have you read any of the above or anything else by the respective authors?  What’d you think?