Monday, March 31, 2014

Longbourn; Growing Up Duggar; Man in the High Castle; Dominion

Seriously, someone needs to stage an intervention and take my phone away from me. My reading output has gone way down since I got the thing. This is pathetic.

"Longbourn" by Jo Baker was a clever mix of "Pride and Prejudice" and "Downton Abbey". We get a look at Jane Austen's timeless characters from the servants point of view. It was neat, I enjoyed it.

"Growing Up Duggar" by Jana, Jill, Jessa, and Jinger Duggar was a sweet but a bit too preachy (of course, what do you expect with them, right?) book of advice from the four oldest Duggar girls. I like the Duggars. It's nice to see a family that genuinely loves and respects each other. And if you are a Christian, this book had some good advice, I think.

"Man in the High Castle" by Philip K. Dick is one of those books that definitely benefits from multiple readings, I think. I don't think I quite got everything. I enjoyed it, but I have a feeling I missed a lot. It's an alternate reality history in which Japan and Germany win WW2 and split up the U.S.--Japan takes the west coast, Germany the east, and the middle is sort of neutral territory. Most of the book takes place on the west coast and looks at how different various sorts of people's lives are.

A lot of alternative history lately: "Dominion" by C. J. Sansom was a recommendation from Stephen King. It's about England a decade after surrendering to Germany in WW2. The resistance fighters are eager to keep a scientist out of Germany's hands because he knows America's secret to how they made an atomic bomb. It was really interesting and well written, and very scary to think how different life would be if only a few things in history had gone differently.

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