Reading The 1000 Books to Read Before I Die

"This was the land where no man had to bow" Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels Hello 1000 Bookies!!!!  We have a great blog post on The Killer Angels .  The Killer Angels is on the list of 1 000 Books to Read Before You Die.   When we were young kids, our guest blogger, Mr. Jonathan Hanson and I went on a trip to Gettysburg with his wonderful parents.  We had been watching the miniseries,  North and South Book 2 and it was a real treat.  We saw the cyclorama and the battlefield. Jon was a Civil War reenactor who fought at Gettysburg. Who better to review this masterpiece--I am so proud to have Jon's blog post on The Killer Angels .  Without further ado... A Review of the Killer Angels By Jonathan Hanson  The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara makes my Top 10 List of Books I’d Want on a Deserted Island. Every time I read it, I find something new within: a connection between characters or a historic reference that I’d missed before. As a hist...

“Number one: you are not the first and you will certainly not be the last. Number two: remember, it’s not about the money—it’s about The Chain.”   Adrian McKinty The Chain: The Sum of All Parents Fears By Jim Romano The Chain is a novel by Northern Irish author, Adrian McKinty.   The novel scared the hell out of me.   Pure and simple.   The events written in The Chain is the sum of all my fears as a parent.   Everyday I worry about the safety of my daughters.   Adding onto my worries about a crazed person with a gun shooting up their school, I also worry about them being kidnapped. I worry about them being sexually abused. I worry about evil being visited upon them.   The Chain brings out how our social media society could be perverted to hunt our children. This story begins with a kind of botched kidnapping.   A 12-year-old girl is kidnapped at her bus stop.   The kidnapping is a notch in the chain.   The girl’s mother...

“Ever since Alistair Cooke left Masterpiece Theater, Mr. Sheffield doesn’t sleep as soundly”, Fran Fine, The Nanny Memories of The Great and The Good By Alistair Cooke The late Alistair Cooke was an old reassuring friend.   Alistair Cooke was a British journalist, television commentator and host as well as author who spent his career explaining Americans to his home country.   He also explained Americans to their fellow countrymen. Of course, I have never met Mr. Cooke personally before he passed away in 2004 at the age of 95.   When I was young boy and I would visit my grandparents’ home on a weekly basis.   When I finished my ice cream, my chicken soup, drink my V-8 and polish off a cookie or two, I would leave my dad to talk with his parents and go down the hall.   I would go through the dining room and the living room to the back bedroom and take out my grandfather’s copy of Alistair Cooke’s America .   The grandfatherly looking man on th...

“How many readers, fascinated by the allure of Marco Polo’s travels on the Silk Road, have daydreamed   of following in the fabled Venetian’s footsteps?”   James Mustich, 1000 Books to Read Before You Die Our next stop in the 1000 Books to Read before You Die, we land in the 1980s and embark on an expedition through Asia along what is left of the famed Silk Road.   This read has been one of my favorites so far in this journey to reading there 1000 books.   In Xanadu is a travel journal of sorts. The story is of this student that traces Marco Polo’s journey from Jerusalem to Xanadu in Mongolia in the year 1985.   The story is part educational, part unrequited love story, part political intrigue and an all-around excellent read.   The story is NOT tough to get through.   In 2000, 6 weeks after marrying the most beautiful girl in the world, like Odysseus, I set off on an adventure that I never believed I would ever take.    I found m...

Good Morning 1000 Bookies!  Our next selection from 1000 Books to Read Before You Die takes place in the city of the Boston.  Personally, I love Boston and have ever since I first ventured there as an 8 th grader during a field trip for the all-boys prep school I attended.  It was love at first sight and that love has endured.  My wife and I had several wonderful trips to the city over the years including the one where I purchased her engagement ring.   Bostin is the land of the Puritans, of John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, Young Benjamin Franklin, James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock.  Boston is the Shining City on a Hill that President Reagan invoked.  In modern times, Boston was home to the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, Progressive ideals, Gay Marriage and the Red Sox.  Whenever I am lucky enough to travel to Boston, I love to walk the Freedom Trail, to see and experience several important sites from an importan...