Conclave

 

Conclave – Robert Harris

Not only was this a great book, but it was somewhat of a relief.  I’ve been a hardcore reader for a long time now. I’ve been blogging for almost 14 years.  When I started reviewing books on my blog I wasn’t really sure if I would keep up the momentum. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but like a lot of “good ideas”, many of us give up after a while. So I’m actually quite proud of my accomplishment of keeping my review site alive.  Well, for whatever reason, I haven’t been reading as much as I used to, and the really sad thing is that the ratio of “not so good” books to “good books” has seemed to rise as of late.  It’s made me wonder: is it the books that are really not that good? Or is it me? Maybe I’m changing. Maybe I don’t have the passion to read anymore.  It didn’t help when I had a rather negative view of two famous authors as of late – Rick Atkinson and Ken Follett.

So when I picked this book up and enjoyed it so much that I finished the whole thing in about 4 days, I breathed a very heavy sigh of relief.  Yes, I still love books. No, my passion has not waned.  Everything is ok.  This book was a much-needed pallet cleanser.

Robert Harris is one of those authors who hasn’t failed me yet. It’s rare to come across an author where you (me anyway) like everything they’ve ever written. Even some of the best authors manage to release a turkey from time to time. So far that hasn’t happened with Robert Harris.  This offering received a lot of publicity since it was made into a movie, and the movie was highly regarded as well. (I haven’t seen it yet)

I was tempted to immediately pick this book up when the rave reviews started appearing, but my OCD tendencies wouldn’t allow it. You see, I have to read everything in order by an author. I know, strange. Maybe it’s because I want to see the author evolve?  Anyway, Conclave was well worth the wait.

The ‘story’ here, for the most part, isn’t exactly a riveting tale. I think the appeal is that Robert Harris is allowing us front-row seats to a historical process where the doors (and even the windows) are literally locked so no one has ever been able to witness the goings on of a particular process.  The pope has died.  The cardinals meet in the Vatican to elect a new one.  We get to watch, feel, and absorb the process.  Unlike the election of a U.S. President, a pope is pope mostly for life.  So it’s possible in one’s lifetime to only be exposed to the process maybe 5-6 times as opposed to every four years.

The story is told through the eyes of the Dean of the Cardinals, Jacopo Lomeli.  It’s an awfully fun thing to watch.  Unlike most elections, a pope is supposed to “not want” to be pope in order to make a good pope.  You know, the whole humility thing.  Of course, we all know better than that.  You can’t help but wonder, throughout history, how many times a cardinal “almost made it” yet, had to act gracious and humble when the pontiff was awarded to someone else.

In all fairness, there are some interesting twists in this novel, so it’s not all “by the book” (pun not intended).  The big issue within the Catholic Church these days (like everywhere else in politics) is the friction between the liberals and the conservatives.  In the early 1960s, Pope John XXIII spearheaded the second Vatican council and the church became a lot more liberal, and the trend has continued to this day.  This hasn’t made the far-right in the church happy in the slightest, but nothing is ever perfect.

So we read a lot about the balloting, the campaigning, the pros and cons, the factions. And even though it is politics as usual, you never get the feeling that any of these cardinals are evil nor fakes.  No, they all truly want the church to prosper, they just don’t all agree as what outcome will best serve the purpose.

Without giving away any spoilers, the ending of the book was a letdown for some.  It wasn’t anticlimactic or anything, in fact, it was almost a tad too much of a stretch that many readers thought was a bit unnecessary.  The way I viewed it, the story was so good, it didn’t really need an “ah-ha” at the end.  But it certainly didn’t ruin the experience for the majority.

This is one of those books that when it’s time to actually select a new pope (assuming I’m alive), I’ll probably pay a lot more attention since I know have seen how the inner workings operate, and it was a fascinating view.   A great book for the religious and the secular.

Circle of Days

 

Circle of Days – Ken Follett

As I stated in my last review of a Ken Follett book, I’m sadly done with him.  An author who I truly thought was wonderful early on has slipped down to mediocrity in my opinion.  I haven’t really enjoyed one of his books in a very long time.  In fact, the only reason I read this one is that was on sale via Kindle.  I’m pretty sure I would have skipped it had it not been.

I have many criticisms of this author.  After the magnificent “The Pillars of the Earth”, he wrote four follow-up books (3 sequels and a prequel) and all those books were basically the same.  His “stand alone” novels as of late (there were a few) weren’t any better. So at least I came to this one not really expecting much.  To be fair, it was a little better than when he has put out as of late.  A little.  At least the first part.

Sadly, the similarities between the basic plot here with “The Pillars of the Earth” are almost embarrassing.  In this one, we’re not in the 11^th century, but rather 2500 years BCE.  There are no “churches” during this time, so the objects of worship are strange circular configurations that are made out of wood or stone.  The one in this story is made of wood.  The characters, tired of the constant decaying and burning, decide to make their circular “worship” altar out of stone.  And this is the main part of the story.  You can already see the parallels between this and “pillars”.

Of course, there are people. We have 3 basic “types”.  There are the farmers, the hearders, and the wood-people (not their actual name, but I forget).   These people are all a mix.  Some good, some bad.  Some seem to be blessed, most seem to be cursed in some form of fashion.  They trade, they fight, there’s jealousy, there’s treachery, and on and on and on.

There are also the priestesses of the sacred shrine.  They have the gift of “counting” which, as simple as it sounds, isn’t a skill that most of these common folk can master.  So there are rituals, there are festivals, there are songs, there is poetry, and on and on and on.

The names of these people are very primitive and basic. So we read names like Seft, Anni, Troon, and Joia.  It’s somewhat interesting to read how these primitive individuals lived – especially during a prolonged drought where many starve to death, but overall, the story just seemed to much of a rehash of everything this author has written before.  He also seems a tad obsessed with explicit lesbian sex.  Nothing really new for this author.  It must be some sort of weird perverted fetish for Ken Follett or something.   These “scenes” in this book about one couple in particular really don’t serve any purpose, and if he absolutely has to include these events, one wishes he could do it in half the pages sparing us the explicit detail.

Overall the book was ok.  If I never read a Ken Follett before, I probably would have enjoyed this one more than I did.  Since I’ve read everything he’s written, however, I can’t really say that there’s much here that is memorable.

The British are Coming

 

The British are Coming – Rick Atkinson

It’s always a bit humbling and somewhat confusing when a book gets tons of great reviews on Amazon, yet when you read the book yourself, you have a less than favorable opinion.  This was the case here.  I’ve read Rick Atkinson before, and I sadly came away with the same sentiment.  The first one I read by him was about the Gulf War. This one is part 1of a trilogy on the American Revolution, taking place in 1775 – 1776.

Atkinson is a good author and if you like to dig deep into the weeds, he’s definitely your guy.  I, however, don’t care for quite the level of detail that he insists on presenting to his readers.  I made that comment when I reviewed his Iraq War book (my reviews have since been removed from Amazon – I guess I get too grouchy) and another reader responded to me on Amazon that “people LIKE detail”.  That person was probably right.  So if detail is your thing, you’ll probably have a more favorable experience when reading a book such as this.

Now, when it comes to “detail”, I should point out that this author focuses mainly on the on-the-field battles.  So we read every detail possible about every soldier, every type of musket, every maneuver, every supply list, etc.  It’s simply too much.  I suppose that if I were on a desert island and had endless amounts of time to read only one book, I would probably enjoy this thing a lot more.  My problem, I think, is that there are so many books that I want to read and won’t ever finish in my lifetime, that I subconsciously think “if this thing is going to be long and detailed, it better be great”.  And sometimes I come away feeling that way about a book. Example: I recently read a 1,000+ page biography of Mark Twain and that author seemed to be able to hold my attention through such a thick offering much better than Rick Atkinson does.

As I write this review, I don’t think he’s released the third installment yet.  Sadly it doesn’t matter for me as I’m positive I won’t ever even pick up the second one.  But if you’re reading this, take my words with a grain of salt.  I admit it when I’m wrong, and I have no problem with the notion that in some cases, I just might be the oddball.

It’s also a Kindle Unlimited. So my advice is give the first 100 pages or so a try.  If you feel a bit weighed down (as I did) by that point, you can at least trust me that it will be pretty much the same for the remainder. It was all simply too much.