Category: BookLust I

Diplomatic Lover

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Lee, Elsie. The Diplomatic Lover. New York: Zebra Books, 1971.

Reason read: Elsie Lee’s birth month is in April.

Confessional: this genre is not my cup of tea. I would say it’s even less so than science fiction or fantasy. I definitely was not looking forward to reading this genre. In fact, I squirmed so much I read it over the weekend. 4/1/17 – 4/2/17

Nonny is an oddball character. Early in Diplomatic Lover she convinces her roommate’s foster brother to take her to bed. She’s a virgin and she simply must have “lessons” from York, the outrageously handsome actor. The deflowering scene is nothing short of cringe-worthy if you are not into bodice rippers. But, Nonny (“Bambi” to the boys) got what she wanted from York: she needed to go from Nonny-no to Nonny-yes. What’s more, she then needs a fourteen day sailing adventure with York to “get him out of her system.” Do you think she succeeds? Insert eye roll here. After the loss of virginity and the sailing adventure are both out of the way, Nonny returns to a scandal at the office. Someone is leaking inside trader information and smuggling political information. As a translator for the British Embassy in Washington D.C. Nonny is brilliant and the perfect person to solve the mystery. She speaks a multitude of languages, including finances. She often gives her roommates advice on investments. In addition, her father is a New York City lawyer and her grandfather is a banker in Zurich. She only has one problem: blackmail. Someone knows of her torrid affair at sea and wants to expose her (literally).

Cringe worthy quote, “He was taking it at her pace, sticking to the rules of seduction, not rape” (p 80). Whaaa?

Book trivia: my copy of The Diplomatic Lover had to be rebound. The library adhered just the paperback’s old front cover to the new hard copy. And what a front cover it is! It features two very prominent stargazer lilies in the forefront and a couple locked in an odd embrace. She looks like she is about to swoon and he is ready to bite her ear off.

Author fact: Elsie Lee was a member of Mensa.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love is Here To Stay” (p 205).

No Ordinary Time

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Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Read by Edward Hermann. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Reason read: Franklin married his fifth cousin in March. I read this to celebrate their unique and extraordinary relationship.

This is a quick read. In  a nutshell, it’s a condensed biography of Franklin, Eleanor, their marriage, and life at home during World War II. The biographies of Franklin and Eleanor are not anything new. If you have read even one other biography of the couple you’ll find all the details worth mentioning are the same. Considering Eleanor destroyed most of her correspondences it would be difficult for a biographer to come up with anything astonishing and unheard of before. The biography of Franklin and Eleanor’s marriage is treated with respect and without judgment. We all know about the other women: Missy, Lorena, and Lucy. But it is the biography of World War II’s home front that makes No Ordinary Time a pleasure to read. I’ve always known women made sacrifices for the war effort; rationing and even going without certain materials. But, I admit I did not know about the girdle protest. Goodwin’s description of Eleanor protesting the inability to wear a girdle for “health” reasons was humorous and fascinating.

As an aside, the title of No Ordinary Time comes from a speech Eleanor Roosevelt made before the Democratic convention.

Author fact: Goodwin won the Pulitzer in history for No Ordinary Time.

Book trivia: No Ordinary Time is a combination of diaries, interviews and White House records.

Audio trivia: the introduction is read by the author. Very cool.

Narrator trivia: Edward Hermann’s list of accomplishments is long. He has acted in a bunch of movies including The Purple Rose of Cairo as well as television (The Practice and Gilmore Girls). I’ve never seen any of these productions and yet I recognize him. I guess he just has one of those faces voices.

Nancy said: Nancy includes this as an example of an outstanding one-volume biography.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Presidential Biographies” (p 195).

Breaks of the Game

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Halberstam, David. The Breaks of the Game. New York: Hyperion, 2009.

Reason read: March Madness is well, in March. Everyone has heard of March Madness before. Read in honor of college hoops time.

This is an interesting topic for a book. Halberstam follows the 1979-1980 sad season of Portland, Oregon’s basketball team, the Trailblazers. Not their winning year. Interestingly enough, they had won the championship the year before. They bombed the year after. Maybe that’s what Halberstam found so interesting. After Bill Walton left the team they simply imploded. Halberstam could have called his book The Wreckage Walton Left Behind.
According to Breaks of the Game between 1970 and 1979 the Portland Trailblazers won 322 games and lost 416 and yet their fan attendance went from a paltry 1,095 to a cap of 11,500 by 1979. The One to Watch was Bill Walton, a first round draft choice. After he joined the team season ticket holders jumped from 2,971 to 6,218.
True to Halberstam form, Breaks of the Game looks at every angle of the sport of basketball from the coaches to the players, from the referees to the sponsors, from the owners to the fans and everyone in between. If you like basketball, this is the book for you. If you love the Portland Trailblazers no matter their record, this is a must read.

As an aside, I have seen Dead concerts “with” Bill Walton. He and I are huge fans. He’s often in the front row (or close to it) while I’m in the nosebleed seats.

Author fact: I probably mentioned this before but Halberstam was tragically killed in an auto accident on his way to an interview. I still can’t get over that.

Book trivia: Breaks of the Game contains no photographs whatsoever (not even of Bill Walton) & is not indexed.

Nancy said: Nancy connects Breaks in the Game with another sports book, The Punch, since Kermit Washington was traded to the Portland Trailblazers following the infamous punch (p 226).

BookLust Twist: from both Book Lust and More Book Lust. From Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Sports and Games” (p 225) and from More Book Lust in the even more obvious chapter called “David Halberstam: Too Good To Miss” (p 112).

Like Water for Chocolate

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Esquivel, Laura. Like Water for Chocolate. Read by Kate Reading. Westminster, MD: Books on Tape, 1994.

Reason read: March is supposedly the best time to visit Mexico. Better go do it before there’s a wall between us!

Confessional: this is a reread. I already read it back in the 90s when it was first published. It’s such a short story I felt like reading it again.

In a word, sensuous. But, keep reading and other words will pop out: passionate, exotic, magical, romantic, mystical. The Boston Globe called it “deceptively simple” and I couldn’t agree more. The words flow off the page and into your brain effortlessly and yet they have the power to stick with you. [Case in point: Gertrudis catching fire and running naked through the yard only to be swept up by a man on horseback is a scene I have never forgotten.] But, to the plot: Tita is the youngest daughter and, by family tradition, must devote her life to caring for her mother for her entire life. She cannot wed, she cannot leave the home. Ever. Even when the love of Tita’s life proposes marriage she cannot accept. Instead she is forced to become the family cook, spending her days preparing meals for the rest of the family, including Tita’s true love who has married her sister. It onl;y gets more intriguing from there.

Lines to quote: whenever I listen to an audio book there often isn’t a good opportunity to find quotes. It’s rare that I’ll even remember the line later. Even rarer that I’ll find the page it was on. However, I liked this line so much I got the print version just so I could quote it properly. “Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying, or dominating, Mama Elana was a pro” (p 97).

Author fact: Esquivel was a screenwriter first.

Book trivia: I think everyone has seen Like Water for Chocolate, the movie.

Nancy said: Nancy said Like Water for Chocolate was “charming.” (p 153).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Mexican Fiction” (p 153).

Travels with a Tangerine

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Mackintosh-Smith, Tim. Travels with a Tangerine: from Morocco to Turkey in the Footsteps of Islam’s Greatest Traveler. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004.

Reason read: Admittedly, this is an oops read. I had Hall of a Thousand Columns on my list a few years back. At the time I didn’t realize you must read Travels before Hall so I vowed when the subject of “exploration” was to be honored again, I would circle back to Mackintosh-Smith and read Travels. The mistake lies in the fact I forgot to remove the other exploration book I had slated for 2017, Antarctic Destinies. As a result, I am reading them both.

Travels with a Tangerine takes us back to the year 1325 when the “greatest Islamic traveler” Ibn Battutah departed from Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca when he was 21 years old. There is nothing astonishing about someone wanting to take a pilgrimage to Mecca. What is so remarkable is where Ibn Battutah ended up. The trip took him almost thirty years and 75,000 miles. He spent his life on the road. At the same age, author Mackintosh-Smith sets out to follow in IB’s footsteps, admittedly taking short cuts because he doesn’t want to spend his entire life on this journey. But the result of this fascination is an interesting look back at the Arabic fourteenth century with eye an toward the future. Mackintosh-Smith’s humor makes it an easy read.

Quote to quote: “Then there were those reports of violence against Maghribi immigrants in Paris and Marseille, the deportations, the unimaginable shittiness of being an illegal alien” (p 31). Think about that sentence for a second. What has changed? Here’s another one, a little more lighthearted, “Defecation and ingestion of knowledge are such complementary activities” (p 105). So, that’s why men bring newspapers in the bathroom!

Author fact: Mackintosh-Smith is the winner of the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award

Book trivia: Illustrations by Martin Yeoman. They are delightful. I especially liked the monkey on page 249.

BookLust Twist: Twisted twice – once from Book Lust in the chapter called “Here Be Dragons: the GReat Explorers and Expeditions” (p 110) and once in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “In the Footsteps Of…” (p 100-101).

Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

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Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Read by Lynn Thigpen. New York: Recorded Books, 1994.

Reason read: February is Black History month

Miss Jane Pittman could be your great-grandmother, she is that real of a character. I’m sure listening to this on audio had something to do with that perception. When 100 year old Miss Pittman tells her life story to an unidentified high school history teacher it’s as if she is sitting in your living room. Beginning when she was ten years old and freed from slavery in the deep south, she recounts her journey to leave the Louisiana plantation she has known all her life. She is looking for the white abolitionist who gave her new “free” name. All she knows is that he is somewhere in Ohio. So, to Ohio she heads. Along the way she befriends an orphan boy and encounters seemingly overwhelming obstacles. But, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, overcome these obstacles, she does. She raises the orphan boy as her own and even though she doesn’t make it out of Louisiana, forges a life for herself.
One point of observation is that while Miss Jane Pittman has lived a long life, you don’t hear her talk a lot about her own personal life. She would rather discuss the people around her and how they influenced her.

Quotes to quote, ‘”…America is for all of us.” he said,”and all of America is for all of us”‘ (p 115), “He wasn’t aiming to break the door in, he wanted to chop it down” (p 195), and my favorite, “And I will eat vanilla ice cream which I loves and enjoys” (p 219).

Author fact: I could have read this last month in honor of Gaines’s birth month. He was born in January.

Narrator funny: There were times when I was reminded of the actress Whoopie Goldberg when listening to Ms. Thigpen.

Book trivia: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was made into a movie. The release date was January 11th, 2005.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the early chapter called “African American Fiction: He Say” (p 11).

Another Life

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Korda, Michael. Another Life: a Memoir of Other People. New York: Random House, 1999.

Reason read: January is a selfish month so I’m reading a memoir…even though this is one about other people. Supposedly.

Michael Korda, through his position at Simon and Schuster, was able to come in contact with loads of notable and eventually, famous people. The cover of Another Life boasts of those notables: Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Larry McMurtry…the list goes on and on. But, fear not. Korda does the sensible thing and starts from the beginning, explaining his own rise in the world of publishing to editor in chief. The backbone of Another Life is the publishing industry itself; delving into the strange and often fickle elements that determine a bestselling author.

As an aside, before the age of the internet and Google the private lives of writers were not as well known. Their deep dark secrets could be kept as closeted as they wanted, as long as they behaved themselves. The over-the-top personality of Jacqueline Susann was not in the forefront of my mind when her bestseller, Valley of the Dolls was all the rage. Now I want to reread Susann knowing what I know now. In fact, it would be interesting to go back and read the books of everyone Korda has dished about in Another Life.

On a personal note, Korda mentions Dark Harbor, Maine. For those of you wondering, it is actually on Islesboro and closer to West Penobscot Bay…and nowhere near Monhegan.

Quotes I liked, “He seemed to be under the mistaken impression, thanks to Morris Helprin I felt sure, that I was a person of scholarly nature, prodigious learning, and refined taste” (p 31) and”It takes a lot of time and shared experiences to make a friendship permanent, to harden it…” (p 167). Very true.

Author fact: At the time of publication, Michael Korda was still editor in chief at Simon & Schuster.

Book trivia: the only thing missing from this dishy drama are photographs of all the celebs!

Nancy said: Nancy calls Korda’s style, “wonderfully affectionate” (p 152).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very straightforward chapter simply called “Memoirs” (p 152).

Book of Puka-Puka

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Frisbie, Robert Dean. The Book of Puka-Puka. New York: The Century Co., 1928.

Reason read: National Geographic Travel Month

Puka-Puka is a Polynesian atoll off the coast of New Zealand. Robert Dean Frisbie, originally born in Cleveland, Ohio moved to Puka-Puka for his health and to get away from civilization. He became a trader, married a native, had several children and even died in the Cook Islands. His was one of the earliest accounts of Pacific island life. It’s full of adventure, humor and culture. A great read!

Quote I liked, “He gave me a priceless  recipe for raisin wine which I will whisper to the thirsty reader in due time” (p 12).

Author fact: Frisbie died in the Cook Islands, on Avatiu.

Book trivia: The Book of Puka-Puka was illustrated by Mahlon Blaine.

Nancy said: Frisbie’s is a “classic account” of island life.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Islands, Desert and Otherwise” (p 128).

Freedom at Midnight

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Collins, Larry and Dominique Lapierre. Freedom at Midnight. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.

Reason read: November is the best time to visit India…or so they say.

I have to admit I had a love-hate relationship with Freedom at Midnight. At times I found it incredibly interesting while other times it was as boring as taupe. This is the kind of book a historian could really drool over. Often times it reads like a novel in its detail.
My takeaways: It is profound to think that the age old antagonism between the millions of Hindus and millions of Moslems is seemingly irreconcilable and Freedom at Midnight provides a wonderful, if abbreviated, biography of Gandhi.

Author fact(s): Larry Collins was born in Hartford, CT and Dominique Lapierre was born in France.

Book trivia: Freedom at Midnight include some pretty interesting photographs as well as one or two disturbing ones.

Nancy said: Reading Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie led Pearl to read Freedom at Midnight (from the Book Lust introduction). She also said Freedom at Midnight was “required reading for those interested in understanding colonial and postcolonial India from a non-Indian point of view” (p 125-126).

Confessional: I started to read Freedom at Midnight five (yes, five) years ago. The start of this blog has been hanging out since 2011.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust and More Book Lust. In Book Lust in the introduction (p xi) and in More Book Lust in the chapter called “India: A Reader’s Itinerary” (p 125).

Paul Revere and the World He Lived In

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Forbes, Esther. Paul Revere & the World He Lived In. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942.

Reason read: Paul Revere was baptized on January 1st, 1735. But. But! But, back in those days the child was usually baptized the day after birth… so I’m thinking he was actually born on 12/31. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

In the beginning Apollos Rivoire came to Boston with an American dream…

Esther Forbes wrote Paul Revere with a good natured, almost folksy tone. I could almost see the twinkle in her eye by her choice of words. Here are some quotes to illustrate my point, “Like so many men of his years and period, Mr. Coney was enjoying his third wife – ‘Prudent Mary,’ Judge Sewall calls her” (p 8), “Boston had not yet run out of either rum or religion fervor” (p 13), and “Only once did she save labor by twinning” (p 21). I could go on and on.
But, just because Ms. Forbes wasn’t didactic in her tone doesn’t mean she wasn’t informative. Her narrative paints a thoroughly detailed and informative account of Paul Revere’s life and times. As an added bonus, the city of Boston also is biographied. One such fun detail is about Boston’s streets: If the present day street is straight it probably used to be sea bottom. “Wherever the streets are snarled up, you are standing in the ancient town itself” (p 49). The next time I am there, I’m going to check that out for myself.

As an aside, I am so glad Revere didn’t teach himself dentistry.

Author fact: Esther Forbes also wrote Johnny Tremaine, a book my sister still has on her bookshelf.

Book trivia: Paul Revere includes photographs. That’s the boring trivia. The more interesting one is that the table of contents includes an abstract of each chapter. I have never seen that before.

Nancy said: Forbes used the information collected for Paul Revere to write Johnny Tremaine.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction for Kids of all Ages” (p 114).

On the Ocean

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Pytheas of Massalia. On the Ocean. Translated by Christina Horst Roseman. Chicago: Ares Publishers, Inc., 1994.

Reason read: December is a good time to visit Greece, if you are so inclined to travel this holiday season.

Probably the biggest take-away I got from Christina Horst Roseman’s translation of On the Ocean was that Pytheas did not intend it as a sailing guide. What is amazing is that despite eighteen known ancient writers making reference to Pytheas over an 850 year-span, his original writings do not exist at all. It is obvious that On the Ocean was an important document but what happened to it? How was it not preserved in some way? In addition, Roseman states, “special problems are also raised by the work of two authors who probably made use of Pytheas, but in whose surviving work he is not named” (p 18). Wouldn’t that be considered plagiarism…if they had such a thing back then? A great deal of Roseman’s text is comparing what Strabo, Polybios and Pliny wrote as they were considered rivals of Pytheas.

Author fact: Roseman admits that through the years, because not a shred of Pytheas’s original writings exist, “assumptions have been accepted” about On the Ocean. I think that would be true of anything without substantiated proof. Rumor becomes real after awhile.

Book trivia: On the Ocean has an index of Greek words but no dictionary. There are quite a few passages in Greek without translation so right away I found it inconvenient.

Nancy said: not much aside from the writings of Pytheas don’t exist anymore.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Here Be Dragons: the Great Explorers and Expeditions” (p 111).

Wherever You Go

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Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Wherever You Go, There You Are: mindfulness and meditation in everyday life. Read by Jon Kabat-Zinn. California: Renaissance Media, 1994.

Reason read: Mindfulness around the holidays is good to have! I’m starting early.

If you are reading Wherever You Go just to say you have read Wherever You Go (like I am) this will take you no time at all. Sometimes a page is as short as a paragraph or just a couple of sentences. But, if you are looking for mindfulness it is best to read this book slowly. Let each section sink in and be sure to savor each line. It is a basic introduction to Buddhist meditation without of mumbo jumbo.

As an aside, I thought this went well to follow MindValley creator Vishen Lakhiani’s book Code of the Extraordinary Mind.

Lines I really like, “best to meditate…” Whoops. Scratch that. No part of Wherever You Go may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever. No favorite quotes for this review.

Author fact: Kabat-Zinn is the founder and director or the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

Book trivia: this didn’t come with my copy of Wherever You Go, but Zinn mentions a series of mindfulness meditation practice tapes that are to be used in conjunction with the book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Help Yourself” (p 110).

Advise and Consent

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Drury, Allen. Advise and Consent. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1959.

Reason read: Not to state the obvious but November is election month and unless you have been living under a rock you know we have to elect a new president.

Confessional: I just couldn’t finish this…maybe because of the election? I’m not sure. I just feel as if this country is broken – very, very broken and reading about politics, even fictional, at this time is not a good thing.

The inside flap to Advise and Consent states it is “…a story so sweeping and complex in its conception that each segment alone would make an enthralling book.” Right. I’m sure that’s why the entire story is over 600 pages long. Drury has crafted five segments: Bob Munson’s book, Seab Cooley’s book, Brigham Anderson’s book, Orrin Knox’s book and Advise and Consent.
Advise and Consent opens with the announcement of the President of the United State’s controversial appointment of Bob Leffingwell as Secretary of State. Right away Drury’s language is witty and mischievous as if there is a twinkle in the eye of the storyteller. If you have ever watched “House of Cards” then you know how deviously politics can be played out. Advise and Consent is no different.

Author fact: Drury covered politics as a reporter for multiple publications including The New York Times.

Book trivia: Advise and Consent has a few drawings by Arthur Shilstone.

Other book trivia: Advise and Consent won a Pulitzer.

Other, other book trivia: Advise and Consent was made into a movie.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Politics of Fiction” (p 189)

Baby Doctor

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Klass, Perri. Baby Doctor: a Pediatrician’s Training. New York: Random House, 1992.

Reason read: November is National Health Month.

Think of Baby Doctor as part memoir, part journal and part collection of essays. Klass starts from the logical beginning, her first night on call as an intern. Fresh out of medical school she finds herself in the neonatal intensive care unit with a three pound baby who can’t breathe. Over the next 300 pages she tells us what it’s like to worry about a young mother’s ability to care for a newborn, what it’s like to watch a patient die, what it’s like to fear the accusation of child abuse in her own home and even, shockingly, what it’s like to be stalked and harassed. As her knowledge progresses and her confidence grows, Klass encounters new challenges such as resident. Klass also addresses heavier topics such as feminism and playing God; when to intervene and when to let nature take it’s course. I found both sections enlightening.

Eye opener: which came firstI can’t imagine what it takes to be a doctor, never mind a pediatrician, charged with caring for ill people children all day. I can’t imagine being a writer, thinking about your next essays at the same time as being a pediatrician, either.

Honest quotes to quote, “I don’t even try to like lost of people” (p 80) and “It is considered bad form to arrive at the destination hospital, leap briskly from the ambulance, and throw up” (p 243). True.

Author fact: Being a doctor wasn’t enough for Perri Klass. She wanted to be a writer as well.She graduated from Harvard Medical School and wrote for the New York Times.

Book trivia: I don’t know what kind of photographs I was hoping for, but they weren’t there either way.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Physicians Writing More Than Prescriptions” (p 185).

Toast To Tomorrow

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Coles, Manning. A Toast To Tomorrow. Boulder: Rue Morgue Press, 1940.

Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Octoberfest.

Spoiler Alert: In the first installment of Manning Coles’s series the reader is to think Tommy Hambledon has drowned. However, on the cover of A Toast to Tomorrow it reads “The second Tommy Hambledon book” so you know he’s in it somehow. No mystery there.
The real mystery begins within a radio broadcast. Someone is sending Morse coded messages hidden in a drama; a code that hasn’t been used since World War I. British Intelligence knows something is amiss. But what? One of my favorite parts of Toast was the different ways key people heard the broadcast and how they reacted.
But, back to Tommy Hambledon. He washes ashore in Belgium with a nasty wound to the head and a chewed up face. He can’t remember his own name but can speak German fluently. His rescuers assume he is wounded German soldier and Hambledon agrees with that identity until his memory comes back: probably the best line to sum up A Toast to Tomorrow is uttered by Hambledon: “”I am the Deputy Chief on the German Police,” said the British Intelligence Agent” (p 48). The intensity of A Toast To Tomorrow comes from German officials slowly starting to question Hambledon. They can’t find evidence of him being a soldier, or even German. The more they question the more Tommy Hambledon is in danger of being exposed. He needs to run but the question is when is it too late?

Author fact: Adelaide Oke Manning died from throat cancer.

Book trivia: the English title for A Toast to Tomorrow is Pray Silence.

Book Lust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Intriguing Novels” (p 124).