Of Time and Place, by B.R. Freemont

James lives in a future where the country has undergone a major energy crisis, and life is much different from today.  He spends many years working close to Washington policy makers to influence the way the crisis is handled, and spends a significant amount of time searching for meaning in his own life.  He spends time forming a lasting relationship with his former boss, and even more time seeking real love from various women.

Let me start by saying that for readers interested in economics, energy usage, and quasi dystopian futuristic literature, this book is probably a grand slam.  In the parameters of those genres, this book is well written.  And in general, I think that the author's writing style shows real talent and considerable promise.  However, this book just failed to hook me.

At over 500 pages, this book could use some trimming.  For example,  at one point the male protagonist goes on at length, for many pages, reciting a lecture he plans to give to a college class.  I saw absolutely no point to having this lecture, verbatim, in the story.  In fact, I felt that the entire scene did little, if anything, to advance the story.  Similarly, there are a lot of sex scenes in the book that seem unnecessary.  Now, I am no prude, but sex for sex sake does not need to happen in a book of this length.  The sex scenes should, but rarely do, have a significant impact on the story.  Instead, it makes the protagonist seem like a sleaze, and made him very unlikable to me.

I did not care for the main character.  I found him cold, particularly concerning the disappearance of his wife and child.  His story carries out on two timelines simultaneously, and while that method was carried out in a clear manner, I found very little of the action of the one timeline tying into the story of the second timeline in most cases, so it made the transitions seem a little forced, instead of flowing smoothly.

I think that this was an ok book, that has the potential to be a great book, if only some of the subplot was removed and the focus narrowed.  Better yet, get rid of the simultaneous timelines, and make this a series about James' life.  The heart of the story was fine, there was just too much extraneous noise for my taste.  

I received a review copy courtesy of Tribute Book Tours.  See the rest of the tour here.

My Father at 100, by Ron Reagan

Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old in 2011.  As a celebration of his father's life, son Ron sought to learn more about family history, and glimpse the often unseen side of our 40th president.  In learning more about family history, Ron learns a great deal about himself, as well as what shaped his father into the leader he seemed destined to become.

It is not often that I write a harsh review of a book, because I know that is most cases, an author has poured his life's blood into the book, eating, breathing, and sleeping the all consuming work for many months, only to put it out there for all the world to see, like their exposed inner child.  So, normally, I try to respect authors even when I do not like the book.  The exception to this is when a person with a famous name masquerades as an author, cashing in on that name, with a piece of pure schlock.  And that is totally the case with this book.

I personally have no strong feelings one way or the other in terms of Ronald Reagan.  I was too young during his presidency to remember much of it, and am too disinterested in politics now to devote too much time learning about him.  However, I thought a biography would be a good way to slightly expand my knowledge base regarding the former president.  And in that way, the book was successful, as I did learn facts about his life.  But I had to learn them in the most boring way possible.  This book is so boring, and poorly written.  It tries to be both a historical genealogy about generations past and a memoir of growing up as the son of the president; it fails at both.  The book starts out ok, if not a little slow, tracing the family roots back to Ireland, and telling how the family made their way to, and across, America.  However, the book kind of tanks about 60 pages in, when the author starts interjecting childhood anecdotes, often unrelated to the overall topic of the chapter, in a way that confuses the narrative.  In one chapter, he discusses himself as a teen, his dad as a teen, then his dad at his first inauguation, his dad as an adolescent, himself as an adolescent, and his grandfather as a young adult, pretty much in that order.  It was awful.  The same chapter included the following obnoxious (and what I suspect to be inaccurate in terms of current alcohol consumption) sentence about his grandfather Jack: "He drank during an age when men imbibed far more alcohol, on average, than in today's more abstemious climate."

I think that this book could have benefited from a heavy handed editor not so intimidated by the Reagan name that he was scared to tell Ron he cannot write.  Either an editor like that, or a ghost writer.  I cannot even speak to the factual nature of the content, because I could not get past the awful awful writing to even devote any energy to the content.

If I felt this were a book by someone who really tried, or that this was an earnest endeavor to write ones memoirs, I would probably not be so harshly critical.  However, I feel like this was just an attempt for Ron to cash in on his famous dad.  I would imagine there are many biographies, and even memoirs written by other Reagan family members, that are written better than this, and would tell more about Ronald Reagan in a clear, concise, logical manner.  I doubt I will go looking for them, however, as this one kind of soured me.

I received a review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Shelby family owns a plantation in Kentucky, and within their plantation system, they own slaves.  Yet these slaves see the Shelby's as loving masters.  Having financial difficulties causes Mr. Shelby to sell two of his slaves, Tom, known as Uncle Tom by many, and young Harry, son of Eliza, a house slave.  When Eliza hears of the plan, she takes Harry and escapes, in the hopes of making it to Canada.  She is pursued by the slave trader who purchased her; eventually she is reunited with her husband and the family makes their way to freedom.  Meanwhile, Tom is taken away and sold to the St. Clare family.  The St. Clares are good to him, particularly the young daughter, Eva.  After a series of family tragedies, Tom is sold by Mrs. St. Clare, and becomes the property of Simon Legree, a heartless and cruel master.

This book is a difficult read, for various reasons.  Written and published in the 1850's, the books subject matter and language both seem so foreign to me.  The main theme of the book is the evils of slavery, and the potential redemption of the sin of slavery through Christianity.  The book is credited with bring the issue of slavery into the national political spotlight.  Part of the evil of slavery, as shown in this book, is the concept of ownership over another human being.  The idea that one man can own another, and that the Master-slave relationship trumps all others.  I cannot even fathom the idea of ones child or spouse not actually being their own, but instead being merely the property of the master.  Women lose their children, men lose their wives, and they are expected to just accept it, because they are slaves.  

The masters portrayed in the book are varied; some treat the slaves well and eventually free them, while others beat their slaves mercilessly.  It makes the subject matter complex, in that some slaves do not appear dissatisfied with their bonds.  Similarly, one of the minor characters in the book, Aunt Ophelia, is an abolitionist, yet she appears to me as one of the most racist characters in the book.  While she finds slavery to be evil, she also finds the black race to be distasteful.  I find the complexity of this character, along with the complexity of the good Master-willing slave relationship, to be compelling, and find that it adds significant depth to the story.

The language, I will admit, is a bit difficult.  Some of the slave dialect was quite difficult for me to decipher, yet I found it to seem more real that if the slaves had spoken grammatically perfect English.  The realistic dialog helped the characters come to life.  The language and social morals are so significantly different from our own modern ones that I can see how this book might be intimidating or off putting to many readers, but I urge them to stay with it, and try to find the deeper message in the story.

While this book is certainly not without its flaws, I have to respect it, and recommend it, if for no other reason that the important role it played in American history.  We may not be proud of this portion of our history, but we have to acknowledge it in order to grow as a nation.

This book is from my personal library.

Uncle Sam's Plantation, by Star Parker

What seems like a compassionate government run welfare system is actually helping keep the poor in poverty.  And poverty means enslavement to the government system that purports to be the solution.  The liberal politicians seem to be helping, when in reality they are hurting, those who live in poverty, particularly among the African American population.  We hear all this from a woman who lived in this systematic slavery for years.

This is my first encounter with Star Parker, and my first attempt at reading a partisan, economic, political book.  I put it off forever, thinking I would hate in, when in fact I really enjoyed reading it.  At first.  My enthusiasm waned a little, not because of Parker's views or my lukewarm agreement with some of them.  Nay, I did not mind at all her ultra conservative views of social issues, despite the fact I disagreed with a few of them.  What made the book just a tiny bit tedious is that it was a bit repetitive.

My husband reads political and economic books a lot, and says that this is common.  Often, the author will have a legitimately good or groundbreaking topic and point of view, but it may not be enough to fill an entire book, so the same points will be stated, and restated, and reworded and restated, multiple times throughout the book.  And that was exactly what I found in this case.  So, I could have done with about 50 less pages of text, which would have staved off some of the repetition.

That being said, I thought that a lot of the points made were quite solid, although unpopular.  Parker is particularly hard on African Americans, and laments the fact that as a black woman, she gets called a "sell out' or "Uncle Tom" for expecting more from her race.  She says that success among blacks should be the norm, instead of the exception to the rule as it is now.  I quite enjoyed the book, and will most likely read more from Parker in the future.

I received a review copy of this book courtesy of Booksneeze.

Hail to the Chiefs, by Barbara Holland

*The full title of the book is Hail to the Chiefs: Presidential mischief, morals, & malarkey from George W. to George W.

Once again, I shopped my husband's bookshelf. It was an accident actually. I was running bathwater for a nice relaxing soak, and realized I had nothing to read while in the tub. Hubby had left his bathroom reading material on the window sill, so I decide to give it a shot.

The book helps dispel some myths about each president, and sums of his time in office in about 4-6 pages, with wit and humor. As a product of public schools, there was a lot in this book that I never knew. Heck, I think there were presidents in this book I never knew. So it certainly served its purpose to educate the American public in a way that was engaging and entertaining. However, I found it hard to interpret the author's intentions at times. I could not tell if her tone in regard to certain presidents was political satire or legitimate snark.

One caution about this book is that it does not flow well. It took me almost 4 days to read this book of less than 400 pages. It is not a book you can sit down and read for hours. My hubby had the right idea. It makes good light reading, a president at a time, while in a waiting room, the bathroom, or the tub. I struggled to push to the end of the book; the presidents I lived through were not as interesting to me.

However, I despite having to plod through the book, and the difficulty in detecting the tone, I would recommend the book to anyone interested in politics or history even slightly. It is a worthwhile addition to any bathroom library.