Recent Book Reviews
I've been reading a lot lately after a very long hiatus due to a heavy work schedule. I want to use this first blog to get caught up on a a couple of reviews of some good books I've read recently. Let's start with the last book I read first.
The Other Side of the Ice: One Family's Treacherous Journey Negotiating the Northwest Passage by Sprague Theobald and Allan Kreda. I could hardly put this one down. It was such a great adventure filled with peril, passion, plotting and a few Polar bears. This book was about a lifelong salior and documentary filmaker's (Theobald) journey to navigate the Northwest Passage; the sea route connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific through the Canadian Artic archipego. He didn't do it alone he had a capable crew of his three (young adult) children and a coupIe of friends.
The authors did a good job telling how the adventure through the Northwest Passage was planned and executed not leaving out any gritty details of life aboard an Arctic expedition boat that tried the mettle and patience of the leader and crew. I was on edge the entire trip rooting for the adventurers to make it safely through their journey it was that well told.
The second book I'm reviewing on this blog is War Brides by Helen Bryan. This isn't a typical book I read but I am doing a long-distance book club (of sorts) with a friend so we were trying to find a good book that we both would enjoy. I try to be flexible like that! War Brides tells the story of five girls/young ladies during WWII Great Britain: two local village girls, an evacuee from London, a quickie marriage bride fleeing racist Louisiana, and a Jewish refuge from Austria.
Their lives intertwine during the hardships of the war years: husbands and boyfriends off to fight the war, babies for some, one burdened with a cantankerous sickly mother, and their own war effort work. There are many twists and turns in the plot line culminating in a surprise revelation at the end after the women are now elderly, but still harboring the same spunk and determination that pulled them through their early hardships.
So two different books, but one's worth reading in my humble opinion. Check them out and let me know what you think!
