This is a fairly difficult book for me to review, because I quite enjoyed it but have some serious complaints about not only its content, but the views of its author. The book itself is well researched, and the subject was interesting, being an area and an era with which I’m fairly unfamiliar. The time between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the antebellum years, has always been a bit out of reach for me. I can never really remember which president served at […]
Djibouti? I recommend you Dji-don’t
I’m a pretty big Elmore Leonard fan. I have only read one of his books “Cat Chaser” but I adore “Justified,” which is based on some of his short stories. He creates amazing characters and dialogue and is prolific as a crime fiction writer. His books have been made into some exceptional movies: Out of Sight, Get Shorty, and Jackie Brown. I was excited to introduce him to my book club, as none of the other members had read anything by him, and to make […]
Here, Have a Black Spot.
When I first read Treasure Island, I was living in Georgia’s low country, an area embroiled in pirate history (in fact, the Benbow Inn is rumored to have been modeled on Savannah’s Pirate House). I like my reading to provide a little bit of local color. Anyway, perhaps it was my own location that made it easy to fall into Stevenson’s world. I can understand how Jim Hawkins might feel every time his little world is intruded upon by a pirate, those dual senses of […]
Captain Jack Sparrow’s World of Pirates
The Republic of Pirates explores the early 18th century of the American colonies and the Caribbean, which was the era of pirates like Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy, Charles Vane, and Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch. Although told in narrative style, most of the information comes from newspapers, letters, journals, etc. from the time, place, and people presented. According to a note on the cover of my edition, this book was the inspiration for the NBC mini-series “Crossbones”. I liked the tv show, so I picked up the […]