You know how it is, you are finishing up reading a book and it hits you: “What am I going to read next?!” And it’s not that you don’t have other things to read, it’s that you have too much to read. Maybe you have piles of books on the floor, by your bed, basically on every flat surface in your home. How do you pick? Ok, this may not be a problem for everyone, but it’s a big problem for me. I can spend days paralyzed by indecision trying to figure out what I’m in the mood for, what I should be in the mood for. I am riffing on this theme because I’m in that place again? I’ve finished a book (this one in fact) and I’m on the horns of The Dilemma. So I thought it would be fun–and very helpful–if I let all of you decide what I’d read next. Take a look at the possibilities below then vote on which one you think I should read and I will read it (and of course review it here).
Candidate #1
Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys among the Defiant People of the Caucasus
by Oliver Bullough.
“Two centuries ago, the Russians pushed out of the cold north towards the Caucasus Mountains, the range that blocked their access to Georgia, Turkey, Persia and India. The Caucasus had to be conquered and, for the highlanders, life would never be the same again. This title features author’s journeys who intended to hear the stories of the conquest.” GoodReads
This one makes the list largely because my favorite part of Catherine the Great was reading about all the tribes running around Russia; my curiosity was piqued.
Candidate #2
Child of Vengeance by David Kirk
“Japan in the late 16th century was a land in turmoil. Lords of the great clans schemed against each other, served by aristocratic samurai bound to them by a rigid code of honor. Bennosuke is a high-born but lonely teenager living in his ancestral village. His mother died when he was a young boy, and his powerful warrior father Munisai has abandoned him for a life of service to his Lord, Shinmei. Bennosuke has been raised by his uncle Dorinbo, a monk who urges the boy to forgo the violence of the samurai and embrace the contemplative life. But Bennosuke worships his absent father, and when Munisai returns, gravely injured, Bennosuke is forced to confront truths about his family’s history and his own place in it.” GoodReads
Because Samurai! Ok, ever since I read James Clavel’s Shogun when I was ten I have been mildly obsessed with Waring States era Japan. Plus, Kirk recently completed the sequel to this book, Sword of Honor, so this one has the potential to spare me The Dilemma for awhile.
Candidate #3
Trinity Six by Charles Cummings
“London, 1992. Late one night, Edward Crane, 76, is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a ‘resourceful career diplomat’. But Crane was much more than that – and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from what they seem.
Fifteen years later, academic Sam Gaddis needs money. When a journalist friend asks for his help researching a possible sixth member of the notorious Trinity spy ring, Gaddis knows that she’s onto a story that could turn his fortunes around. But within hours the journalist is dead, apparently from a heart attack.” GoodReads
I love espionage anything. Fiction or non-fiction it doesn’t matter. What attracted me to this one was its mix of past and present espionage–kind of cool.
