Historical Reads

Viking Warrior: The Strongbow Saga, Book One, by Judson Roberts. This was an ok book. I felt it was more a young adult book than belonging to adult fiction: it's a coming of age story, the main character is only 15, the vocabulary and writing style are simple, certainly not challenging or even intellectual or anything. The plot was pretty good, but it wasn't especially gripping, and the characters weren't totally personable. I don't know if known of them reached out to me, or if I could kind of tell early on not to bother liking them. On another note, this book did not have to be three hundred and fifty some pages. I'm not talking about a rambling writing style; in this edition, all the margins are like an inch and a half. It's an irresponsibnle waste of our friends, the trees. 1001 Events That Made America: A Patriot Handbook, by Alan Axelrod. I'm still trying to bring in more nonfiction and broaden my general knowledge base. This book was great because it presented all these events with short, little, well-written explanations. It's not the kind of thing where you remember each event, because some of them have only one of two sentences, plus there are so very many, but it helps give a better overall picture of American history. American history has never been my strong suit, I've read more European stuff, so this was helpful. This covers wars, equal rights, technological and mechanical innovations, sports milestones, all kinds of stuff that impacted and still affects our society. I'd recommend it.