The Road to Gandolfo by Robert Ludlum

 

 

Here's an old paperback (yes ... found at Goodwill) that kept me reading. It doesn't take time to breathe so you are swept away in the movement of the scenes. I think the little bit that Ludlum writes at the beginning of the book explaining how this idea for this story came about is fun to read. We all like to know how authors get their inspiration, don't we?

 

Anyway this  is about a plot to kidnap, of all people, the pope!! How does one do that? Well it takes someone who has been in the military with four voluptuous ex-wives and the time to pull it off and the gumption to raise millions of dollars to finance the escapade.

 

Bring in a twin brother of the pope and the stage is set.

 

I'll leave you to it to read this one and see how the caper is pulled off. It would be a good read at the beach during your summer vacation. 

Divining Women by Kaye Gibbons

 

A friend gave me this book to read. I picked it up one weekend and enjoyed it. It is about a young woman who goes to her aunt's home to help her through the last stages of her pregnancy. It's back in the days when there was no air conditioning to help you struggle through the humid, hot days of summer. Then the winter arrives and one is glad for the respite if only one could get out of bed.

 

But this pregnancy is a difficult one. However the young niece not only helps her aunt physically, but emotionally and mentally as well. After all she is worth being loved even if her husband is heartless. It's time to be strong and stand up for yourself!

 

I wouldn't say that this is a happy book nor a page turner to the point where you just want to stay on the couch with a cup of tea, coffee or a cool coca-cola but it was the next book in line in my pile of three books to read. Sorry I couldn't have been more enthusiastic.

A MIDWINTER'S TALE by ANDREW M. GREELEY

 

Here we go again. Another book found at the local Goodwill when I took my Dad with me. As you know by previous blog entries, my mother loved reading this author. The allure? He writes romances and he's a priest!

 

This one starts off slow and you wonder if it will be any good but then you find yourself hooked on the characters and you want to see what happens to the main subject and his love interest. I have loaned this book to my sister so I regrettably cannot remember the character's name. Awful of me I know.

 

But he is a young Italian man growing up in N.Y. ending up being sent to war. We read about him growing up but also yearning to hear of news back home. Is that brat of a neighbor girl whom he swears he has no feelings for, but whom he rescued one night from drowning, still being good or bad? His sister can keep him updated while he falls in love with a young German girl.

 

Well you have to cut your teeth on love somehow, somewhere and with someone, right? I mean you are ten billion miles away from home and you do seem to rescue damsels in distress. It's your nature although you try to deny it. You can't just leave this starving waif of a girl stranded nor proceed not to rescue her whole family from distruction, can you?

 

So I will probably put this one on my shelf and wonder if my mother read it and if she liked it and what she would have said if we had been able to discuss it. And what a lovely cover! It makes me want to see snow.