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SusannaG

SusannaG - Confessions of a Crazy Cat Lady

Just another GR refugee.  Other than that, I had a stroke in 2004, and read almost anything I can get my hands on, though I have a particular weakness for history, mystery, and historical fiction.

Currently reading

Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition
Paul Watson
Progress: 6 %
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
Ed Yong
Progress: 40 %
Wizard's First Rule
Terry Goodkind
Progress: 49 %
Thomas Cromwell: The Untold Story of Henry VIII's Most Faithful Servant
Tracy Borman
Progress: 14 %
Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life
Helen Czerski
Progress: 20 %
The Hanover Square Affair
Ashley Gardner
Progress: 10 %
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)
Beth Archer Brombert, Massimo Montanari
Progress: 10 %
Scars of Independence: America's Violent Birth
Holger Hoock
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari
Progress: 9 %
Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years
John Guy
Progress: 20/512 pages

The Man in the High Castle

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick

This 1962 novel is the work that made Philip K. Dick's reputation, and it is appropriately one weird novel, but one where the memory of the setting lingers after the book is read.

 

This novel is set in the year it was published - 1962 - but a very different 1962.  The Axis powers, chiefly Germany and Japan, won the Second World War.  Japan holds sway over the west coast of North America, while much of the rest of the continent is dominated by German puppet states.  Slavery has been re-legalized, and Jews are scarce and what few are left live deep under cover.  The I Ching is as popular as poker is in our universe.

 

The book has an exceptionally odd ending (it almost peters out more than anything else), which is what prevents me from giving it a higher rating, but the setting is a detailed nightmare, and lingers in the mind.  I won't forget it anytime soon.