Blog Post #3

I finished Winter of the Worlds the day I wrote my last blog post, so I don't remember everything word for word, but Ken Foullet basically finished the book by having one of his characters, Carla von Ulrich, standing around the room with her adopted daughter, and her two sons (Though one son was from a Russian soldier who raped her, and the other from her husband) and asking herself what the future holds. So not a giant cliff hanger for the next book, but I am defiantly excited to read it. I assume the next book will follow this book in the way that the children of the narrators become the narrators of the next book. It almost makes me sad, because I am now so attached to some of the main characters and want to hear more about their stories and lives. I will hear some more in the next book, but it will be through their children's eyes, so I don't think it will be the same. Two of the characters, Daisy and Lloyd, had little sparks flying throughout the whole book, but weren't able to get married until the last few chapters because Daisy's first husband Boy (half brother of Lloyd) refuses to divorce her. I want to explore their relationship more because I didn't get enough time to read about it. I am also attached to some of the main characters from the first book, and in the third book some will be dead (some are dead by the second) and others will play extremely insignificant roles. I have no doubt that it will be more confusing to see which of the 3rd generation kids will be related to the others because they will all be cousin or half cousins once removed, or really any combination. I can't wait until 2014 because that's when the next one comes out!

I have also been reading the beginning of Little Women by Louise May Allcot. I really like it so far, the passages are extremely descriptive and not so hard to read. I like the way Allcot describes the four sisters and their actions, and in someways I think that it is completely different from how four sisters would act today. It's nice to read a book about simpler times. This book takes place during the Civil War on the east coast. I've seen the movie, and it is one of my all time favorites, but I wanted to read the book as well. The second oldest sister Jo, who is kind of a tom boy has just met their neighbor Lorie who is cooped up all day by his grandfather. I know from the movie that they become really good friends, so I'm excited to start reading about it.

I am so close to finishing Winter of the World by Ken Foullet. Over the long weekend I read for an hour + everyday, and got through almost 300 pages. I am currently only 20 pages from the end of the book. I wonder how Foullet will wrap up the book, because I know that the book ends in the year 1949 and currently I'm in 1947, so I am interested in seeing how he writes two years in twenty pages. I have noticed that the years are explored in various detail through this book. For example the year 1943 was in total about 300 pages while 1948-1949 will only be twenty pages or less. Foullet titles the different chapters the different times of year, and what year it is, which is very helpful when trying to figure out the timeline of the war. I also think that how Foullet places characters in every aspect of the war is really cool, because we can see the fighting as well as other really important factors. For example, the character Greg Peshkov lives in Washington D.C., so we can see some of the political moves of the Unites States, as well as majored in physics and works on the Manhattan Project. Greg's half brother (though they think they are cousins and have never met), Volodya Peshkov lives in Russia and in a major and spy trainer for Berlin spies. He is married to Zoya who is a Russian physicist and works on the nuclear bomb in Russian. It is interesting to see the race for nuclear power play out between the two countries, and I think that the 3rd book will most likely revolve around that and the cold war. I have noticed that there is a lot less war scenes in this book then in the last one. There is more scenes of living though the war in every country then fighting. For example one of the more prominent characters, Daisy Peshkov (half sister of Greg and Volodya), was born in Buffalo, New York but lives in England. Almost every scene she narrates is about driving the ambulance in the Blitz (her part time job) or her love life with her husband (Boy Fitzherbert, son, and heir, of the Earl of Arberowen) and his half brother, Lloyd Williams (though they don't know they are half brothers, also son of the Earl Fitzherbert). Another prominent character Carla von Ulrich (whose mother used to work with the mother of Lloyd Williams) describes the life in Nazi Germany. We see the war through Nazi eyes with her brother Erik, who is a doctor in training on the front line. Carla also depicts life as a spy, as she and her boyfriend are spy for Russia (who are recruited by Volodya).