5 Dogs Book Blog

Review by Elleanor Vance "Northanger Abbey" is one of those novels i just hadn't quite got around to until now. I don't know what I expected. I *do know that it is obvious that this is a first novel, even if it was posthumous publication. We follow Catherine Moreland, a 17 year old 'heroine in training', as she takes a trip to Bath. There she meets other young people (about 65%of this book) and is eventually invited by her newfound friends to their home, the titular Northanger Abbey.   I found myself reminded why Austen is so extremely adaptable. Like Shakespeare, one sees the echoing archetypes of her characters in media today. Chad who likes to drive his car, the pretty girl who conveniently forgets she said she would be your prom date when she gets asked by the QB, etc. Like Christie, Austen was an original that the rest of us mere mortals can only hope to emulate.   If you're ready to slow down and really relax with a good book, i would reccomend a ...

Review By Elleanore Vance In Great Britain school children are taught about the Plantagenets, (Henry II to Richard III), and no story involving those British kings would be complete without mention of the Templars. I was not one of these children, so I had to learn about these 'holy' warriors from renowned historian Dan Jones. As an American student,  my knowledge of the Knights Templars and the crusades could be summed up in two sentences:    1) The Templars were a group of warrior monks across Europe,  sanctioned by the Pope and later the Holy Roman Emperor.     2) The Crusades were a series of Holy Wars urged on by several different Popes (over the years) to secure Jerusalem for Christians. As I found out, that is just the tip of the proverbial  iceberg. Author Dan Jones details wave after wave of those bloody and horrendous battles, as well as the kings and Popes who lead them. This falls into an area of history that should make you feel...

Review by Elleanore Vance For the longest time my personal knowledge of "The Stepford Wives" consisted of a trailer for the 2004 movie starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick. It looked ridiculous, so I wrote it off as a whole.   My discovery of "Rosemary's Baby" changed all of that. I needed to read Stepford. Once i had...hooo buddy. I was not prepared. At 35 years old, I was having nightmares. My habit is that i read the book, then watch a film adaptation, but i have yet to watch Stepford. It messed with me that bad.  Photographer Joanna Eberhart and family (husband and 2 children) move to Stepford to get away from the dangers of the city. Immediately upon their arrival, Mr. Eberhart is asked to a meeting of the Stepford Men's Association, which he accepts. But there is no mirroring Women's club. In fact all of the long-term female residents seem to only have mental power to take care of their homes and children. None of the ladies can hav...

Review by Elleanore Vance "Dunkirk", the Christopher Nolan film, was a favorite almost as soon as I saw it. Something about it just stuck with me over the following days. I am a history nerd, but WWII, especially the European Theater, hasn't been a period of interest for me for a very long time (it's bad for my mental health, mmmmkay?) I knew nothing about what was going on, and that made me curious. That curiosity drove me to pick up this book. Lord quickly gives us enough detail to tell us where we are and how we got there (It's a whirlwind) before he details the plan to get out. In a time when the British Royal Navy are envied the world over, it is actually the flotilla of privately owned small ships who save the day. We are talking about a dire event with the best projected hopes were saving 45,000 soldiers.  The miracle, is that over 300,000 were evacuated, all allies: French and British. This occurred over 8 days in 1940 from May 27 to June 4, and is credi...

Review by Elleanore Vance Some readers may find the following situations found in the text of the book disturbing: claustrophobia, cloulrophobia, loss of a child, nyctophobia, mental and emotional abuse of a child by a parent, sexual assault of a minor by a parent, body horror, helminthphobia, animal cruelty/danger, loss of a child. Please bear this in mind should you visit your local library for a copy I WOULD say that Spooky Season starts early in my household, but the truth is, its ALWAYS Spooky Season. House on Haunted Hill, the Vincent Price version, lulls me to sleep throughout the year. This is just who I am as a person.  So when my hubby was reccomended this new author by Stephen King himself (not a personal reccomendation, or anything), he jumped at it. When it came time to choose a new book, this one promised to be a Lovecraftian delight.  We experience the story from the perspective of a veterinarian whose brother is in a lab at the bottom of the Marianas Trench,...

Review by Elleanore Vance As an 80's baby I heard the phrase "Dont Drink the Kool-Aid" before I went to school. The older I got the more I learned that the phrase had something to do with a preacher who convinced a bunch of people to end their lives as a political statement. Then I saw the Heaven's Gate news coverage like everyone else. I had a very Webster's Dictionary understanding of what a cult was and how it worked. In my youth it wasn't really a line of inquiry I had any interst in pursuing.  I was 16 or 17 before I heard the name Jim Jones. I would be 21 before I would learn his first People's Temple had been across the street from my apartment building at 10th and Delaware in Indianapolis. But this story doesn't start in Indianapolis. It starts in a little hole in the wall  Indiana township called Crete, just east of Lynn on Highway 36; just south of Spartanburg as the crow flies.  This light in the cornfields is where Little Jim Jones was b...