I'm new would like some recommendations
Hey everybody I"m new to this site just found today while looking up some books. I'm just wanting to know some recommendations for some books to read. I like books that are thrillers with some historical themes such as Lewis Perdue and Katherine Neville. I also loved Romance of the Three Kingdoms. If you haven't read it then you are missing out on one of the best books ever written. There are a few parts that will make you just break down and cry and I'm a grown a$$ man. I basically just like stuff that has emotion surprise ending or very scary without being too boring.
D. Gutterson INVITES Harper Lee!
'Snow Falling on Cedars' by David Gutterson.
http://www.liglobal.com/readersbloc/reviews/snowfall/
During the dark days of World War II, our government made a decision, based on prejudice and fear, to intern Japanese Americans. These interment camps were largely based in the Northwest. Hardworking citizens were forcibly taken from their jobs and homes and held against their will. It is a part of our history that we are now ashamed of and rightfully so. I did not study this disgraceful episode as a high school student in the late sixties. My first encounter with this subject came through the reading of the marvelous novel Snow Falling On Ceders by David Guterson.
The plot actually begins with a murder. On its' simplest level, this is a murder mystery with all the intrigue and drama of a courtroom thriller. An established and populsr member of this small fishing and farming community is found dead on his boat. Foul play is immediately suspected and a Japanese American is taken in for questioning and eventually booked for murder. Although a respected member of the community as well, Kabuo Miiyamoto turns out to have opportunity and motive. Claiming innocence, he is nevertheless indicted.
We soon begin to learn the story behind the motive. Before the war years, Kabuo's father made an agreement with the victim's father. Money changed hands, land was promised and terms were set. Unfortunately, the war came and the Japanese Americans were sent away. Nothing was quite the same at wars end. Agreements were no longer honored and the isolated island became emotionally remote as well. Without giving away too much, a sub-plot of romance and passion weave a complex trail throughout the story and redemption and integrity eventually save the day.
http://dcn.davis.ca.us/go/gizmo/cedars.html
David Guterson says he owes the wonderful success of his first novel to a reclusive Southern woman who only wrote one book. That woman is Harper Lee and the book she wrote was, as everyone knows, "To Kill A Mockingbird."
"I owe a lot to 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' Guterson said at a reading in Berkeley earlier this month. "I followed very much the same structure and addressed the same concerns. I'm glad that book was part of my life."
When Guterson's book, "Snow Falling on Cedars," won the Pen/Faulkner Award earlier this year, he wrote to Harper Lee asking her to come to the award ceremony in Washington, D.C. Guterson didn't say whether Lee answered his letter, but she definitely didn't come to the award ceremony.
Guterson became an English teacher and "To Kill A Mockingbird" became his favorite book. "No other book had such an enormous impact," he said. "I read it 20 times in 10 years and it never got old, only richer, deeper and more interesting."
"I took that structure...of two separate stories that become one...and used it," he said. Guterson's book, like his mentor's, is multilayered. His book takes place on a fictitious island in the Pacific Northwest. Guterson grew up and lives on Bainbridge Island. "Snow Falling on Cedars" is a courtroom drama, a story of racial conflict, a regional novel, and a novel that portrays a particular time in U.S. history.