Skip to main content

Flashman for Freedom!



A lot of interesting new titles at Everyman's Library.  Flashman caught my eye.  This volume binds three of Fraser's witty tales together, including the hilarious Flash for Freedom! in which he finds himself as a fugitive slave in America and brushing shoulders with young Congressman Lincoln.

Comments

  1. At the moment I am reading Fraser's ''Flashman's Lady'' and am about half way through it. I found the parts about cricket to be more attention grabbing than the rest of the tale but it is somewhat entertaining.

    For some reason in my old age I've become a cricket fanatic. Too bad there isn't all that much cricket fiction available in the USA. There is much in the UK but our libraries don't have the books I want to read. Argh!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have never read any Flashman books, although I know they are hugely popular with all of the NY Times book people.

    When Gintaras posted this one, I looked for a copy at my local bookstore, but they don't have a single copy in stock. I'm surprised given how popular the series is.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think it's best to read the Flashman titles in time sequence not as the titles were released as he jumped around a bit early on.There are references to earlier events in some which is why they read better in sequence.I only bemoan the fact there won't be anymore with his passing and he never got around to the Civil War novel as Flashman skirts the events in a few novels.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can't recall which book but in one of the earlier Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin series there are pages on a cricket match played at Aubrey's house while home from the sea.Cricket Fiction would be an interesting subheading at online sites.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Just an aside but a high school friend from Rochester NY who comes from old blue blood money had a mother named Cricket.I saw last year that a sister of his named her daughter Cricket.It's an odd name to be sure but they named her brother Ryder because he was born the year the Ryder Cup was in Rochester.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The site I know of that has a cricket fiction section can be found at Guardian. Indeed, there is much crciekt fiction but usually only in the UK.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I thought it was kind of funny the way Fraser tied Flash in with Cassy from Uncle Tom's Cabin.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...