Cogan’s Reviews Readers of these reviews may remember that I was a big fan of Jenning’s previous work, Aztec . I gave it my highest accolade – five stars. And here comes the sequel, which is almost as good. The action in this one takes place 12 years after all the goings on in Aztec and concerns […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews The simplest way to describe this tale is to quote from the author’s preface. “South of Yesterday” is the story of my mother’s life as a bride coming to a strange land. The book flows through the charmed life of an American living in Guadalajara in the early nineteen hundreds, into the violence […]
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Cogan’s Reviews I finally have gotten around to reading this much beloved novel even though it’s been available for years and was made into a very popular movie few years ago. I’m glad I did. It turned out to be one of the more pleasant reading experiences I’ve had in a while. If you haven’t […]
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Cogan’s Reviews The simplest way to describe this novel is to say that it’s a kind of Mexican “Roots” – a big family survival saga covering three generations of two families, complete with a large cast of characters. Author Villaseñor has based his complex, sprawling tale on the experiences of his own family members and […]
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Cogan’s Reviews This must surely be one of the great adventure stories of all time – how Hernan Cortés and about 500 conquistadores conquered a settled and established civilization in three short years, from 1519 to 1521. Distinguished scholar and historian Hugh Thomas has made good use of recently discovered archival material in both Spain […]
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Cogan’s Reviews While I was writing this review, in May 1998, some 9,000 bush fires were said to be burning across Mexico. I don’t know how anyone ever counted that number, but I wasn’t going to argue. One night we sat on our terrace and counted twelve of them on the other side of Lake […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews I started to read this book expecting to hate it. However, I’m not going to end up saying I read it, and then loved it. Despite some pretty obvious problems, it was a bit better than I expected. The good thing about “Mexico” is that Michener has done enormous research in order to […]
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Cogan’s Reviews I started to read this book several years ago, before coming to Mexico, and didn’t get very far into it. It’s a formidable 1,038 pages in length and, at the time, I just didn’t feel I could go the distance. Also, the world that Jennings was describing was a bit too alien and […]
Continue ReadingCogan’s Reviews It is with some trepidation that I set out to write a review of this famous novel about a Mexican priest on the run from the authorities who are out to kill him and all other Roman Catholic priests they find. The story is based on a true happening in history in Mexico […]
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Cogan’s Reviews I have to admit there were moments during my reading of the first hundred or so pages of this book when I wondered if I would finish it. Rereading the notes I made along the way I see that at one point I wrote the question: Who are the intended readers of this […]
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