Monday, February 3, 2014

Kindle Monthly Deals for Feb 2014 that Caught My Interest

So every month, in addition to their Kindle Daily Deals and their Gold Box Deals and their 'Big Deals', Amazon also does some odd 100 books for under $3.99

I review the list every month to see if there's anything on there that I'm going to wind up reading later on. Makes it easier to look them up since there isn't a physical book involved that requires me to store it somewhere in the meanwhile.

So for February 2014, here are some I'm looking over. Since these prices are good till the end of the month, I'm not too worried about picking them up RIGHT NOW but have it bookmarked and reminder to myself to review later.

The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England: An upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought. This new history explains why the Norman Conquest was the most significant cultural and military episode in English history. Assessing the original evidence at every turn, Marc Morris goes beyond the familiar outline to explain why England was at once so powerful and yet so vulnerable to William the Conqueror’s attack; why the Normans, in some respects less sophisticated, possessed the military cutting edge; how William’s hopes of a united Anglo-Norman realm unraveled, dashed by English rebellions, Viking invasions, and the insatiable demands of his fellow conquerors. This is a tale of powerful drama, repression, and seismic social change: the Battle of Hastings itself; the sudden introduction of castles and the massive rebuilding of every major church; the total destruction of an ancient ruling class. Language, law, architecture, and even attitudes toward life itself were altered forever by the coming of the Normans.

Uh... wow. That's it.

Now quite true. There are a few I actually already own and a few in the genre I'm just not interested in. Some non Herbert books in the Dune saga for example.

Looking over it further, these don't reach out to me like The Norman Conquest does but may bear further investigation.

The Last Secret of the Temple: In the year 70 AD, as the Romans sacked and destroyed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, a young Jewish boy was hidden away and chosen as the guardian of a great secret. For seventy generations this secret remained safeguarded. But in present day Israel, a Jewish radical threatens to reveal this hidden truth and use it to rend apart the fragile Middle East—and only an unlikely duo of hardened detectives of very different origins and a young, enterprising Palestinian journalist can unite to ward off disaster.

A relentless and fast-paced thriller that moves from Egypt to Jerusalem to the Sinai Desert, that spans the millennia and involves Cathar heretics, Nazi prisoners, and modern-day suicide bombers, Paul Sussman’s The Last Secret of the Temple is a thrilling, roller-coaster adventure that brilliantly examines the participants on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Timely, important, and completely absorbing, it marks Paul Sussman as one of today’s great thriller writers. 

The whole shift to Modern day kinda makes it blah for me and I have enough books that anything that doesn't jump out at me is put on the backlist. I guess we'll see as the month wears on.

Katharine of AragonFor the first time in paperback—all three of Jean Plaidy’s Katharine of Aragon novels in one volume.

Legendary historical novelist Jean Plaidy begins her tales of Henry VIII’s queens with the story of his first wife, the Spanish princess Katharine of Aragon.

As a teenager, Katharine leaves her beloved Spain, land of olive groves and soaring cathedrals, for the drab, rainy island of England. There she is married to the king’s eldest son, Arthur, a sickly boy who dies six months after the wedding. Katharine is left a widow who was never truly a wife, lonely in a strange land, with a very bleak future. Her only hope of escape is to marry the king’s second son, Prince Henry, now heir to the throne. Tall, athletic, handsome, a lover of poetry and music, Henry is all that Katharine could want in a husband. But their first son dies and, after many more pregnancies, only one child survives, a daughter. Disappointed by his lack of an heir, Henry’s eye wanders, and he becomes enamored of another woman—a country nobleman’s daughter named Anne Boleyn. When Henry begins searching for ways to put aside his loyal first wife, Katharine must fight to remain Queen of England and to keep the husband she once loved so dearly.

I like historical bits but this seems a little more romance to me. Some of the reviews give it thumbs up for it being a good time piece though so again, I'll wait and think about it.

1492: The Year the World Began : 1492: The Year the World Began is a look at one of the most fascinating years in world history, the year when many believe the modern world was born. Historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, author of Millennium, covers such iconic figures as Christopher Columbus and Alexander Borgia and explores cultures as diverse as that of Spain, China, and Africa to tell the story of 1492, a momentous year whose lessons are still relevant today

And yeah, that's about it. 1492 sounds more promising than the rest except my first choice of Conquest.

What's everyone else looking at in terms of sales? I know Barnes and Noble has a good science fiction fantasy sale going on over here that was still active last time I looked. Anything else from the February kindle sale that is outstanding?

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