Calendar Girl!!! August theme: historical. I chose… Fall of Giants by Ken Follet.

I’m participating for the third time in this monthly blog event called Calendar Girls and hosted by Melanie Bernard and Flavia The Bibliophile.

As I love calendar girls, pin ups and retro I headed over their blog and now I’m hooked on this event.

Again this is a perfect event/tag/meme call it like you want as it’s simple and does not ask lots of time to build!

Guidelines are easy: each month there is a theme voted on. Bloggers then write posts about a book fitting that theme. The best part are the discussions on our picks as we’ll visit the other bloggers and comment their choices 😀 To make it even more interactive we have a Twitter chat once a month on the 3rd Monday using #CGBChat

Now these ladies have added a read along! If you feel like reading and discussing a book with other book junkies you’re welcome to participate 😉

The choices are meant to be posted the first Monday of each month on our individual blogs.

We also get to vote for the next month’s theme starting on the 3rd Monday of the month (same day as #CGBChat) and for our favorite book pick of the month!

August’s theme is Historical!

When I learned the theme was historical I thought “Hell! I’m toast!!!”. I’ve read many, many historical twenty years ago even ten years ago (Egyptian, Italian Renaissance, Cavemen, Musketeers, etc.) but now I’ve switched genre.

So I will pick my most recent historical read Fall of Giants by Ken Follet.

What the blurb says:

“

This is an epic of love, hatred, war and revolution. This is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women.

It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. In a plot of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, “Fall Of Giants” moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty.“

I know this is not Victorian era or vicking or… but it’s a MUST READ!

What I do love about Master Ken Follet because let’s just say it he IS a master at writing plain and simple: he weaves fantastic intertwined family stories upon incredibly accurate historical background.

I was really impressed by all the things I learned reading this book whereas these wars (WWI and WWII) have been discussed in details within my History classes. Ken Follet digged deep and I was really enthralled by all the diplomatic moves happening behind the curtains. What pushed USA to intervene. The different political factions in England. The mining problems and the huge cleavage between social classes, the …

Well as you can see I’m really smitten with this book. Just for the anecdote my first read in English ever (outside school of course) at the age of 18 was The Pillars of the Earth by the same Ken Follet! It was as big as the Bible, had many terms I hadn’t learned in school but it was so fascinating that I read it all in one week (yes, that’s a big book).

Pfew, I did it!

Now I’m headed to the other blogs just to see what there picks are 😉