Wherein our hero Durfee shows you his new and improved James Clavell book collection. Shogun. Tai-Pan. Gai-Jin. King Rat. Noble House. Whirlwind. #JamesClavell #Shogun #Asia
Durfee you're the best I absolutely love your content. I hope that you are working on a new series because the first series is easily in my top ten series of all time. Keep up the great posts.
I agree. Shogun is perhaps the greatest historical fiction ever written, and Noble House is my second favorite. Both TV mini series are excellent. Are you looking forward to the new Shogun series next month?
Then you should read John Jakes, The Kent Family Chronicles....while Shogun is great, if you like historical fiction, the Kent Family Chronicles takes you through the American Revolutionary War to past the Civil War interesting tying in Kent family bloodline along some of the most significant historical events since our nation's birth.
With all the hubub about Shogun on the streaming services, I decided to jump back into the Asian Saga. Started with Gai-jin, my favourite. Man, Malcolm's demise hits just as hard as when I read it back in 1999. I love the old format paperbacks, but, I'll be honest, reading it on the laptop is so much easier. Those page-turners were a killer for those of us with carpal tunnel.
Did you read my mind Shogun was there as a book idea I was going to check on Amazon I didn't know just had vague memories of a Shogun movie in the 80s. These 6 books look great but I need to progress on my TBR stack before I offer this to myself hopefully soon.
All of these books shot up in price, that red of shogun is the one I had in middle school back in 2006. My counselor let me borrow her sons copy, I wanted to get that red one again but its around $70 now because of the popularity of the show. But hey that's a mean collection man, glad you enjoyed the stories.
You missed so much pertinent knowledge of these books and James Clavell. It's noteworthey on the timeline when those books were published. King Rat was semi-autibiographal. Plus you mispronounced Gai-Jin.
I disagree. The battle of Sekigahara was never the point of Shogun. Clavell's writing was all about all of the strategizing, scheming, allegiances, and hidden agendas (secret hearts) of all of the characters leading up to it, the coming together of different cultures and how they interacted, and the paths leading up to the ending. The final battle that the entire book was leading up to didn't need to be included, historically everyone knows that Tokugawa won that battle and if you read the book up to the ending then you likely took the time at some point to research it yourself. I feel like it would have been gratuitous and would have taken away from the revelations that the ending revealed, particularly Mariko's.
