Bettie's Books

The simplistic writing style seems to be the norm for historical-fiction nowadays and maybe it's to ensure the writing doesn't get in the way of the premise but the impact can be construed as patronising at times. Anyway, I am scooting through this and am just at the point where Nicholas reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which he considers useful, and the point is made that he never gets to realise that it was a hoax of colossal obnoxiousness. Another thought that could be worth discussion about mindsets - it is interesting to know who read what during captivity, a great issue was/is made of Hitler's prison reading list.---Opening paragraph: America Summer 1998"My name is Mikhail Semyonov. I live in Lake Forest village, Illinois state, the United States of America. I am ninety-four years old. I was born in Russia before the revolution. I was born in Tula province and my name then was not Mikhail or even Misha, as I am known here in America. No, my real name - the one given to me at birth - was Leonid Sednyov, and I was known as Leonka. Please forgive my years of lies, but now I tell you the truth. What I wish to confess is that I was the kitchen boy in the Ipatiev House where the Tsar and Tsaritsa, Nikolai and Aleksandra, were imprisoned. This was in Siberia. And ... and the night they were executed I was sent away. They sent me away, but I snuck back, and that night, the moonless night of July 16-17, 1918, I saw the Tsar and his family come down the back twenty-three steps of the Ipatiev House, I saw them go into that cellar room ... and I saw them shot. Trust me, believe me, when I say this: I am the last living witness and I alone know what happened that awful night ... just as I alone know where the bodies of the two missing children are to be found. You see, I took care of them with my own hands."As some of you know we haven't that long ago visited St. Putinsburg, so of course we visited the Winter Palace Hermitage Museum and stood where the last Tsar and his family were kept confined for so long before being taken off to their ultimate stay upon their last journey. As always, standing where some momentous 'space' in history occured, it made us shiver at the cruelty and blinkeredness of humankind. Now as I understand it, this book was ordered by me because somewhere it was going to be book of the month and it has taken so long to arrive that I have probably missed all the action and discussion; nevermind, I shall still read with avid interest, another rendition of this sad tale.