Just One Damned Thing After Another: The Chronicles of St. Mary's series

Product Information

In short: Excellent fun for the reader in need of fun, thrills, and a larger sense of significance that can easily be ignored if the mood is light. Free. Now, what on earth are you waiting for? Free! Go! GO! And the building itself. I lost myself in the description when Max first arrived. The library but also the hall must be so fascinating. I would feel right at home there too! However, the title is good hint as to what the book is like. It’s a RAPID pace, and everything happens so much, one right after another, boom, boom, boom. I wanted some breathing room, but not for me, I wanted the characters to have a break! I mean, that is the point, that things just roll downhill and there’s no stopping point until events have worked themselves to a plateau.

Long Story Short (July 2019) – The second collection of short stories ( Christmas Past; The Battersea Barricades; The Steam-Pump Jump; And Now For Something Completely Different; When Did You Last See Your Father?; Desiccated Water; Markham and the Anal Probing; Little Donkey)Follow the tea-soaked disaster magnets of St Mary's as they rattle around History. Because wherever the historians go, chaos is sure to follow. In 1909 a character in a novel by Lilian Bell saw the following words as a motto on a wall as noted previously:

I certainly wasn’t where I should be and it would be the cautious, the sensible thing to do. But, for God’s sake, I was an historian and cautious and sensible were things that happened to other people.” ..." Instead, I rushed on to the bits I found most important. Perhaps the spirit of St. Mary's is infectious. I hope so. Jodi always wanted to write books; being an author was a long-time dream of hers. She also always loved history. She is a self-claimed history nut. Thus she knew that she would have to combine her two passions into writing historical novels. As already mentioned, coal companies used the phrase life is just one darn thing after another in advertisements published in May 1909.

one thing after another

That being said, Taylor’s gift is in immersing the reader in history, any history, and making it interesting and accessible. She can drop her characters anywhere in time, and make me want to learn more about it. The writing is good, well described and fast paced (perhaps too much at times!) and Taylor’s passion for history, and the infallible research that goes with it, is great to read and shines through. She manages to encompass so much both socially and on a wider scale that I’ve felt personally compelled at times to read up on some topics that I wouldn’t normally ever be interested in, or been exposed to. That’s a wonderful talent to have. We finished with a tour of the grounds… Even as I opened my mouth to ask, there was a small bang from the second floor and the windows rattled. According to the Lincoln News the ball team up there has adopted the following motto: “ Baseball is just one damn thing after another.” The motto has been hung on the wall at the baseball headquarters as a reminder for the players. At first I had thought bursting out with hysterical laughter on the train had been embarrassing, but now I'm much wiser, knowing that uncontrolled sobs are even worse. I really felt for the characters. I was sad, I was devastated, I was so ANGRY! The only consolation: looking at how far along in the book I was, seeing how much further the story would go and that there had to be a resolution - even if I had to travel to the author's house and force her to write another ending. The story opens with a quote attributed to the great historian Arnold Toynbee, that “History is just one damned thing after another…” What I find more interesting after having finished the book is that when Toynbee made that famous statement, he was actually quoting someone else, another historian named Elbert Hubbard.