Becky has
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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
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date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
168
| 
| 1466827939
| 9781466827936
| 3.47
| 32
| Aug 22, 2012
| Aug 22, 2012
|
This is the second short story that I picked up from Tor for free - again, I was drawn in by accolades - this was a Nebula Award nominee - but mostly...more
This is the second short story that I picked up from Tor for free - again, I was drawn in by accolades - this was a Nebula Award nominee - but mostly I was hooked by the cover. I LOVE the cover... it's almost vampiric, like the taller woman is breathing the life right out of her victim. I love the haunted quality the woman in white has, and the way she seems to be basking in the theft of her. I love the kind of greedy sensuality of the cover. These are the things that I thought when I picked this up. I didn't notice the paintbrushes, and despite the title, I didn't really think of this book being about art. I don't really read book descriptions much, and I didn't read this one. I read it while I was reading the story though, and I almost wish I hadn't, because even the one sentence teaser of a description caused me to assume things about the story. Which is why I don't like to read them in the first place. I was not thrilled with the other free Tor story I picked up. It told everything and showed nothing, it lacked substance and meaning and just did nothing but disappoint me. In comparison, Portait of Lisane de Patagnia had all of that. The writing was evocative and descriptive, and the story was interesting and compelling. I wanted to know where it was going. It seems like I've been reading a lot of stories about art as a method of creation, but not very many stories about art as a method of destruction. But really it wasn't so much about the art, this story. It was more about the relationship between this particular artist and her subject, between teacher and student, lovers. It was about the bitterness that can be created when hopes and expectations aren't met, and how that bitterness can create something new and powerful in its own image. I really enjoyed this little story, though there were times when I was a little confused, because the narrative jumped around from present day to scenes from the past, and there wasn't always a clear delineation between them. But it wasn't difficult to keep up with the story, I just had to backtrack a couple times. I can't say that I really liked the characters, but I could identify with them and I had no trouble understanding them. I am always a little impressed by this in short stories, because it seems to me that identifiable characters are hard for many to write even in full length novels, so to do so in only 32 pages makes me happy. There are only a few authors that I've seen write stories this short (or shorter) that have well-written characters, and they are among my favorite authors. I take this as a sign that I may need to search out more of Swirsky's books. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Apr 20, 2013
| Apr 20, 2013
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Apr 20, 2013
| ebook
| ||||||||||||||
167
| 
| 0833510894
| 9780833510891
| 3.72
| 916,861
| 1595
| May 01, 1998
|
Romeo & Juliet; Or: How Verona High Society Was Devastated Due To Two Kids Who Couldn't Keep It In Their Pants for 24 Hours. This story is only a...more Romeo & Juliet; Or: How Verona High Society Was Devastated Due To Two Kids Who Couldn't Keep It In Their Pants for 24 Hours. This story is only a tragedy in the sense that, through their stupidity and selfishness, Romeo & Juliet caused others to suffer. When we meet Romeo, he's in the throes of grief over Rosalind, who he is "in love" with, but who is not interested in him. Oh, he's in a right tizzy over her. The sun shines out her ass and all that, and the world is just a pit of despair without her in his arms, yada yada yada. Then, OH HAPPY COINCIDENCE, he learns that she'll be at the Capulets' place for a party, so he can go stare creepily at her for a while, and just be in her presence. (Wonder if they had restraining orders back then?) Anyway, while at the party, Romeo blinks and forgets Rosalind completely, because pretty girl! And... is that...? Why yes. That IS the sun shining out of her ass. Someone must have just misplaced their flashlight at Rosalind's rear, because now that he's seen the true sun, there is OBVIOUSLY no comparison in the brilliance of the light. We're told in the beginning of the story that Montague and Capulet have this feud thing going on. I dunno why, they just do. Makes for a convenient conflict. Tybalt, of Clan Capulet, recognizes Romeo, and thinks he's there to start shit. Remember - feud. So, he makes to fight him, but is shouted down... so he just files it away for future reference. AIN'T NO MONTAGUE GON' COME UP IN DIS CRIB, YO! Romeo gets all kissy with Juliet. Juliet gets all swoony (it was her first kiss, being all of almost-14 and all), and within a few hours they are engaged. The next day they are married. Taking things slow. As a lovely wedding gift, Romeo kills Juliet's cousin Tybalt. Well, I mean, Tybalt started it! *stamps foot* He TOTALLY killed Mercutio FIRST! DANG! And so he's banished from Verona. Verona Death Count: 2 Juliet loses her shit. Romeo loses her shit. (That's not a typo. Even Friar Lawrence calls Romeo out for crying like a little bitch.) I would like to take a moment right now to talk about Juliet's moment of losing her shit. Because it is just a moment. Her nurse, who goodness knows needs to be slapped at the best of times, can't be trusted to relay a message accurately, and essentially mindfucks Juliet into thinking for a goodish chunk of time that it's Romeo who is dead. Understandably, Juliet is distraught at the thought that her boyfriend of 12 hours/husband of 3 hours is dead, and she didn't even give up her maidenhead yet (not making this up... she literally laments the fact that he'd not taken her to bed yet)... So, when Nurse FINALLY sets her straight that her boyfriend isn't the murdered but the murderer... Juliet is relieved, happy, and sees this as a comfort. She sees the murder of her lifelong cousin at the hands of a dude she's known for 12 hours and who previously was a sworn enemy... a comfort. And she didn't even know if the sex was good yet. O_o Anyway... So, like... They meet up that night, Juliet finally finds out how the sex is (apparently good enough - WHEW!) and in the morning, Romeo leaves town (banished), and Juliet's kindhearted father promises her to Paris (who I am sure is a nice man, but apparently he ain't no Romeo) and when Juliet refuses, he casts her out. Well, he leaves the option for her to be uncast her out if she agrees to marry Paris. He's a good dad. So accommodating and caring. She demands Friar Lawrence to help her, so he gives her a potion to allow her to fake her death. She lies to Mummy and Daddy that she'll marry Paris, and then fake-offs herself. Much sadness ensues. The Friar tries to tell Romeo of this plan, but his letter was waylaid, and he found out about Juliet's death through another messenger who didn't know it wasn't real, and he makes haste back to Fair Verona to real-off himself to spend eternity with his wife. Of two days, if my count is right at this point. Apparently Paris also had the thought of going to visit Juliet, and he meets Romeo, they fight, and Paris dies. Verona Death Count: 3 Romeo offs himself. Juliet offs herself. Verona Death Count: 4 & 5 The parents show up with the prince, who after about 5 minutes' investigation into the events, basically says "See what this stupid feud did? Everyone loses." So, unless I missed someone in my accounting, Romeo and Juliet caused 2 1/2 deaths per day of their marriage. Could you imagine the state of Verona had they NOT both killed themselves out of angst-ridden lust? The moral of this story: Just have sex and get it out of your system. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Apr 09, 2013
| Apr 09, 2013
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Apr 09, 2013
| School & Library Binding
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166
| 
| 1301845477
| 9781301845477
| 3.92
| 147
| Jan 13, 2013
| Jan 17, 2013
|
3.5 Stars I wasn't really sure what to expect from this one going in, but I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the story much more t...more 3.5 Stars I wasn't really sure what to expect from this one going in, but I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the story much more than I thought that I would, especially considering that, despite what MrsJ claims, I am not really a romance reader. Occasionally I'll dip a toe into romance, but it's not really my genre of choice. So, I actually liked this. It was a bit over the top, and in the middle I started feeling like it was getting repetitive with the antics and mishaps, but, thankfully, the book overheard me, and moved along. I thought that the characters were fleshed out pretty well, and I liked seeing things from both Penelope's and Charles' perspectives. I particularly enjoyed Madame Bellafraunde. She reminded me quite a lot of Lord Akeldama from the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger... Only, you know, not vampiric. Apparently I find Fashionistas in Regency fiction appealing, despite being abysmally fashion-backwards myself. I enjoyed the progression of the story, though the ending felt a little rushed. But I thought that the tension was done well, and that the little chips in Charles' ice-facade were well-placed and mostly well-timed. His situation, with Lydia, was a little coincidental, but of course it had to be something. I did think that his history though was a little much. It's a little much to believe that Charles would have fallen so many times for so many different women, all of whom would try the exact same snare tactic in such a short period of time. I think it would have really only needed one to put Charles' guard up, not 3 or 4 or... however many there really were. I also noticed several typos and misused words in the text. For instance, "bucked" was used instead of "bucket", "peak" instead of "peek", and "breath" instead of "breathe". "Of" and "off" were mixed up more than once as well. I noticed that the frequency of typos increased the further along in the story I got - the beginning was quite clean and well edited. Overall, this was a fun read, and I enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to fans of Regency romance easily. Disclaimer: I received a free e-book copy of this book for review from the author. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Mar 15, 2013
| Mar 23, 2013
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Mar 15, 2013
| ebook
| ||||||||||||||
165
| 
| 0446602205
| 9780446602204
| 3.99
| 339
| 1995
| Feb 15, 2001
|
I've never read any Witch World books, or anything of Andre Norton's, to be honest, so when my friend chose The Key of the Keplian for her group's boo...more
I've never read any Witch World books, or anything of Andre Norton's, to be honest, so when my friend chose The Key of the Keplian for her group's book of the month, I agreed to read it and participate in the discussion. Unfortunately, I can't say that I enjoyed it much. I wanted to like it much more than I did, but I kept being distracted by the writing and storytelling, and I couldn't get into the story enough to be able to overlook the issues that were bothering me. I think part of the issue is that, though this is the first book in a story arc within Witch World's overall series, it is not the introductory point, nor does it make a very good one, in my opinion. Technically, it can be read as a standalone - the story is complete enough for that, in that there's a beginning, middle, and end - but I think that lack of prior Witch World experience hurt more than it helped. There was a lot of content that assumed the reader knew the reference, so explanations were either not forthcoming, leading to random sentences that just didn't make sense, or an explanation came after it would have been helpful to the reader. Here are two examples: First, this: The Keplians had an ability to handle evil at closer quarters, where humans would faint from the stench of the Dark.I made a note here that said, and I quote: "Uhhhh, what?" This was especially baffling, considering that there were no Keplians present during the final Boss fight - only humans, and none of them had fainted at the appalling stench of evil. Second, a passage relating a joke shared between two characters: "He's a nice old man but very stuffy and pompous. It was kind of him to ride all the way out here and he only came to go over our fortifications for us. But he would keep on about the importance of having escape passages. We should have at least two, one known only to us. We were both sitting there trying to look interested and he just kept on and on. The next thing, I had this picture--" She broke off to snicker again while Eleeri waited patiently. "It came from Jerrany. It was of Lord Terne as a burrower, digging tunnels madly all underneath the keep until the whole thing fell in on him. Then this burrower with his face sat up in all the dust looking so surprised. I couldn't help it." She was laughing again, and visualizing it all. So was Eleeri.I didn't get the joke until later, when it's explained that a burrower is a "small stout animal who did indeed have an air of surprised pompousness about them." Until then, I failed to see what was funny. I mean, that's a small, throwaway scene, but it's a good one to illustrate my point. If there was no explanation that a burrower is an animal, I'd have been completely confused. As it was, the explanation came too late for me to be in on the joke as well. So all I got out of it was bewilderment and then a bit of irritation at the fact that it could have been written in a way to include the reader as well. Eleeri, the main character, isn't from Witch World - she came through a gate from our world, so everything she knows about WW, she had to learn. But she learns it off-screen; the reader is never involved in the process, we don't get to learn about the world with her, but what's more aggravating is that we're only told that she has learned something immediately before it will benefit her to use the knowledge in some way. So not only did this book constantly tell rather than show, but it also seemed extremely convenient and coincidental how things just fell into place for Eleeri. Everything was incredibly easy for her. She makes "intuitive leaps" several times that left me baffled when I tried to connect the dots. I could not figure out what either piece had to do with the other, but obviously it made perfect sense to Eleeri. Either that or she's the best and luckiest guesser I've ever read about. In fact, only one time did something not go as planned or prepared for, and in that case, her friends showed up in the nick of time to save her. Conveniently. It was very hard for me to care about Eleeri, in general. I felt like I was being kept at arm's length from her because of the writing. At the halfway mark of the story, Eleeri was still being referred to at times as "the girl" - something that bugged me quite a lot. By this point, I believe she was 20 or 21, so she was NOT a girl anymore, and calling her "the girl" just created distance from Eleeri for me. I think Norton was going for a connotation of innocence, but the term also connotes inexperience, naivete, & immaturity, which contradict what I was told and had seen of Eleeri, an independent and proud hunter and warrior. Another example of distancing the reader from the story is the repeated use of "these ones", "these", "this one" etc when referring to people or Keplians. It just seemed dismissive to me. There were times, toward the end, that I understood the use to avoid saying names in a place of power where the names could be used against them - but throughout the story, these terms are used, and it was distracting to me. Likewise with the references to Light and Dark. I get the good vs evil thing, and even that they might have a kind of consciousness or power (even though this was never mentioned in the book, I'm just extrapolating here) - but the way they were constantly named and referred to, in capitalized form, just seemed so cliched and distracting to me. Finally, there was the "romance" plotline. *sigh* As soon as the love interest's name was introduced, before I'd even met the guy, I knew exactly where this was going and how it'd get there. It was predictable in the extreme. By the end, I was just waiting for it to happen - I no longer cared. Though, if I'm brutally honest, I will say that I harbored a small hope that Norton would pull the rug out from under me and let Dark win. Alas, that was not to be. I know, I was shocked, too. ;) Anyway, this book didn't work for me, but I have been known to be nitpicky. If you're used to Norton's writing, or looking for a light, not-very-complex story to kill some time with, I'd say go for it. (less) | Notes are private!
| 1
| Mar 05, 2013
| Mar 15, 2013
|
Mar 05, 2013
| Mass Market Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
163
| 
| 3.96
| 272
| Feb 13, 2013
| Feb 13, 2013
|
This was a fun little story. It took quite a while for it to get going, there was a lot of build up and intro type stuff, but once it really started c...more
This was a fun little story. It took quite a while for it to get going, there was a lot of build up and intro type stuff, but once it really started chugging along, it was hilarious and fun. Also, I just want to clarify that I'm not complaining much about the intro stuff - too often, short stories skim over that stuff when they shouldn't. But I will admit that it took a pretty good chunk of time for the story to even start on the paranormal stuff. I was beginning to wonder why it was called "Undead Sublet" at one point. It felt like a standard fiction story, not paranormal at all, so it was a little bit of a "Huh?" moment for me when the vampire finally made his appearance. But, like I said, that is a little thing. I really liked the story, and the characters, and the humor. I might have to read more of Molly Harper's stories if they are all this funny. There were some moments that definitely had me giggling out loud. I also really enjoyed the cooking references, and I was getting hungry while some of Tess's concoctions were being described. The human ones, not the vampiric. But speaking of the vampire diet, I did like the name of their blood substitute, Faux Type-O. It's much better than lame-o TrueBlood. My one actual complaint would be regarding the reader on this one. She did pretty well, overall, but I hated how she read the guys, and the other female characters of Half-Moon Hollow all kind of sounded like they'd taken to huffing helium. The accents were right though, even switching back and forth between them, and that's kind of impressive. So, overall, a fun story. Definitely worth reading. :)(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Feb 28, 2013
| Mar 2013
|
Feb 28, 2013
| Audiobook
| ||||||||||||||||
161
| 
| 0765328666
| 9780765328663
| 4.00
| 5,672
| Aug 07, 2012
| Aug 07, 2012
|
Ugh. This will be a rant... Just warning you ahead of time. Seriously, I'm pretty annoyed right now. I just finished Girl of Nightmares, and I'm really...more Ugh. This will be a rant... Just warning you ahead of time. Seriously, I'm pretty annoyed right now. I just finished Girl of Nightmares, and I'm really wondering why Kendare Blake went the New Moon direction with the story rather than the rather more interesting and meaningful and purposeful "Let's save my Dad" direction. Because she could have, easily, and it would have been a better story for it. I mean, this duology had the potential to be amazing. Book one was almost there, but the stupid romance instant connection THAT I STILL DON'T GET AND WAS COMPLETELY POINTLESS (other than making me want to throatpunch the main character every 3 or 4 pages), and it sapped the awesome right out. Book two started with that awesome-deficient romance-y, mopey, ghost-longing shell of a story, and then proceeded to stab it repeatedly with the plot line from New Moon. Which, I mean, is less a stab than a kind of wet and pathetic flopping, but you catch my drift, right? At one point, I was calling the main character Casbella. Because that's pretty much how I thought of Cas in this book. He was no longer the witty, sarcastic teen from book one... now he's a mopey little bitch who can't explain why he loves or is drawn to Anna but he JUST IS! GAH! CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?! *foot stomp* Nevermind the fact that she's dead. Nevermind the fact that they spent less than 9 months "together". Nevermind that they have nothing in common except an unwillingness to change their clothes. They are in lurrrrrrve. So Cas needs to save her from the awful meaniepoopoohead that oh yeah... alsohappenedtokillCas'sfather... if we want to be specific. But he's PICKING on ANNA! *stomps foot* I can't even begin to generate enough angst to impersonate Cas. Because there isn't enough in my body... or even my neighborhood. And there's a school two blocks away. *deep breath* OK. Before, I said that this could have been a better story if Blake had gone in a different direction with it. Lemme 'splain why I feel that way. First, some points: 1) the Obeahman murdered Cas's dad when Cas was 7, and since then, Cas has been researching and training to fight and kill the creature that killed his dad. 2) Anna, the dead luuuuuuuuurve of Cas's life, dragged the Obeahman out of the world at the end of book 1. 3) Anna then started to appear to Cas (shades of Edward in New Moon), because apparently cutting her with the athame one time linked her to it, and he decided to save her. 4) The "saving" involved Cas and Thomas and Carmel meeting the Order of the Black Dagger, who let Cas cross over to try to save her... where he does so, and ohyeahhisdadistheretoo. Yes. His father, the murdered guy who helped bring Cas into being and who saved people from murderous spirits is relegated to a damn AFTERTHOUGHT! WHY was saving his DAD not the plot, since we KNOW he is linked to the athame since it's been a bloodline weapon since page ONE. Why go in the "I have no meaning in my life without her" route? SHE IS DEAD ALREADY, and cursed or not, had killed dozens of people, and again, their "relationship" was only a period of months. There was no meaning there. Not like there is in a parent/child relationship. So shunting the "I do this to avenge my father" purpose to a fucking afterthought in favor of 200+ pages of whiny teen brooding is just... It's SO AGGRAVATING. Just... whatever. I'm done here.  (less)
| Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Dec 31, 2012
| Jan 2013
|
Dec 31, 2012
| Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
162
| 
| 0385534639
| 9780385534635
| 3.99
| 154,610
| Sep 01, 2010
| Sep 13, 2011
|
I never expected to like this book. Just from the title I knew it wasn't for me, but so many people spoke highly of the book, so I read some reviews.....more
I never expected to like this book. Just from the title I knew it wasn't for me, but so many people spoke highly of the book, so I read some reviews... And my opinion remained the same. This wasn't for me. Nothing about it appealed to me, and so I had no interest in ever reading it. But, it was chosen for my bookclub, and so I read it. Technically. And now I am going to rant about why I wish I hadn't. In detail, which means there's gonna be spoilery stuff, probably. Here we go: I don't like reading about circuses or parties or scenes of revelry and dreamlike wonder. I don't like reading about unrestrained, no-holds-barred magic that is only limited by the imagination of the magician, with no boundaries or explanation of how it works. I don't like magical realism. I don't like endless descriptions of every-fucking-thing ever. I don't like books without a point or plot or reason for existing beyond their own wank. And I REALLY don't like insta-love and completely unrealistic "love will find a way" stories. (And don't give me crap about it being fantasy either. That's just a shit cop-out for lazy storytelling.) Annnnnnnd since that's exactly what this book was, it should come as no surprise that I did not enjoy it. I know. I'll give you a moment for this revelation to settle.  Why hello there, Clock. Fancy meeting you here! ...Are you following me? Ugh. Reading this (or I should say listening to it- but more on that in a bit) was mind-numbingly tedious and just all around awful. I can't think of a single thing that I enjoyed about this book. I can't even say, "Oh the writing was good" because the writing was so fucking purple that I feel like the Purple People Eater mistakenly ate something that didn't agree with him, perhaps one of the oh-so-interesting guests at Mr. Lefevre's parties, mmm? And then it shat out this book.  He looks pleased with himself. So we have ENDLESS descriptions of parties, endless descriptions of the food at the parties, and the people at the parties, and the clothes the people at the parties are wearing, and how OH SO EXCLUSIVE the parties are, which is good, because for fucking fuck's sake if I had to endure MORE guest descriptions I think I might really have ice-picked my own face. Then we have ENDLESS descriptions of the circus, and the tents in the circus, and the ground at the circus, all of the signs at the circus and on the individual tents, and the food at the circus, and the non-tent attractions at the circus, and everything you can imagine at a circus and even 50 things you can't. And let's not stop at one example, or two examples, let's have ALL of the examples. If there's 12 chimes on the CLOCK during the lighting of the bonfire and each corresponds to an arrow fired into the cauldron where the fire will soon be lit, we have to have every last one of them described, in detail, with the seconds leading up to the first chime spelled out too (DRAW, NOTCH, PULL....RELEASE!). Described to the point of brainmush, in fact. Perhaps Erin Morgenstern thinks she's the only person on the planet with any imagination, because her descriptions left absolutely nothing for anyone else to imagine. Oh, no, I take that back. We get to imagine all the stuff she DIDN'T describe to death... or even bother to include. You know, like the plot. Or the magical education specifics. Or the moves in the OH SO IMPORTANT Challenge (capital C) that is apparently, supposedly, the point of this book's and the circus's existence. We are allowed to imagine that stuff, because, though we're told that they exist, THESE things are apparently not even important enough to warrant any explanation at all. Not when we have super vital things like CLOCKS to describe and hint at incessantly! Speaking of the Challenge-slash-Duel-slash-Competition thing... Could it have possibly been more lame? "The first move has occurred. The earth shook and I felt a disturbance in the Force!" "What was the move? What does it mean? What happens now? Does this mean this story is going to actually start soon?" "Hmm? What move? OH, hey! Wanna see my dress? Let me describe it to you!..." "FML. I can't even. I just.... Can't."  And that's the duel, until the point when *gasp* THIRTY YEARS AFTER BEING BOUND TO THE CHALLENGE, they find out what the fucking stakes are... and then they do (wait for it...) Nothing. The universe does all the work and these two "main characters" just get moved around like chess pieces. Only chess pieces have a purpose, unlike Marco and Celia. Moving on... I hated the way the story jumped around in time. And I REALLY REALLY hated the lapses into 2nd person narrative to take me inside the circus. I don't like circuses, and especially don't like magical, whimsical circuses of dreams (imagine me saying that with as much disgusted sarcasm as possible). I don't give two craps about the endless I would also love to know how a pregnant woman in the late 19th, early 20th century would know that she's having twin babies, specifically. There was no sonograms back then, no ultrasounds to show Mom and Dad their little bun(s) in the oven, so short of X-ray vision, or some sort of precognition (which seems more likely), there's no way that anyone could have known. But no explanation is given for that little tidbit. We're just supposed to say, "OK then!" and let our eyes glaze over with the next 15 or 20 mentions of clocks, I guess. And then there's Jim Dale, who read the audio. I just can't stand him. I just can't. His voice and reading style make me angry. I hate when readers have to do the voices and can't let characters speak for themselves. He gave these characters voices that completely clashed with my impressions of them, and it was distracting. Not that any of the characters were truly remarkable on their own, but I'd rather them be unremarkable than memorable for being a distraction from their own story. But, speaking of characters, I didn't care about any of them. At all. Literally. I couldn't have cared less if an enormous sinkhole opened up and swallowed up the entire circus. No big loss. None of the characters were real enough for me to care about. Oh, we're told all about their personalities and whatnot, but for all Morgenstern's showing of everything else, her characterization leaves quite a lot to be desired. Marco apparently thinks it's OK to lead on his girlfriend for years, while cheating on her RIGHT UNDER HER NOSE... but that's OK, because he just erases those memories. No harm, no foul! Celia is just a Mary Sue. I actually forgot that "the illusionist" was her sometimes, because both could have been anyone. There's absolutely nothing interesting about her at all. Her magical abilities aren't a substitution for personality, you know. Celia doesn't even say Marco's name until the last 3rd of the book, and then only at his specific request. But I'm supposed to believe they are in love. Uh huh. But they have to be in love, otherwise the Love Shall Overcome deus ex machina trope that needs to die a horrible painful death would be out of place! Can't figure out how to legitimately get out of the corner you wrote yourself into? It doesn't matter! As long as the two Insta-Lovebirds are together, nothing can harm them or happen to them. The universe will (apparently) conspire to bring about the one solution that will be timed perfectly (know what shows the time? CLOCKS.) and will make EVERYONE a winner. Because everyone gets their reward if they just show up and then give up. Whenever there's a winner, there's also a loser, and losers are sad. The universe won't let you be sad, so it'll change EVERYTHING around to make sure everyone's a winner! No hurt feelings here! You'd think, that by the end, the glorious, long-awaited end, I'd have known better than to assume that there would be a proper ending, or any kind of sacrifice or trial or... broken nails or even a dirty dress or SOMETHING. Nah. Silly me. The end was so ridiculously "perfect", and fell together so effortlessly, that the ridiculousness actually cost me IQ points. What was the point of So. There's no point, endless, tedious descriptions of things I couldn't care less about, the lamest conflict EVAR, and insta-love to boot.  I wish I could give this negative stars.(less) | Notes are private!
| Barb
|
1
| Jan 17, 2013
| Jan 19, 2013
|
Dec 21, 2012
| Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
157
| 
| 1416503862
| 9781416503866
| 3.70
| 703
| 2010
| Apr 20, 2010
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This book was a 2 star, middle of the road, didn't hate it, didn't love it, it was OK kinda read until the last 40 pages or so. At 40 pages from the e...more
This book was a 2 star, middle of the road, didn't hate it, didn't love it, it was OK kinda read until the last 40 pages or so. At 40 pages from the end, I stopped reading, stared at the book, and asked it: "Are you fucking kidding?!!" It didn't answer, probably because I'd shamed it into silence, but the answer is no, it was not fucking kidding.  Lemme back up a bit and work up to my vocal incredulity. This book was selected as the November book in my real life bookclub. And so I read it. I was assured that the author is "hilarious" and "smart" and that I would "probably love this book". Huh. Not so much. I'm gonna talk about what led me to stare down and then yell at this book now, so if you have intentions of reading this book, or just don't want me to ruin it for you, stop reading right about.... Now. Let the rant commence. OK, so, we start this book with Charlotte grieving, unable to get out of bed or deal with her day without a plan. Through her memories, we see her daily morning interaction with her absent husband, Matthew - how she's a horrible morning person, how he would tease her that her right side is still sleeping and tell her left side not to wake her, etc. So cute, sweet, loving... *HURK*. Oh, 'scuse me. I just ate. Anyway, so, we add together Grief + Missing Adorable Husband, and we end up with the assumption that he's dead. Turn that in to the professor and we get a big red FAIL for faulty logic. He's not dead... he's just estranged. And Charlotte is a fucking wreck. Alrighty... I don't know how long they were together before they got married, but from the bits and pieces of their courtship, where Mattypoo is impossibly adorable in spite of (if not because of) his OCD, which necessitated Charlotte learning his mannerisms and body language, meaning that she is The Only One Who Gets Him, I really did not get the impression that it was very long. Maybe a year? Then they were married for 5 months, when seemingly out of the blue, Mattypoo says he's moving out. Which he does, until a month later when he changes his mind and comes back home. Which sends Charlotte into a mental crisis tailspin of worry and doubt and what-the-fuckery where she ends up masturbating on the cold bathroom floor in the middle of the night, before skeeving herself out and then scrubbing said floor at 3am. Charlotte: OMG! My beloved husband left me! This is terrible... I'm sad. -Later- Charlotte: He's back! Wait. Why? Why is he back? Did he sleep with someone and now he feels guilty? Did that someone (who is, of course, blonde and beautiful, and utterly uninhibited) do things that I would never let him do, so now that oat is sowed (sown?) and he can come back? Does he love me? I love him. I don't know if he loves me. But he came back. But he left. He loves me though... he came back. But he doesn't. (At this point, I was like "DID YOU TRY FUCKING ASKING HIM WHY HE LEFT?! *slap slap*) Charlotte, cont'd: He loves/doesn't love me. Everything is falling apart. If I don't have him I don't exist... but he doesn't want me... or maybe he just doesn't want to be alone. Or maybe blah blah blah blah [edited for brevity]... *Complete breakdown/bathroom scene* And that is how, after being unable to cope with her husband deciding to leave OR stay, SHE decides to leave HIM... apparently in order to save her marriage. Or... something. 'Or something' because she somehow thinks that makes sense... She makes absolutely ZERO effort to discuss anything with him, aside from inviting him to her family functions, because she insists on pretending as though there's nothing wrong at all to her family, while at the same time acting as though the sun just fell out of the sky to her friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and casual passersby, whom she expects to behave the same way. She could make a silent indy film called THE PERPETUAL DARKNESS OF A MATTHEWLESS WORLD. In miniature. Cannes would love it. (Remember the miniature part. This will be important later.) Seriously, her behavior at this point in the story (pre-incredulosity, remember) is so out of proportion to the situation that I was hoping something really awful would happen to her just for some perspective. (It didn't.) So anyway, then she makes a new friend, who introduces her to roller derby, which performs the oh-so-painful-but-necessary role of distracting her from her miserable, fucked up life, while at the same time teaching her confidence, and, umm confidence, and... conf-Zzzzzzzz...  But not really. Because she's still clinically UN-FUCKING-ABLE to make a goddamn decision about what she wants to do with her life. Or even cope with being a human. There was the part where a male friend is going through a mini-crisis of his own, and she hugs him, during which he kisses her on the cheek/corner of her mouth, and she freaks the hell out. Going into a panic attack/crying fit because a "man has touched her" and she can't cope with that. As if she'd been raped or assaulted or something, rather than just having her husband leave her and then come back. How traumatizing!! Have I mentioned she's 30? She's MY AGE. And I am a Libra, and as such, I am technically allowed to be indecisive. But for shit's sake, I don't think that a break up with a boy EVER incapacitated me to this level of stagnation... not even when I was in full on BOYS ARE THE UNIVERSE mode at 15. I don't even think that I'd get that way now if The Boy and I were to split, and we've been together 24 times the length of Charlotte's pathetic ass Kardashian marriage. But I digress. Friend > roller derby > other shit which is too pointless to mention > leads to a Much Needed Girls' Getaway Vacation. (Brace yourself, the incredularity is coming soon.) During the MNGGV, Friend asks Charlotte, "What did he do to you?" And this is where Charlotte breaks her long silence and tells Friend what led to Mattypoo leaving in the first place. (Ready?) She is a miniature artist. By which I mean to say that she makes small things and displays them as art. Shortly after the wedding, she did a show, wherein a gallery owner got all flirty with Charlotte and Mattypoo got jealous. Mattypoo's not real good with his words (despite being a LAWYER!!) and so he tells her to keep him out of that aspect of her life... Until one day he gets drunk, comes home, they argue... and he breaks her miniatures. And I quote: "He opened the door and threw the scraps of my work out onto the porch.And then this... "'He left two weeks later. I think he couldn't handle what he'd done.' I just... I can't. He didn't hit her. He didn't call her a whore for allowing Gallery Guy to flirt with her. He didn't threaten her. They argued, and he broke the miniature art piece that she had been working on. Which ruined their marriage and sent Charlotte into an 18 month long depression. Oh yes, you heard right. 18 months. The depression was longer than their marriage, and possibly longer than their entire relationship. Over a broken miniature art piece that they couldn't find it within themselves to work past.  Aside from the utter fucking ridiculous catalyst for the entire story, I didn't find anything particularly funny, though it was definitely trying, and I didn't like the writing all that much either. Things just randomly happen, huge time jumps occur and suddenly it's 1, or 5, or 18 months later, with no feeling of change or progress at all. Charlotte's nicknames are both "clever" references to her emotional state: Char (as in burned) and Hard Broken/Broke-Broke/Broken. And of course by the end, after all her Roller Derby Confidence Fixes Everything, she dumps the jerkbag and scores a date with the hottie from roller derby with the crush on her that she never gave two seconds thought to previously. I'm trying to think, and I can't come up with a single redeeming thing about this book at all. Overall, I'd describe the entire book as TSTL. It felt like it was trying too hard to be unique or quirky or something, but just felt cliched. Add in completely unlikable characters I couldn't identify with in any way, and a catalyst that's TSTFB (too stupid to fucking believe), and I want my wasted time back. (less) | Notes are private!
| Jess
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1
| Nov 06, 2012
| Nov 08, 2012
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Nov 06, 2012
| Paperback
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158
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| 045146317X
| 9780451463173
| 4.51
| 27,505
| Mar 18, 2010
| Apr 06, 2010
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 Yup. That about sums it up. Holy craptoid this book was intense. I know that I said that I found Turn Coat to be predictable, but Changes was anything...more Yup. That about sums it up. Holy craptoid this book was intense. I know that I said that I found Turn Coat to be predictable, but Changes was anything but. It started off with a Whopper and then added jalapenos and Sriracha and some pickled habaneros and holy shit is this going to be regrettable later. I never knew where this was going to go next, and each time another explosive ingredient was added, my intestines clenched.  And on top of that, this book was surprisingly emotional as well. EVERYTHING changes and many things are lost for good. Harry makes choices that I was sure NOTHING would ever cause him to make, and rather than losing respect for him for these choices, I have even more because after 11 prior books and several short stories, it's perfectly clear how dire things would need to be in Harry's view in order to lead to that point. And for him, it was. And it was heartbreaking. I had no trouble at all accepting Harry's reaction to the bomb that was dropped on him regarding Maggie. Though I did think that anyone else would have been there for the wrong (selfish) reasons, but not Harry. He went from zero to Super-Dad in 0.006 seconds. And it made sense. In the very first Dresden story, the short that comes before Storm Front even, we see him go to the wall for a little girl he doesn't know who has no ties to him in any way, so of course for family he'd go through the wall and demolish the house and the ground it's sitting on if necessary. Whatever he needs to do. And though my intestines were clenched, I loved and dreaded every minute of it. I really liked the Red Court/Maya correlation, and I think it makes perfect sense. That's probably what really happened.  Yes. So. Changes. Wow. Awesomeness, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Nov 05, 2012
| Nov 10, 2012
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Nov 05, 2012
| Hardcover
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156
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| 0451462564
| 9780451462565
| 4.42
| 28,380
| Apr 07, 2009
| Apr 07, 2009
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3.5 Stars This book was a little... predictable, in my opinion. Maybe not the supernatural threat in this book, because that was new, but quite a few d...more 3.5 Stars This book was a little... predictable, in my opinion. Maybe not the supernatural threat in this book, because that was new, but quite a few different things were extremely predictable, and I figured out the whodunnit way, way early. I almost never put all the pieces together before Harry does, but in this one, I did... over and over. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the book. I really did. Harry is his usual snarkrageous self, and I loved him. Things got dicey here, and the tension was pretty palpable, especially because I was listening to the audio. The voices were very different than I'd heard the characters in my head, but I still enjoyed the reading quite a lot. Very interested to see where the next one goes. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Nov 03, 2012
| Nov 05, 2012
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Nov 03, 2012
| Hardcover
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155
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| 0156032872
| 9780965818674
| 3.90
| 693,983
| Jul 05, 2003
| 2003
|
I am not a romance reader by nature. That's not to say that I don't enjoy them from time to time, but I just don't usually gravitate toward romance. A...more
I am not a romance reader by nature. That's not to say that I don't enjoy them from time to time, but I just don't usually gravitate toward romance. And to be completely honest, I had absolutely zero intention of reading this book, ever. But then it was chosen as my October Bookclub book, so my intentions just became irrelevant. So, now that I've read it... Umm... Well. I think that this book did have an interesting premise, and in another author's hands, could have been fantastic. But most of the time while reading this, I just kept feeling, well, manipulated and skeptical. All I kept thinking as I read this was how implausible it all was. And I'm not just talking about the time-travel. Just to forewarn you, this long (really long) Ranty McRanter Review may contain spoilery stuff. This book's description says "[...]this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap[...]". Uh huh.  "Impossibly romantic trap"? Well. A trap of some kind, anyway. My biggest issue here is that Clare's life has been entirely determined by Henry, with a little help from his unknown ally, the Catholic Church. Henry's told her what her life is and will be: She will be his wife. And because of her Catholic upbringing, the concept of predestination is not at all foreign to her (remember, God has a plan for us all), and so she accepts it as a matter of course. She sees him as her closest friend, the person who knows the most about her in the world, the person who loves her the most in the world, and as a young girl who is just starting to form ideas about romantic love, I'd imagine that to her he's like a God. An all-knowing (he knows her future) but mysterious (because he won't tell her about it, or anything about himself), unconditionally loving (I don't think I need to explain this one), metaphysical or supernatural being (time traveler, remember?), and who is just waiting for her to accept him (well, actually, just to get old enough to do so). I don't think it's much of a stretch, honestly. So, leaving aside the paradox of their relationship technically being impossible (they only meet in the present because of Henry telling her where they will while visiting Clare in the past), it strikes me as incredibly unfair to Clare that from 6 years old, when she meets a naked man claiming to be a time traveler in the meadow near her house, her life becomes tethered to Henry. Now, I can see a 6 year old accepting a story of a time traveler. A 6 year old's imagination is a wild thing, and children can accept and cope with concepts that would drive adults to drink. But as Clare gets older, and learns more about her life with Henry - that they are married, specifically - it becomes less and less plausible to me that someone would be able to accept that. How does she know that he's not lying to her, or manipulating her into the life he claims she will live with him? She doesn't know anything at all about him other than the fact that he shows up naked in her yard repeatedly and claims to be her husband in the future. To me, the time travel itself isn't enough evidence. He could be a time traveler AND a liar. It just seems to me like a waste. A waste of a life that Clare could have had that would have been fulfilling and satisfying without Henry in it. Considering the fleeting nature of their relationship, and the massive extent of time she spent waiting for him, I just don't think it was worth it, and to me, Henry is incredibly selfish for pursuing that life for her.  The waiting is just endless... And here's where it gets confusing, because Henry believes that the past can't be changed to affect the future, right? So, 42 year old Henry meeting 6 year old Clare in the past leads to 28 year old Henry meeting 20 year old Clare in the present. It's destined because 42 year old Henry's past contains that meeting at 28. Right? But, Henry's theory is kind of crap because the whole thing is a paradox. He went to a past from a future that couldn't have existed UNLESS he changed the past in order to affect the future. And this is another reason why this book felt manipulate-y. I feel like we're not supposed to examine it in this way, and just read it for the love story and the heartbreaking sadness that this time-travel thing causes in the time traveler's wife's life. We're supposed to see this as an epic romance. We're supposed to see the relationship as the central focus, we're supposed to accept this at face value (as everyone accepts Henry's time travel and 20 years worth of him gallivanting around naked in the Newberry Library without losing his job, which is completely plausible, of course) and not give it too much thought, because if we look too closely, we can see there's not much there. Henry is described as something of a player by everyone but Clare. A cheater, a heartbreaker, emotionally unavailable... yet we never see this. Not one time. Ingrid (who we don't see with Henry in a Clareless present) is the bitter, devastated ex, and whatshername Celia? is the one trying to catch Ingrid on the rebound, so of course she's going to play up the Henry-the-Dog thing. But I don't buy it. Pics or it didn't happen, as they say. If you're going to claim someone's a player, you need to back it up - in real life and in fictional time travel stories. Show him time travel back and interrupt his younger self mid-affair. Then I'd believe it.  Whoops! Instead, all we see is Henry the Totally Devoted To Clare. He loves her more than love ever loved love and therefore they are DESTINED, and so it shall be. Henry knows what's going to happen, and therefore he doesn't even try. He just sits back and let's the future come to him. Kendrick's going to be his doctor because he is. It happens because it has already happened. So no need to get all rowdy and make an effort or anything. *Yawn* In fact that's another thing. There's absolutely ZERO conflict in this book. None. Henry gets arrested for indecent exposure on a freeway in 1963? Conveniently he disappears before he's booked. Want something? Take it. Something's weird? Accepted. Family troubles? Just introduce your new wife, then all tension is gone. If there's a snag, it's always a momentary one, and it always works out in the end. UGH. Jeez! Anyway! Where was I? Oh yes, characters. Clare. She is... Well. This is going to be unpopular, but Clare is just an older, slightly (very slightly) less annoying version of Bella Swan. She has no life other than Henry. Her friends become his friends (because it's not like he has any of his own. Oh, wait, his old Korean babysitter counts, I guess). Her life is completely engrossed by his and there's no part of it that is Henryless. She's completely devoted to this guy who had to ship in an extra to appear at his own wedding because he's too unreliable to actually be there in present time. Just the kind of life every girl dreams of on their big day! :D  Oops, close, but not quite! Supposedly Clare's an artist or something...? Yeah. Something like that. I guess. I live with an artist. And the art TAKES OVER EVERYTHING. There's art and art supplies and potential art supplies and scribbles and drawings and markers and paint and art... just... EVERYWHERE. It's not a hobby, it's a part of the Boy's LIFE. This creative need. So when Clare is described as making stuff like 3 times in the book, complete with step by step directions and an accompanying Create-It-Yourself! shopping list for the reader... it rings false with me. I don't see her as being an artist. I see her as being a toy that Henry picks up and plays with when he's around, and who sits on the shelf and waits for him to come back and play with her again when he's not around. And when it's convenient (aka: will reinforce the romance, like when she sketches Henry), Niffenegger sticks her in a studio with some art supplies and calls her an artist. That's not character development, that's just lazy. Oh but wait, you say, what about the bird sculptures? Oh right, those, how could I forget, because they were so massively important to the story that they were mentioned like one time. Henry's job is mentioned a bazillion times, and Clare's work mentions I could count on one hand. Lazy. For real. The book is called The Time Traveler's WIFE, why is there not more about Clare? Why is there not more TO Clare? And, speaking of shopping lists, seriously, I don't need an entire recipe recitation for each and every meal they eat. And the kinds of meals they eat are ridiculous. I don't believe that a 20 year old and her 2 punk-rock rebel anarchist roommates are drinking merlot and eating wild mushroom risotto. I can't even roll my eyes enough at that shit. But that's not even the best. I mean, Niffenegger's descriptions are insanely long anyway (the quality of the light glinting off of this or that, dew on the thinger I don't care about at all, the texture of the whatchamajig, blah blah blah) but at one point Henry is unpacking groceries and EVERY. SINGLE. ITEM. is listed before getting to the point of the list: a shocker item. THERE WERE 32 ITEMS. THIRTY-EFFING-TWO!! I counted. Unlike Clare, I am not fascinated by celery stalks and cans of creamed corn. So I gave approximately 0% of one shit about 31 of the items that were listed before the SHOCKER ITEM. Gah. Thirty-two. Seriously. Another thing that really bugged me were the miscarriages. There were times that they were written in such a way that I wasn't sure if it was a nightmare of Clare's or reality - I'm still not sure, but I think it was supposed to be reality. I admit to skimming quite a bit, so maybe I missed something. Blood-soaked sheets and bed, and a little tiny fetus breathing its last in her hand? What? Maybe Niffenegger isn't familiar with the stages of fetal development, but lungs are pretty much the last things to develop, so that's just... weird. But then finally, FINALLY Clare gets preggers, with her husband who is time travelling from the past. She cheated on her hubby with her hubby while in bed with her hubby, who is sleeping. But hey, that's OK. They are used to being in bed with each other, eh, 15 year old Henry and 15 year & 6 months old Henry? *elbow nudge* Anyway... Toward the end of the book there are quite a few events that feel manipulative in order to cause a certain event. Henry's feet are important to him. This is drilled into the reader time and again. He runs because he needs to run when he time travels and lands somewhere buck-naked, raising all kinds of suspicions. So of course, something happens to his feet. Not just one, which would have had the same effect, likely, but BOTH. For the shock value. And to me, it was just not necessary at all. Because THE EVENT would probably have happened anyway - it happened in an eyeblink. And the repercussions from that event are... well. We're supposed to be crushed.  I think this book is doing it wrong. I won't lie and say that I wasn't affected, though... but it wasn't because of the characters themselves. It was because I imagine myself in the position of losing someone I love, and know how heartbroken I'd have been. But then I get angry, because in the goodbye letter he leaves for her, the one in which he tells her to live her life and be happy, he mentions - just as an aside, you know!- that he visits her in the far flung future. And that leaves her waiting for him again... for 50+ years. How horribly selfish do you have to be to do that to someone? Is that a comfort? I don't think so. I think it's exactly the opposite. It's torture to make someone wait in uncertainty for over half their life for one brief momentary visit. Such a waste, and the more I think about this book, the more I find to dislike in it. It's not romantic, it's depraved. Yeah... so. I could go on, like about how the different perspectives were written and how even with the abrupt shift in POV I could never tell who was narrating unless I either checked or got lucky and one was talking directly to the other, because there was no difference in character voice at all, but the longer I do, the more annoyed I get, and I have better books I could be reading. (less) | Notes are private!
| Jen
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1
| Oct 21, 2012
| Oct 23, 2012
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Oct 21, 2012
| Paperback
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149
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| B008ONRAAI
| 3.25
| 4
| Jul 25, 2012
| Jul 25, 2012
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Once upon a time there was a girl who read a zombie book she didn't like (What?! I know!!), and wrote a frustration-filled This is the review of that book. (Also, surprise! I'm the girl. :D)  (In case you didn't know.) So, what did I think of "Guns, Booze & Zombies"? Overall, I thought it was on the high end of OK to good scale, but a little spit and elbow-grease would make it really shine. I really enjoyed the concept and setting of this story: A zombie outbreak in Prohibition Era New York. It sounded intriguing - I don't think I've seen a 30s era zombie story before. (I mean, I've seen Nazi Zombies, but that's a whole different set of entrails there.) I was interested to see how Prohibition was worked into the story, and to get the feel for 30s NYC. But as much as I liked the concept, I did have some issues with the execution.  See what I did there? Storywise, it was a little too skewed toward the "tell" side of the spectrum, and I wanted more "show". The Prohibition aspect felt sadly lacking, as was the Depression. They were mentioned, of course, but I never truly felt the impact of either one. They never felt like hardships. Benson is evicted, but since the story moves almost right into Escape From Zombie New York, the impact is dulled and I felt as if it was almost unimportant. For another example, we're told that Benson Doss and Emma have rekindled their romance, but this doesn't quite mean anything because 1) we didn't know they had one in the first place, and 2) randomly meeting up in a speakeasy and having a few drinks doesn't exactly scream "rekindled romance" to me. That says, "They're friends, and she's a forward thinking kind of gal that will buy a down-on-his-luck guy a drink." For me to believe the romantic aspect, I wanted to see them react to each other, be attracted to each other, to maybe talk things through and discuss where attempt #1 went sour, commit to trying again, that sort of thing. All of which I missed. I wanted to really know the characters, and care about them, but I didn't really get that as much as I'd have liked. In fairness, this is a novella - it's only 117 pgs on my Nook. But there's a lot of stuff packed in those pages, and I feel like a little more focus on the characters would have brought a bigger impact when bad things happen to them. For example, when we find out about a character's softer side, which leads into a side plot, I was able to sympathize with him more and wanted things to work out for him. But I didn't really feel anything close to that connection with any of the other characters. Two other big story issues affected my enjoyment of this one. First, the side plot I mentioned was never resolved. Maybe there's a 2nd book in the works, which wouldn't be a bad idea, since the second issue I have is the twist at the end which came out of left field. It was just... OK, maybe not as unbelievable as one aspect towards the end was... (view spoiler)[The group of remaining survivors meet up with the Army, and the commander instantly knows who Benson Doss is, and turns over command to him...? My suspension of disbelief turned into a lead weight on that one. (hide spoiler)]... but still out of left field. Finally, my last issue is with the lack of editing. This book is badly in need of an editor. I mention this because, to my knowledge, I was sent a copy of the final, for-sale version. There were quite a lot of misused words, missing commas, unnecessary semi-colons, misspellings, and awkward syntax all over the place. Every instance of the word "quiet" was misspelled "quite", "site" and "sight" were used interchangeably, among other misuses. Also, it seemed that words were switched out in favor of "better" ones that made the sentence awkward in many cases. Often, the simpler word will fit more naturally into the sentence than a less commonly used one. Example: "We allow the team to gather some excess sleep." This just feels clunky to me. It would feel much more natural as "We allow the team to get some additional sleep." I actually did enjoy the story, though, despite my complaints above - I was interested in seeing where it went and what happened, and if there was an explanation for everything. I really enjoyed the goriness of the fighting, and liked, oddly enough, the sentimentality some held toward their loved ones turned flesh-eating-corpses. I would be interested in reading the sequel, if there should be one. I definitely think that G. Joseph has potential. He's one to watch. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jul 28, 2012
| Jul 31, 2012
|
Jul 28, 2012
| Kindle Edition
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147
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| 0307238024
| 9780307238023
| 3.68
| 357
| May 01, 1991
| Jul 25, 2006
|
If it weren't for my bookclub, I probably would never have even heard of this book. But it was chosen, and so I read it. I finished it in less than a...more
If it weren't for my bookclub, I probably would never have even heard of this book. But it was chosen, and so I read it. I finished it in less than a day, so it's compelling enough, I'm just not sure I can say exactly why. This is just the story of a family, the Hazens, trying to make it season by season, year after year, living close to and off of the land, and with faith. They don't work 9 to 5 jobs so that they can go down to the Super Wal-Mart to pick up the things they need. Instead, Susan grows their vegetables, Gary and their sons hunt or fish for their meat, they barter for goods, etc. That's not to say that they are completely cut off from modernity - Gary does odd jobs for money to buy generators and freezers and such, and surely to pay taxes, though that wasn't mentioned specifically, but they try to live by an ideal of respect for the land and simplicity. The two boys, Gary David (24) and Kevin (19) were raised to this life... but Kevin is itching to get out of it. He's the first in their family, ever, to go to college, and hates that he feels trapped by obligation to live a life he's no longer sure he wants. He's got a liberal vegetarian girlfriend who doesn't believe in killing animals for any reason, including meat, and she tries to get Kevin to refuse to hunt in the upcoming season. Gary David is more accepting of the lifestyle they choose to live and responsible, a role he sees as being necessary as the first born, but in his own way he's rebelling too, by choosing a life with someone not North Country born, and in a position of authority over the Hazens - an Environmental Conservation Officer, investigating the Hazens for a reported hunting violation. The story begins with a prologue from Susan's perspective, recounting the early morning departure of the three men on hunting season opening morning, and leaves us with a sort of aimless sense of foreboding. The remainder of the book takes us through the weeks leading up to that day, and we get to see how the Hazens live and interact with each other and their community. Gary and Kevin are drifting apart. They both want life on their own terms, but their terms are completely opposite, and so they butt heads and each resent the other for making things difficult and not understanding the other's perspective. Gary's lifestyle is a tradition based on necessity that's no longer truly necessary in this society of modernity. He doesn't understand how life could be fulfilling in any other way. His lifestyle gives him purpose and a sense of accomplishment, as well as an ingrained respect for the nature around him. Kevin just sees it as a ball and chain holding him back from his own chosen path. To tell the truth, not very much happens in this book. There's not very much conflict, aside from the familial type I mentioned above. There are a lot of beautiful descriptions of the Adirondacks and the community in which the Hazens live, but for much of the book, what I've written above just about covers it. It's definitely a slowly building story, which makes the end and the resolution feel like it was on super fast-forward, unfortunately. This book's told in quite a lot of different perspective chapters, all in 1st person narrative except for Kevin's chapters, which are in 3rd person. I honestly do not have any idea why Kevin was singled out for a different narrative style. It really doesn't make sense to me. The only thing I can figure is that we're supposed to associate the difference in narrative with the foreboding from the prologue, and it's supposed to generate some suspense and worry about what will happen to Kevin. And I guess, in a way, there was that, because obviously it came to mind, but mainly it just stood out like a sore thumb. And even now, after finishing the story, I still have no idea why the choice was made to change the narrative for Kevin. His perspective could easily have been written to match the others, and in my opinion, would have worked better that way. Third person created a distance from him that I didn't want. I wanted to know him as I knew everyone else in the story. Why should I get to hear the innermost thoughts of a waitress that is only in the story for a few pages here and there, but be kept distant from one of the main, pivotal characters? Frustrating. Coming back to the ending, I have to admit it was a bit of a let-down. There was all this build-up, all this manufactured suspense, and then the main event is completely skipped, and we only see the outcome, with an explanation of what apparently happened from those who weren't there. And then the epilogue is just a pat, too conveniently perfect resolution, one that doesn't fit what I know of the characters. Honestly, I wish that the epilogue had been left off. I think the ending would have been better that way, even if it was problematic. One other note about the writing. Some of the phrasing and sentence structure was a bit awkward, and I'd have to read a line 2 or 3 times to get what was being said. It felt like it was trying too hard to be beautiful prose, and it didn't need to try at all. In fact, considering the stark way of life they chose, less would have been more. Overall though, I can't say that I disliked the book. I read it in less than a day, and something about it kept me turning the pages. I don't know what that was, but it was there. (less) | Notes are private!
| Kenny
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1
| Jul 07, 2012
| Jul 07, 2012
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Jul 07, 2012
| Paperback
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148
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| 0061430226
| 9780061430220
| 3.92
| 2,495
| Aug 02, 2007
| Jan 29, 2008
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I am not a fan of verse even free verse. I like proper grammar and paragraphs and commas. So I was wary about reading this book when I saw crazy staggerin...more I am not a fan of verse even free verse. I like proper grammar and paragraphs and commas. So I was wary about reading this book when I saw crazy staggering lines of text wandering around my nook screen. *** But a friend's review made me reconsider and so I read the book and I mostly liked it. Mostly. Mostly because I still don't like verse even when it's free. Also because I want to see the picture that is being painted not just be told what it's of. I feel like too much of Sharp Teeth was telling telling telling and not enough showing. And the book is kind of schizophrenic jumping here and now there and then somewhere else randomly. Is it now? Or is it then? When is then? Who is she? *** I liked the love story and Anthony on the beach and vulnerable. I liked the dog angle and the brutality but a single dog cannot eat an entire human and then have human dinner too. It would 'splode. *** Not bad but I was ready for it to end when it did. *** I'm getting a dog. Know any good shelters?(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jul 03, 2012
| Jul 08, 2012
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Jul 02, 2012
| Hardcover
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144
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| 1595142967
| 9781595142962
| 3.51
| 780
| Sep 30, 2010
| Sep 30, 2010
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I picked this book up on a whim a while back, when it was on offer at a favorite discount store here. I'd never heard of it before, but thought that i...more
I picked this book up on a whim a while back, when it was on offer at a favorite discount store here. I'd never heard of it before, but thought that it looked interesting, and for $2.99 I'm willing to chance it. So now I've read it, and... well... There were some things that I liked, and some things that didn't work for me. I liked the interweaving of fairytale characters into the story. I thought that the way it was done was pretty neat. But I felt like they were all just kind of name-dropped, with the exception of just a few, and I wanted to know more about their alternate existences. Like Detective White, who is a tough, take-no-guff cop, who got to be so tough by fighting off the seven men she lived with... What? In what way? Sexually? Were they drunken abusers? This little tidbit raises a lot of questions, because in my mind, the Seven Dwarfs took Snow White in in her hour of need, and sheltered her, and helped her. They weren't creepy old men crawling into her bed at night, or abusers, which is what the reference in this book makes me think. Yet there's zero additional information given, nothing to clarify the statement. It's true that the characters we see in this book aren't the characters we'd expect, but... dang. I liked the way fairydust was depicted... I liked the way it was used, and exploited, as if it's a drug (which is pretty much accurate). I really liked the way the City is kind of modernistic, with a big, name brand thaumaturgical (read: pharmacological) industry, complete with loose morals and even looser principles... and advertising, too. I also liked the concept of the divisive nature of the City and its inhabitants... Hominids vs. Animalia. Just shows that we'll latch onto anything to keep from being too accepting of the neighbors. They're different! THE HORROR! I didn't much care for or about any of the characters here... I thought they weren't developed well enough. (This is in addition to wanting more evidence regarding the libel perpetrated on seven innocent until proven guilty dwarfs.) I thought Henry was atrociously bad at investigation... I mean, jeez, he strolls into the Bad Guys' Lair and proceeds to ask said Bad Guys where they hide their Evil Doings. "Is it behind that curtain over there that says 'Keep Out! Bad Guys Only!'? Mind my own business? OK." For realsies?? Ugh. I thought that this had a good concept, but I just didn't think that anything was developed enough. The characters felt flat, they weren't even described except in the barest terms, there really wasn't anything to identify with, and I certainly didn't understand Henry's motivation for anything... It was like he was just doing things to progress the story rather than having any actual purpose in doing them. "I'm gonna go left now." "Why?" "Uhh... Because that's what I have to do in order to be in place for Chapter 6." "Umm... OK." That's really all. Good concept, not so great execution. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jun 29, 2012
| Jun 30, 2012
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Jun 29, 2012
| Hardcover
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143
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| 1439159491
| 9781439159491
| 3.13
| 141
| May 01, 2012
| May 01, 2012
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I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review. My first impression of the book, even before cracking it open, was that it would be a gu...more I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review. My first impression of the book, even before cracking it open, was that it would be a gut-wrencher. The description mentions "Tara and Sky share a mother, but aside from that they seem to differ in almost every way. When a series of tragedies strikes, they must somehow come together in the face of heartbreak, dashed hopes, and demons of the past." which sounds right up my alley. I love a good tear-jerker - they can be so cathartic. And then there's the cover. So gorgeous. I want to have it framed. I love it. I love the colors, the silhouettes, the way the figures are together, but distant, and we're prevented from truly seeing who they are. I love everything about it. Unfortunately, once I got the book, I did not love touching it. I don't know what it is, but the texture of the dust-jacket just does not feel nice. It's like... grimy, somehow. I don't know how else to describe it. I had to take it off the book while reading, because I just didn't like touching it. Such a shame, because it is really beautiful. Regarding the story itself, I have mixed reactions. On one hand, I really enjoyed the concept and the story's format of alternating point of view chapters with parallel chapter titles, but there were quite a few things that just felt "off" to me. The beginning of the story was fantastic. I was drawn into Sky's grief for the loss of her friend, drawn into her family life and her history, and I really felt for her. When she suffered yet another tragedy, I was completely heartbroken for her. Which is exactly what I would expect. But things shifted after Sky went into her newer mourning cycle. I couldn't believe that she was the same person! I know that everyone grieves differently, but I couldn't help but be annoyed with the complete selfishness and narcissism that Sky displayed. It was just mind-boggling. I wanted to grieve and heal with her, but I just couldn't go with her to the level she was at, because not only could I not understand it, I couldn't justify it or condone it. I'm not trying to be heartless, but grief isn't an excuse to dredge up the most horrible things you can think to fling at someone. It's not a license to hurt others. People can be cruel, yes, but this was just beyond the pale, and I just couldn't go there with her. Tara, Sky's younger half-sister, is there for Sky every step of the way. She went to lengths to rearrange her and her crew's tour schedule to help her sister decide what to do and help her get it done. I identified with each sister differently, and at different stages of the story. But I will admit that I had trouble reading Tara's sections at times, because her dialogue was very uneven. At times she'd talk in a kind of valley-girl way, saying "like" all the time. At other times, it would be a kind of ghetto slang. Then others she'd use a sort of metaphor-heavy prose style, usually when talking about her family. And then when she wasn't "being" any of those other people, she was just herself and just talked. Maybe this was intentional, though. Tara isn't sure who she is, so maybe the dialogue was a way to illustrate that point. But it didn't feel right to me and was a bit distracting. Also distracting was Tara's self-congratulatory musings. By this I mean that she'd often say something like "Do you see how I go out of my way for my sister?" I do see that, without you pointing it out, thanks. Finally, the second half of the book got a bit bogged down in the "meaningful" stuff. It was full of Hallmark moments, people telling each other how much they loved them, appreciated them, how proud they were of them, or other deep, meaningful thoughts that just felt staged or forced. Meaningful moments are great, but they should be used sparingly or they begin to feel cloying and fake. These complaints aside, I enjoyed the book quite a bit, and I really loved the crew. I liked that they helped Sky out as much as (if not more than) Tara herself. I kept turning the pages, and I wanted to know what would happen to these sisters and their families, and whether they'd make it or not. I would pick up another of Pearlman's books - even with the flaws I mentioned, it's one that will likely stick with me.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jun 25, 2012
| Jun 28, 2012
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Jun 25, 2012
| Hardcover
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137
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| 0312362080
| 9780312362089
| 4.00
| 191,333
| 1994
| Jun 13, 2006
|
I think I am surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It was exactly what I needed right now: light, funny, and quick. I'm not really a huge fan of chick...more I think I am surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It was exactly what I needed right now: light, funny, and quick. I'm not really a huge fan of chick lit (though I am scared I might be becoming one). But this was great. I liked this book right from the opening scene, and it was familiar and interesting to see where it would go. There were some parts that had me laughing out loud, or stuck in gigglefits, and that's always a plus. The mystery was intriguing, and thought it was wrapped up a little too neatly and quickly at the end, I didn't see it coming (though we were missing information until almost the end, along with Stephanie). Overall, I really liked this and will definitely continue the series. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| May 06, 2012
| May 10, 2012
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May 06, 2012
| Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
139
| 
| 0451459407
| 9780451459404
| 4.29
| 38,404
| Aug 01, 2003
| Aug 05, 2003
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Best Dresden Yet. The people who told me that the series just keeps getting better and better were not lying. I loved this one. So many different stor...more Best Dresden Yet. The people who told me that the series just keeps getting better and better were not lying. I loved this one. So many different storylines converged here, and it was SO EXCITING! I seriously didn't want to put this one down. That is all. Wait, no... The only thing I think would have improved this book would be to scrap the recap of past books and the way the world in the series is. This is book 5... Pretty sure I get it that Harry's a wizard by now. Otherwise, I seriously really and truly loved this and cannot wait to see where the series goes from here. NOW that is all. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| May 12, 2012
| May 14, 2012
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May 06, 2012
| Paperback
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136
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| 0446616419
| 9780446616416
| 3.69
| 13,928
| Nov 01, 2005
| Nov 01, 2005
|
Short version: I wish that I could say that I loved this book from start to finish, but I can't. I was frustrated with Kitty's weakness for much of th...more
Short version: I wish that I could say that I loved this book from start to finish, but I can't. I was frustrated with Kitty's weakness for much of the book, and it was only toward the end that I started to really get her. That's not to say that it was a bad book (it wasn't) or that I hated it until the end (I didn't), it's just that I'm a character reader, and I need characters to make sense. Unfortunately, to me, the characters and the "paranormal hierarchy" just didn't make sense until close to the end. After finishing the book, I think it makes a little more sense as to why Kitty would behave the way she did for so long... but I feel like the explanation should have come earlier in the story... It would have lent a validity to Kitty's dependency and need for protection that I felt was missing. Oh, I almost forgot. When Kitty shifts into her wolf, the narrative changes to 3rd person, which was just weird. I didn't really care for that aspect at all. It just felt out of place and awkward - like it was completely separate from Kitty herself, rather than a part of her. I did feel that there was a lot of growth to the main character though, which I appreciated, and that overall I liked this well enough to continue the series - but it was far from perfect. I did like Cormac, so I'm hoping we see more of him going forward. (Fair Warning! I'll just say now that there shall be spoilerish rantings and stuff ahead, so continue at your own risk.) Long version: So, Kitty is a puppy. She's a werewolf at the bottom of her pack's peculiar pecking order. Completely submissive to, and completely dependent on, her pack and alpha to keep her safe. Safe from what, you ask?  You see... Kitty was date-raped, and when she fled from the dick who did it, she had the crappy luck to be found by a werewolf and bitten, and thus turned herself. The werewolf's pack took Kitty in, promising her security and safety... and then kinda proceeded to continue violating her for the next 3 years. I use the term 'violate' here in just about every way. As Alpha, one can pretty much have run of the pack without any consequences at all, so there's more rape**. But she was also abused and terrorized by the Alpha and other members of the pack, kept in a constant state of fear and submission and powerlessness. So not only was her body violated, but her trust and her identity and EVERYTHING was violated. Some pack. There's no order, no consistency, no security - none of the stuff that a good pack provides. Instead, being the lowest ranked member, Kitty lived in unending fear of being picked on, or beat up, or in trouble... so she coped by being completely submissive to everyone above her. It's give all control to those higher than you, or nothing. In any other relationship, that would be considered physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. (** Kitty didn't see it that way - she thought that was normal pack behavior, and the submissive wolf in her worshiped her Alpha. She didn't know better. It was only when she found a sense of place outside the pack that she began to see that shit was fucked up.) So coming back to the "What were the pack protecting her from?" question... My answer is "independence". Though they'd have you believe it was from vampires, or other humans... big spiders... vicious kittens... whatever. So, Kitty finds her place outside the pack, with her radio show, and proceeds to remember that she is not just pack puppy, but also a person. This creates all the drama you'd expect from alpha tyrants who don't like to be told no. Kitty does a lot of cringing, because the part of her who has lived as the pack puppy for 3 years feels she should, but the woman part of Kitty is like "Fuck that." And I say GOOD. The problem is that Kitty's only saying it in her head... she's afraid to make a move to go along with the thought... she's too used to having the pack behind her. And to that I say, "Shit or get off the pot, girl." She eventually does, and there are some interesting plot twists and turns that, while predictable, were still decent. Nothing was really resolved, but that's what the rest of the series is for, I guess. Still... despite my annoyance with the above stuff, I did like the book, and will continue on with the series at some point, now that Kitty has a backbone and is willing and able to stand up for herself. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| May 05, 2012
| May 06, 2012
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Apr 08, 2012
| Mass Market Paperback
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134
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| 145632781X
| 9781456327811
| 4.13
| 52
| Jan 01, 2004
| Dec 05, 2010
|
I admit to being mostly unfamiliar with the Oedipus myth before I read this book. My knowledge was pretty much limited to "man kills father then marri...more
I admit to being mostly unfamiliar with the Oedipus myth before I read this book. My knowledge was pretty much limited to "man kills father then marries his mother". I didn't know any of the details or nuances to the story. So I can't really say whether this is an accurate retelling or portrayal of the myth. I can only really discuss this story on its own, and in that light, it was good. I had three major issues with this book (and incest wasn't one of them). First, I didn't much care about Jocasta as a teen in the beginning of the book. I didn't dislike her, I just didn't care about her at all, which is in my opinion worse than dislike. She lived in ancient Greece, in a time where arranged marriages were common and expected, and yet her attitudes seemed out of place and far too modern. She rebels against a switch in her marriage plans after the first one becomes impossible, on the grounds that she's never even met the man she's now supposed to marry. So? Throughout history, women and girls have been married off to men (usually much older men) that they'd never met. In a society where almost everything is at the will of the gods, and prophecy holds sway over all, why should one girl feel like she's being mistreated by her father handing her off to a different man to become her husband? Why should she expect anything else? This just seems like a more modern mindset than I would expect from a girl who lived then, as if she was expecting a marriage for love and respect instead of one arranged for power, alliances, or "the will of the gods". Also, there was insta-love. Not a fan the insta-love. Probably this was due to the prophecy, which stated that she would love her husband and bear him lots of little Thebans, but it just felt like modern teen behavior to fall in love with the first attractive, powerful man to show her some attention. Finally, the terms "my lady", "my lady queen", "my lord", and "my lord king" used throughout the book felt out of place to me. In a conversation with Victoria Grossack where I brought this up, she said, "[Regarding] Lord/Lady – Bronze Age Greece definitely had both nobles and kings/queens. We decided on these terms as the most accessible, giving the correct flavor without having readers stumble over unfamiliar terms such as wanix and spartoi." While I can understand this decision, for me, it didn't work. Every time I would see "my lady queen" or the like, I would feel as if I was in England rather than Ancient Greece. Rather than helping immerse me in the world, they kick me right out of it. I'd personally rather "wanix" and "spartoi" be used if those were appropriate. As long as I'm given an explanation for an unfamiliar word, either outright or by context, then I'll acclimate to their use. But those complaints aside, I did eventually begin to gel with the writing, and once Jocasta was out of her teens, I definitely began to like her more. There was a lot of political maneuvering and religious practices that give us an idea of what living back then might have been like. I liked how things were hinted at, and left interpretable. I liked also how the more fantastic elements of the story, the prophecies and the Sphinx, were brought into the realm of the real world, and it was shown how these things could have really happened. Overall, this was a good book. I would have liked a little more information pertaining to what happened after, but I thought that the ending was appropriate. Two things to remember: 1) Never ask the Tiresias to dinner. 2) Thebes is fickle. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Apr 06, 2012
| Apr 07, 2012
|
Mar 01, 2012
| Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
130
| 
| 0224061631
| 9780224061636
| 3.49
| 8,518
| 2008
| unknown
|
When this book was chosen for my real life bookclub, I was a little nervous about it. I'd never read anything of Salman Rushdie's before, and I wouldn...more
When this book was chosen for my real life bookclub, I was a little nervous about it. I'd never read anything of Salman Rushdie's before, and I wouldn't have chosen this one to start with (if ever). I'll be honest, the premise looks kind of boring. But then I started reading it. And I was completely surprised by not only how much I liked it, but by how funny it was. Irreverent, and witty, and whimsical and a little weird, with more than a dash of gutter-humor funny that had me giggling like a fiend. At the 45% point, I was ready to call this one a 5-star book. I was loving it. I loved Akbar, Akbar the Great, the greatness of which must be twice specified in order to merely hint at his glorious gloriousness. Him. I loved his personality, his unpredictability, his mind. I loved how he thought about things... Honestly, it is so rare for a ruler to think about the nature of his (or her) rule in terms other than 1) how to keep it, and 2) how to get more of it. I loved that he thought in the abstract, the philosophical. I vs we. All "I"s are "we"s, not just Royal "we"s. Everyone is part of a larger entity that makes them up: family, friends, community, etc. Perhaps the idea of self-as-community was what it meant to be a being in the world, any being; such a being being, after all, inevitably a being among other beings, a part of the beingness of all things." "...[They] are all bags of selves, bursting with plurality..."I, that is to say "We", loved this. It's interesting, and uniquely worded, and it made me giggle to read it in what, before starting, I assumed would be a seriously dull book. We enjoyed his blunt honesty too, in acknowledging that his kids, whom he loves, are royal bastards who will try to usurp his rule. "They were little gods, the despots of the future: born, unfortunately, to rule. He loved them. They would betray him. They were the lights of his life. They would come while he slept. The little assfuckers. He was waiting for their moves."Oh, yes... We loved him. Loved. For the first half. And then it shifted. Then that yellow-haired guy had to show up and tell his secret that is so momentous that to tell it to the wrong person would cause the listener's death. Dun dun dunnnnnnn! Except it wasn't. The secret was... mundane. A family history that leached almost all the humor and life out of the 2nd half of the book. Not all... but enough. Suddenly we have this new cast list, and though they try to be interesting, to me they just weren't. They didn't compare to Akbar. Recognizable names, sure, but I wasn't really feeling them despite that. I wanted to get back to "the present" and spend more time with Akbar. He made the story interesting to me. Qara Koz was... not really enchanting me. Honestly, I don't get her allure - or, to be honest, the allure of any of the other "Oh so beautiful that one look upon her face makes men ready to just keel over and die for her" women mentioned in the story. We have one that's so perfect she's literally imaginary, but doesn't even have the decency to stop existing when her imaginer is away. We have another who is so beautiful that basking in her haughty condescension is considered a luxury, and one who is so amazingly gorgeous that everyone in town's had a share except her husband. But maybe Qara Koz is actually literally enchanting them, as opposed to just being so pretty that men fall down at her feet. I'm a little iffy on that point. That's magical realism for you. I'm not sure how I felt about this book, overall. I wanted to love it, and for the first half, I did... but then it just got tedious to me. There's the underlying question of a woman's power and influence, but I feel a bit bothered by the fact that every woman in this book either a) had none, b) had a little that was granted by a man, c) obtained it strictly based on her looks, or d) used magic. Another reason why I loved Akbar... he didn't want a submissive doormat of a wife... he wanted a woman that would actually think for herself and act upon her own will. In fact the main men were like this and valued more than just appearance... but appearance definitely came first and was a huge factor in their relationships with women (aside from whores). They are imperfect, I know... but I do give them credit for at least being somewhat respectable. To shift gears a little, I will say I quite enjoyed the kind of modern feel to the narration. The story is set in the 16th century, but the language was accessible and straightforward, while at the same time being somehow more. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but it was gorgeous and easy to read and descriptive, and at times really funny, as I mentioned before. There was also an interesting duality in this story... with the Echo and the Mirror, and the imagined-made-live theme running through both story lines. I thought that this was interesting, but it wasn't enough. There was quite a bit to enjoy in this book. I just wish that the story-within-the-story interested me more. But, in fairness, this isn't one of my favorite things to begin with. I definitely think I'll try another of Rushdie's books though. (less) | Notes are private!
| Kenny
|
1
| Mar 15, 2012
| Mar 21, 2012
|
Feb 22, 2012
| Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
133
| 
| 1846059372
| 9781846059377
| 4.28
| 60,102
| Aug 16, 2011
| Aug 18, 2011
|
You know that thing, the thing that everyone else thinks makes you the nerdiest nerd to ever nerd? That thing is what this book is all about, and it's...more
You know that thing, the thing that everyone else thinks makes you the nerdiest nerd to ever nerd? That thing is what this book is all about, and it's awesome. Mostly awesome. This book celebrates the geekdom of the 80s. The music, the movies, the books, but especially the games and technology. Because the 80s were full to the gills of new technology that allowed games to move from boards to computers and game consoles. It allowed awesomeness like this to exist: --------------------------------------If you're not familiar with this, it's a fake commercial played on one of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's in-game radio stations. GTA Vice City is set in 1986, and there are tons of references contained therein... Mostly of the 'did-they-really-just-say-that?' variety. The one above is a reference to the awful graphics of 80s computer and console games, and the creepy guys usually found around arcades. Speaking of which, anyone looking for a puppy? I know a guy... Anyway. This book is exactly what GTA:VC isn't. It doesn't make fun of the atrocious 80s... it celebrates it. It celebrates the huge amount of innovation and change that occurred in that decade, and the huge amount of geekdom that fueled those changes. This book celebrates all that the D&D players have always dreamed... that they can do exactly what they love and hit it big by doing so. That's what James Halliday did. He took his love of 80s pop culture and made it into the Moste Epice Queste EVAR before he died. He created the world's first truly immersive virtual reality game and free education system that is as vast as imagination itself, The Oasis, and promised to leave it and his megabillions (really) to the first person who successfully completes his quest: Find 3 keys, go through their respective gates, and then find the egg. Enter 'Parzival' aka Wade Watts, 18 year old orphan (does one still count as an orphan once they've hit their majority?) who is obsessed with finding the egg and winning the ultimate prize. But maybe more than the desire to win is the desire to prevent the Sixers from winning. The Sixers are employees of The Oasis's rival corporation, who would love nothing more to win the Oasis cash cow and then start milking it dry. Instead of free use (services, such as transportation, is paid for in the Oasis, but logging in is free), there'd be a monthly fee, higher fees for everything and ads galore, which in the hard times of economic collapse shown in the book would reduce the availability to only those rich enough to pay. In other words, they'd ruin the only sanctuary that millions of people have from their hard day to day lives. The first 3rd of this book was AWESOME. The parts of the book pertaining to quest and battles were awesome. The concept and the detailing and the story was all awesome. There were some parts that were so exciting I couldn't put the book down, but then there were others that were a bit frustrating or (dare I say it?) boring. So brace yourselves... I'm about to start inventorying my complaints. This book seemed to go in waves. Something thrilling would happen, and then it would shift to very not thrilling. Then after a while, it'd start to build momentum again, and then the same thing again. So it was a little hard to keep my interest going the whole time, because I don't think that I need to know every single detail of the components of Wade's apartment or his gear for logging in and using The Oasis. I don't know what any of it means anyway, though I can guess it's pretty cool. It just got a little tedious and I got impatient to get back to the quest. Likewise with the romance. Let me just say up front that I know Wade is 18, and has never really interacted with girls before, let alone an awesomely popular famous hottie girl who just HAPPENS to have all of his same interests and hobbies and whatnot in common with him, so I know it is unfair and unrealistic of me to get irritated by the romance element to this story... but I did. I just didn't much care. Just ONCE I'd like to read a story with a young adult protagonist that doesn't have a romantic theme, or at least not an insta-love one. It just got a little tedious and I got impatient to get back to the quest... again. Then, the dialog. Oh goodness. It was awkward. It FELT awkward. Too forced and too "hip" and too everything, especially Aech's slang, and it felt fake. Didn't work for me there. Finally, we come to the issue of death. I feel like the way death was portrayed in this book was somewhat ridiculous. First, let me say that there were two kinds of death: avatar death and real world death. Avatar death means that your Oasis character dies, you lose all your stuff (status, inventory, credits/money), and you start over from no0b status. Real world death means you, the person who exists in the real world, actually die, for realzies, no do-overs, no resets, no reloads, you're just dead. D-E-D, dead, as my daddy would say. Now, there were a couple of RW deaths, and it was one of these where I couldn't put the book down. It was crazy intense and I just had to know what was gonna happen next. But for all the intensity, it didn't seem to register much on Wade's "Oh Shit!" scale, at least not when it came to avatar death. There's a scene where a big battle is going down, and avatars are rushing in to do battle without hesitation, knowing that it could mean their death, and it was portrayed as really brave and harrowing. And I wondered to myself... So what? Why the dire reaction? It's just some data in a server somewhere that would be zeroed out and that person could create a new one. It's not a real life-or-death situation, so I don't really feel like it was all that brave. But then on the other side of the coin is the fact that the bad guys could go after Oasis players and Real World kill them. Yet at the end, there's no tension around this possibility, because deus ex machina arrived to provide the way, or it was just conveniently forgotten that the real world existed in the heat of battle... or probably both. So... While I really did enjoy this one, obviously I had some pretty large issues with it. It was a fun story, and I have already recommended it to a few of my friends that I think would enjoy it, but I admit that I wish I'd enjoyed it even more than I did. I'm very curious to see where Cline goes from here though. I'd definitely pick up his next book, and in the end, that's really all that matters, isn't it? (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Apr 2012
| Apr 05, 2012
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Feb 15, 2012
| Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
125
| 
| 0547550766
| 9780547550763
| 3.77
| 894
| Jan 17, 2012
| Jan 17, 2012
|
I've been in a little bit of a funk lately. It seems that the last several books I've read have all just not lived up to my expectations, and I've rea...more
I've been in a little bit of a funk lately. It seems that the last several books I've read have all just not lived up to my expectations, and I've really just wanted to read something that, well, made me feel something (other than annoyance). So I picked up "Never Eighteen". It's slim, so I thought it would be a quick read (I was right - I finished it in a little over two hours), and that it would make me feel that 'something' I have been missing (right again). In a lot of ways, this book was great. I couldn't put it down once I started and sped through it like the wind. I wanted to know about Austin, about those people around him that he cared about and wanted to help, about how he was going to help them. I wanted to know about Kaylee, about these best friends' history, their future, everything. I loved seeing little bits of Austin's life being revealed with each visit, but I won't deny that it felt rushed, the visits short and direct. I don't really count that as a bad thing, though. This book should feel rushed. Austin is dying, and he knows it, and he's trying his best to not only live as much as he can in the little time he has left, but also trying to help the people he loves to live their own lives to a fuller extent. Each visit to someone felt short, to me, but Austin probably felt like there was a giant ticking clock following him, slowly (but far too quickly) counting down to when his time will run out. The visits were short, but his situation seemed to speak the introductions, so he could just get to the point. Sometimes we just don't have the luxury of beating around the bush. I felt for Austin trying to find the courage to speak up about his feelings for Kaylee, too. It's so easy to think, "Jeez, what do you have to lose?" but I completely understand his reticence. She's been his best friend for 9 years, and he doesn't want to risk tainting their remaining time with hurt feelings or rejection. I also could understand from Kaylee's perspective, too, not wanting to have that pressure put on her. I would not envy someone who finally opens up their heart knowing it can't last and that it will only hurt more when it ends. I don't know if it is better to go for it. They say it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but who are these "they" people anyway? I did like that not everything was fixable, or worked out how Austin wanted. This would have felt incredibly unrealistic if things just worked out perfectly because Austin is a sympathetic character. It was enough that he tried. Enough that he cared enough to try. That says a lot about him, as well as the people around him. I mostly loved the writing in this book, as well. It was simple, but evocative. Not overdone, but honest. I felt like some of the dialogue was a bit wooden and unnatural in some spots, particularly for 17 year olds, and I thought that the 'The End" chapter was a little awkward. (view spoiler)[It felt strange to be listening to Austin talk about his death in the past tense. (hide spoiler)] There were some "young adult" situations: drinking, cursing, sex, drug use, etc, and some other issues, abusive relationships and rape, mentioned as well, just an FYI. Overall, I really enjoyed this one, and I'm glad that I read it. It definitely makes me look at my life in a new way, and makes me appreciate the time I have here. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Feb 16, 2012
| Feb 16, 2012
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Feb 11, 2012
| Paperback
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164
| 
| 0525478817
| 9780525478812
| 4.52
| 230,853
| 2012
| Jan 10, 2012
|
3.5 stars Ok, so a little background, just to get a base point for some of my reactions to this book. In late 2010, I read Green's "Looking For Alaska"...more 3.5 stars Ok, so a little background, just to get a base point for some of my reactions to this book. In late 2010, I read Green's "Looking For Alaska". I ended up liking it more than I thought that I would, but for a long time I'd avoided it based on incorrect preconceived notions regarding what the book was about. It wasn't until I'd watched some of John and Hank Green's Vlogbrothers videos that I decided to go for it. And that made a difference. I could see John in the story - in the quirky intelligent teen characters, in the irreverence, and I liked it. After that, I bought "An Abundance of Katherines" & "Paper Towns", but I haven't read anything but their synopses yet. So, flash-forward to present day. "The Fault In Our Stars" is chosen to be read among friends, and so I read it. And immediately, I'm struck again by the quirky intelligent teen characters, and the irreverence... But now, it's not so different, because now it seems like a pattern. A style. And that makes it less meaningful. When everyone is profoundly quirky and intelligent, it begins to seem a little trite. So here again we have quirky intelligent characters, including a host of 16 year olds with ridiculously sophisticated vocabularies, and including an "extremely sophisticated twenty-five-year-old British socialite stuck inside a sixteen-year-old body in Indianapolis". These are midwest teenagers who sound like they're members of the Intelligentsia. Everything is profound and has "metaphorical resonance". It just didn't feel realistic to me. Case in point: At one point there's correspondence with an author of a book that the main characters found profound, and I had a hard time differentiating between the voice of the Profound Author and the teens. That shouldn't be the case. Ever. When one of the teens mentioned rhetorically whether the other thought they'd made up the Profound Author's letter, whether it sounded like something they'd come up with, I thought, "Yes!" It's just too much for EVERYONE in these stories to be so quirky. Where are the average teens who just hang out with each other and don't use $10 words to say hi to each other? It was just unrealistic for me, especially in a book trying desperately to show that kids with cancer are just normal kids who shouldn't be treated deferentially just because they are sick. The problem here is that these weren't normal kids. These were extraordinary ones. Like everyone else. *sigh* It took about half the book for this annoyance to peter out. It was like, at this point, the quirkiness and $10 conversations took a backseat to the story, finally. And that's when I really started to love it. Coincidence? I think not. Extraordinary characters are great and all, when, as a friend put it, they have "an ordinary background to shine against". I couldn't agree more. I was far more affected and heartbroken by the simple, no-nonsense way that Hazel talked about her parents and how they were coping (or failing to cope) with her cancer prognosis than by her constant multi-syllabic conversations about the metaphorically resonant quality of... whatever. There was a line near the end of the book that kind of summed this up perfectly: "He wasn't perfect or anything. He wasn't your fairy-tale Prince Charming or whatever. He tried to be like that sometimes, but I liked him best when that stuff fell away."I loved all the bits of this book that were in between all of the uber-profound stuff. The bits about loving and losing in terms of how much both hurt in stark terms of pure aching. Fancy words are fancy, but sometimes the beauty is in simplicity. When all the pretense fell away, and it was just two people wanting to spend as much time as they had left together, it became the story it always should have been. This ended up being a moving and heartbreaking book, but I think it would have been a much better one had it been written more simply. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Feb 26, 2013
| Mar 02, 2013
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Feb 10, 2012
| Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
135
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| 0316127183
| 9780316127189
| 4.09
| 8,265
| Mar 01, 2012
| Mar 01, 2012
|
I love these books. They are so much fun, and so witty and smart and just all around enjoyable. I loved the whole extended family dynamic, with Lord A...more
I love these books. They are so much fun, and so witty and smart and just all around enjoyable. I loved the whole extended family dynamic, with Lord Akeldama's household, the London pack, and Alexia, Conall, and Prudence... one big happy family. But the real shining star for me here was Biffy. He was never really a favorite character of mine in the other books, but in this one, I absolutely adored him. He kept making me giggle, and at the same time I was hugely proud of him for how far he has come along in accepting his new dual-self. There was a lot going on in this book, plotwise, and it just doesn't really seem... finished. Not "last book in the series" material - but I understand that there's going to be a shift, and little Prudence will be the focal point going forward. I'm looking forward to it. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Apr 10, 2012
| Apr 18, 2012
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Feb 09, 2012
| Paperback
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127
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| 0765327449
| 9780765327444
| 3.78
| 577
| Sep 27, 2011
| Sep 27, 2011
|
Despite the title, which is awesome, if I had come across this book on my own, I can say with complete certainty that I wouldn't have given it a secon...more
Despite the title, which is awesome, if I had come across this book on my own, I can say with complete certainty that I wouldn't have given it a second glance. The book description doesn't tell very much about what the book is about, and honestly it sounds boring. But this book was selected for a group read and was pretty highly recommended, so I decided to give it a try anyway. This is one of those books whose peg doesn't really fit into a genre hole. You can make it fit into a couple maybe, but there's no one thing that will say, "That is what kind of book this is, so if you like that, read this." And, much to my own surprise, I liked it. Not as much as I could have, but quite a bit more than I expected to. Pretty much the only thing I knew going in was that there would be music. That's always a little suspect for me, because I have very little interest in music in books, especially folk music, and musicians or performers of any type rarely interest me in fiction. That's not to say that if there is music or performers of some kind in a book that I'll automatically dislike it, but I think it has to be handled well, and that's not always the case. I've come to realize that I prefer music in books to be an extension of the characters, something that makes them who they are, not just something that they listen to. Usually, a character listening to music just feels like a name-drop opportunity. That wasn't the case with this one, thankfully. The music in this book was definitely a part of life, a part of the characters, and part of the community. It was the type of musicality that I love - the kind where the characters live and breathe music because it is part of what makes them who they are. But that leads me to my first complaint. Music and songs, specifically one song in particular, were given so much importance in the story that I wanted a big revelation about what it meant, and I was disappointed not to get one. The story went in a different direction, and that aspect just felt forgotten. In fact, that feeling that things were forgotten is my major, overall complaint about this book. I think the book should have been longer so that all of the background, the history, the hierarchy and the characters' stories could all have been better fleshed out, so that the meaning of the songs and the stories could have been better shown. Bledsoe created a whole community, a mini-world, and peopled it with interesting characters that I wanted to know more about, but who, in the end, were just sort of... filler. That's disappointing. I wanted to know what Don Swayback's awakening meant, and what the purpose was. I wanted to know more about Rockhouse Hicks and what his history was. I wanted to know more about the First Daughters, and what that truly represented. Another complaint that I had was regarding the relationships between Bronwyn and Craig Chess. The first time they meet, there's an almost literal spark of attraction between them, and it stank of Insta-Love to me. I hoped that the story wouldn't go in that direction, and it seemed not to, with Bronwyn having this thing with Terry-Joe, but then it did anyway, completely out of the blue. And then the story was just kind of over. It was left open to interpretation whether Chess would accept the relationship, but there's no denying their instant and seemingly baseless attraction to each other. It seems that the Tufa people have a strong attractive quality to non-Tufas, and can make them fall in love extremely easily... but I don't get Bronwyn's attraction to Craig, (view spoiler)[nor why she'd know that she wanted to marry him (hide spoiler)] when she barely knows him. It just doesn't make sense to me. I will say that I really enjoyed the writing, and felt myself kind of absorbed in it while I was reading. Bledsoe has a way with words that just drew me in, and it was like I was there. I could see everything crystal clearly. I also loved the slow build-up, and how the hints that we received were dealt out slowly and methodically and just at the right times. It seemed like every time I would have a question about something, the answer would come along as soon as I started reading again. I just wanted more than what I was given. I also liked the way that the story felt almost ethereal. It had a kind of realistic dreamlike quality, and I was never really sure if what was described was supposed to be taken literally or metaphorically. I think that's exactly how I was supposed to feel, so in that, Bledsoe did a fantastic job. Despite all my complaints (which mainly boil down to one major complaint that I just wanted more characterization and history), I did really enjoy the story. I enjoyed reading it, and it kept me intrigued despite, or maybe because of, the slow build up. I would definitely recommend this one for someone looking for something a little bit different to read. (less) | Notes are private!
| OSGA
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1
| Feb 18, 2012
| Feb 25, 2012
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Jan 30, 2012
| Paperback
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122
| 
| B00433U1CM
| 3.49
| 51
| Sep 14, 2010
| unknown
|
Bow chicka bow wow! Sorta. This was pretty good... parts felt a little rushed and sometimes the characterization didn't really mesh for me... but I me...more Bow chicka bow wow! Sorta. This was pretty good... parts felt a little rushed and sometimes the characterization didn't really mesh for me... but I mean, was that really why I read this? No. Get your minds out of the gutter. I read it for points in a challenge! :P(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jan 17, 2012
| Jan 17, 2012
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Jan 05, 2012
| Kindle Edition
| |||||||||||||||
160
| 
| 0765328658
| 9780765328656
| 4.00
| 24,767
| Aug 30, 2011
| Aug 30, 2011
|
Wow. I just realized that I added this book to Mount To-Read exactly one year ago today. That's pretty strange, isn't it? I mean, I picked the book up...more
Wow. I just realized that I added this book to Mount To-Read exactly one year ago today. That's pretty strange, isn't it? I mean, I picked the book up yesterday on a whim, thinking that it would be light, quick reading to squeeze in before the new year. I wasn't looking for any weird cosmic alignments or anything... but it is kind of cool. As was this book. I really enjoyed it. It was different, very different, than what I expected, but not in a bad way. Well, maybe not ALL bad, because I do have a few *cough* teensy weensy gripes about it. But first, the things I DID like. - I really liked the realistic teenager tone of the story. I liked how there were some f-bombs, and how Cas skipped school (albeit for really selfish reasons like "work" and stuff), and how the characters were all relateable. I liked how the usual student tropes both did and did not fall into their usual lines of "Big Dumb Jock" type, or "Most Popular Homecoming Queen Bitch" type, or "Outcast" type. I liked reading about these characters, even the ones I didn't like, and I am excited that this is the beginning of a series. I want to see more of them. - I really liked that it was a bit horrifying. To be honest, I had kind of pegged this book, pre-read, as that "light, quick" read (as I mentioned before). I thought it would be a little cartoony, may be a little funny at times, but not something I expected to be in any way horrifying. And I don't mean it was scary, although there were some bits that could have been, but I mean more of a "Oh crap, that's not good" kind of horrifying. I liked that it wasn't cartoony or funny (though again there were moments of levity), and I liked that the method of the deaths we're privy to aren't glossed over. We see them as Cas sees them... or as he'd rather not. - I liked the way that the "Ghost Whisperer" concept was made into something that didn't make me fall asleep and drool all over my nook. I mean, no offense to Jennifer Love Hewitt or anything. I know she's got a lot of loyal (male) fans (fanatics) who watch every episode of her show (hoping for cleavage... COME ON!), but I just can't. I think I've seen one episode and I was bored. BORED. This book though, was not boring. This is no Ghost Whisperer, though Cas does help restless, violent spirits go... somewhere... by murdering them... again. SLICED AND DICED! I like it. It was gritty and interesting and different. I liked how the practitioners that Cas gets to help him (witches), were portrayed and the way that the rituals and spells were done was different from what I've seen before, though admittedly, that's not all that much. I liked the twist near the end, though the resolution did kind of do a little "fade to black" thing. We're left to assume the outcome based on the set of details, but still hope... So now we come to the stuff that had me griping. Two things, mainly. OK three things. Tops. Two gripes and a rant. #1 - The action scenes were a little sketchy and hard to follow for my taste. I like to visualize fight scenes in my mind, and these were hard to see, as they didn't always make sense linearly. #2 - I don't understand how normal people don't believe in ghosts if they are apparently able to see them all the time without trouble. I can understand Cas's ability to see them, and I can understand the witches being able to, but the Normals, the students with no special abilities at all can also see them (at least 3 different ghosts). Maybe they've all "manifested" as visible to everyone, but I would have liked some sort of explanation here. Either that they HAVE to have manifested even for Cas to see them (which seems likely since Tybalt was a kind of ghost detector), or that proximity to Cas or witches allows others to see ghosts too, or something. #3 - The Insta-Connection. I was hoping that the connection that drew Cas to Anna would be explained, and it may still be later on in the series, but as of right now, I don't get it. And honestly, that cheapens the story to me. It would have been a better, stronger story, in my opinion, if Cas was less emotional about Anna, and rather than falling in love with her, he freed her and used her as an ally... maybe working up to something more later, after we get to know them and their characters and situations better. Or not, even. But falling in love with a ghost is hard to believe, despite my suspension of disbelief with the rest of the story, and given that I don't like insta-love (under any euphemism) in the first place is just... kind of disappointing. I really don't understand why books written for teens and young adults rely so heavily on instant connections and immediate love. I was a teen once, and yeah, I had crushes, and boyfriends, doodled sickening little hearts with initials in them on the margins of my papers (don't tell anyone), and thought that THIS GUY was THE ONE, but I never once felt a bone-deep, undeniable, magnetic connection with anyone. Ever. No matter how strong my feelings were. So I don't get why this unrealistic trait is repeated in book after book after book. It's really starting to turn me off of reading YA. I'm so tired of it. I cannot wait for this trend to be ooooovvvveeeerrrrr. Please, authors, PLEASE. Stop this. Write realistic relationships!!! I want to read them. Not soulmates or instant love that requires no effort except against outside influences trying to break it up. That's incredibly boring to me, and I'm more than ready for something different! But still... I DID enjoy the story overall, and I WILL continue the series to see where things go. I'd be interested in the character development of some of the characters, and in seeing more of Cas's world... and possibly others. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Dec 30, 2012
| Dec 31, 2012
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Dec 31, 2011
| Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
153
| 
| 0312858868
| 9780312858865
| 3.83
| 6,784
| 1995
| Sep 15, 1997
|
3.5 Stars This was... Hmm. This book was not anything I expected. Though, I'm not really sure just what I expected, to be honest. I alternated between...more 3.5 Stars This was... Hmm. This book was not anything I expected. Though, I'm not really sure just what I expected, to be honest. I alternated between thinking that this story was going to be dry and boring, or over the top "magicky", or all fluffadelic like what I expect The Night Circus would be like if I could bring myself to read it. I don't like circuses, or... well, parties or performances or celebrations or fairs or festivals or whatever authors write about to make their books "lively" or something. They just don't interest me, and I zone out and then when I next have a conscious thought, I have a string of drool inching its way down my face and realize I've misplaced 20 minutes of my life. Which is another thing that I thought would work against this one for me. But surprisingly it didn't. I think that this one worked because of the realism. This wasn't "magic", this was "illusion". Illusion has rules, and relies on real life physics and ability, rather than just "Oh, I'm going to imagine something and then POOF! it will appear from thin air using only the power of my mind and magic." Yaaa-*conk-snore* As I've recently been reading more fantasy that deals with magic lately, I've come to realize that clearly set rules and laws of magic are vital for me to enjoy a story containing it. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series works for me for that very reason (among others) - he's created a system of magic that not only makes sense, but has limitations and boundaries and laws. Yes, creativity and imagination shape the outcome of such magic, but only in the desired effect. There are limitations to what can be done, and how, and there's a cost for it. If you want to use force, that force comes from somewhere that will suffer a lack until the balance is restored. Nothing just appears from nothing. So, ramble aside, the fact that this was indeed NOT magic of the fantasy sense but rather magic of the stage illusionist sense allowed me to enjoy the story much more than I thought I would, despite the fact that many would probably feel that illusion is boring compared to magic. I didn't think so, though. I thought it was interesting and well written, though, admittedly some sections were dry and overly detailed for the little that was actually conveyed. I enjoyed the feud between the two illusionists, and enjoyed seeing the events from both perspectives. When things started really getting interesting around the 2nd half, I was thrilled because things that had confused me in the 1st half were now starting to click and make sense. It was Celine Dion was crooning, "It's All Coming Back To Me Now"... I really enjoyed the inclusion of Nikola Tesla, and was happy to see him given the credit he deserved as a mothereffing genius. Because he was. Tesla > Edison. (PS. The Oatmeal. Read it.) Anywho, the apparatus was... fascinating. Possible? No idea. I get confused subtracting double digit numbers (Do I carry the one? Remainder? Multiply by pi? Should I have all these extra parts? Why are these instructions all in Korean??! It's hopeless, really.) so physics, and energy, and matter transference are light years times infinity beyond me. I liked the mysteriousness of the story, but I would have liked a little more closure and definition at the end. But still, very good overall, and I quite enjoyed it, and Simon Vance's reading, which can sometimes be hit or miss for me. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Sep 08, 2012
| Sep 13, 2012
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Dec 12, 2011
| Paperback
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124
| 
| 0525950079
| 9780525950073
| 4.17
| 68,949
| 2007
| Oct 09, 2007
|
Let me preface this review by saying that I loved Pillars of the Earth. A lot. I thought it was almost perfect, in fact, except for one minor issue th...more
Let me preface this review by saying that I loved Pillars of the Earth. A lot. I thought it was almost perfect, in fact, except for one minor issue that I had with the dialogue sounding too modern for the time period (an issue I had with World Without End, too). After being engrossed in that book, loving, hating, caring about the characters in it, after feeling like I was living in Kingsbridge for 900 pages, I was excited for this follow up. I wanted more, I wanted to be back in that world, experiencing life right along with the people I was reading about, the people I cared about. So I picked this audiobook up and started it. And all was good... for a while. It didn't take me long to start feeling that something was wrong. It didn't take me long to start feeling like Follett had ripped off his own book. Maybe if I'd had 20 years to forget the details of Pillars before reading I wanted more of Follett's Kingsbridge world, yes, but I didn't expect Pillars of the Earth: Now With New Character Names! I wanted a different story. Instead, I got a rehash of Pillars, and so I kept comparing them in my head. "Oh, There's the devious, overbearing mother-plotter..." "Here's the Lord-Who-Thinks-He's-God..." "Another brilliantly talented at a really young age master craftsman... who woulda thunk it?" and so on and so on... Did I like the characters? Yeah. Sure. I didn't care about them nearly as much as I cared about the Pillars characters though. Did I like the story? I guess. I did love the performance though. John Lee read this audio, and he was great. But still... I just endured this one, rather than enjoyed it, and couldn't bring myself to keep going another twelve hours to finish. Enough is enough. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Feb 03, 2012
| Feb 15, 2012
|
Oct 13, 2011
| Hardcover
|
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