LOLITA?20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA?FIVE FINGERS???ECT ECT
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Wonderful book. Nobody gets into the head and heart of her realistically flawed characters like Trigiani. It had a lot of similarities to Lucia, Lucia, if Lucia had grown enough brain to see past superficialities and try to play her best with the hand she was dealt. I also enjoyed The Big Time, since I also grew up in a town that had an Our Lady of Mount Carmel church and Mt. Carmel Day was our biggest and best celebration of the year. The only other author I've read that writes about Mt. Carmel Day is Jennifer Haigh--but then she grew up in the same little PA mining town that I did. ]]>
Very sad story with well-drawn characters, so I truly shared in their sorrows. However, I found it somewhat disappointing after reading the Big Stone Gap books; those books had a realism, flow, and internal integrity that this book seemed to lack. I kept saying Huh...what the...now why would...enough already...wise up...The characters were engaging, yet the story just didn't hang together and compute with me. The explanation about the aunt's curse just didn't cut it, when so much of what was going wrong with Lucia's life was due more to pure foolishness and willful self-destruction than cursed fate or ill-fortune. I never did figure out what it was that Lucia really wanted; why was she so hell-bent on wrecking her life; what went wrong in her developmental history that made her so foolishly self-destructive; was she born with only half a brain? Much of the story just didn't add up or make sense to me. But it was a pretty good book if you shut off your left brain and didn't think or analyze, otherwise it becomes very frustrating. ]]>
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Lola4
took the never-ending book quiz.
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I finished the last book of the series and now I am very depressed, like on the day after Christmas when all that's left is the clean-up. I don't know if I'd have liked this book as much if I read it first without becoming acquainted with the characters and all their lovely human flaws in the previous stories. I always like books in which the characters are flawed and the message is acceptance. I think we just bumble through this imperfect life trying to do the best we can and then learn to see the remaining flaws, that are scarred into us too deeply for changing, as our personality. Covering them is deceit and life has taught me the fruits of deceit are never worth the efforts of cultivating them, and how odd we would be if we did achieve perfection! We are here to love and be loved; we are not broken machines to be fixed or discarded. We must try to overcome our faults as best we can, but many are just part of us that we can adjust, somewhat, but never really change--none of us will ever make ourselves perfect, and we can't get a personality transplant. I fell in love with Jack Mac when he talked about deciding to accept (before proposing, thank goodness) Ave Maria's faults, sadness, worries, and emotional scar tissue as just part of the packaged deal--you either take it or leave it. I do not want another book since I am about the same age as the characters and know that there isn't much left except to start killing them off, and this book ends at a very satisfying time of life--when you achieve some degree of imperfect comfort within your own skin. I am just going to wait awhile and re-read the whole series start to finish. I think these are books we will understand and love even more as we get older. I have a hard time now, burying so many friends--but I do hope I have learned to make them feel loved, accepted, no, appreciated for their total packaged deal. I guess I found that true love is loving warts and scars. I'd like to leave Ave, Jack, Iva, Theodore, and Pete at that really good place 10 years back. ]]>
I just love this series and love Ave Maria, Jack Mac, Theodore, Iva Lou and most of the characters in it; they are as real to me as the people I grew up with in my own little mountain mining town. Nobody gets into the heads, hearts, and flaws of her still-lovable characters like Trigiani. Granted, Etta is a bore, but bores exist in real life. I am so glad she wrote a fourth book, which I can't wait to read. I guess I don't want a fifth one, if she decides to write it, since the characters are just a bit older than me, and if she writes another book, it would probably be to kill off Jack Mac or one of my other favorites, and I am losing too many old friends in my real life as it is. I prefer my fictional friends to just fade off into the sunset with their life lessons learned. ]]>
Some good points but they were hard to find, buried among the fluff and hokey--some great Bible lessons but really poor characterization and story-telling. Will you shed tears over this story? Only if you cry over Old Navy mannequins commercials--the characters have the same lack of depth, animation, and realism. The writing was grade-school primer "Run, Spot, Run" level, which, blessedly, made it a fast read. Look up the definition of "mediocre" in the dictionary, and you'll find a picture of this book. Kingsbury really took a step backward when she wrote this one. ]]>
129. Adriana Trigiani--Milk Glass Moon
finished 11/20/09, 130. Lucia, Lucia
finished 11/21/09, 131. The Queen of the Big Time
finished 11/22/09, and Home to Big Stone Gap
finished 11/23/09.
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This is the first Robert Crais book I've read but will undoubtedly seek out more. Fun exciting page-turner, with hero smart-mouthing his way through dirty cops and street gangs--not a smart thing to do, but it works well for a good read. ]]>