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	09/23 Vikki is currently reading: The Greenlanders (Paperback) by Jane Smiley bookshelves: currently-reading	my rating:
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September 23

Vikki is currently reading:
The Greenlanders (Paperback)
by Jane Smiley
bookshelves: currently-reading

my rating:

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September 16

Vikki marked as to-read:
Crusade (Hardcover)
by Robyn Young
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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Vikki marked as to-read:
Under the Banner of Heaven (Paperback)
by Jon Krakauer
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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September 14

Vikki gave

to:
Jane Austen: A Life (Paperback)
by Claire Tomalin

my rating:

read in September, 2008

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August 29

Vikki marked as to-read:
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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Vikki marked as to-read:
Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Paperback)
by Michael Baigent
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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Vikki gave

to:
Welcome to the Monkey House (Paperback)
by Kurt Vonnegut

my rating:

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August 16

Vikki marked as to-read:
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity (Paperback)
by Beverly Daniel Tatum
bookshelves: to-read

my rating:

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June 17

New comment on Eric's review of Outlander (Outlander, Book 1)

Vikki wrote: "eric, all i can say about your review is this...
agreed. "

(see all 27 comments)

Vikki read and liked Eric's review of Outlander (Outlander, Book 1):

"I gave this book a really awful and visceral yet irreverent review and people got all hurty. Sorry gentle readers. So here's a revised review - still bad, but with fewer sharp corners and internet ugliness. So...

I really disliked this book. As I...more I gave this book a really awful and visceral yet irreverent review and people got all hurty. Sorry gentle readers. So here's a revised review - still bad, but with fewer sharp corners and internet ugliness. So...

I really disliked this book. As I think about all the ones I've read, this one is at the bottom. I bought it thinking, "Scotland. Time Travel. Awesome." But it was not to be. What did it was the adolescent writing style. Actually it was the interplay between the writing style and the adolescent mindset behind it, one which we as the readers are asked to share and indulge in, to put on like a hat. It made me angry with its badness. On the upside, it finaly cured me of a disease I used to have - a compulsion to finish any book I started. Because I mean you never know, right? Now I can safely let bad ones go and preserve precious hours of my life.

Anyway, the love scenes, as I mentioned in my previous review were where the writing/mindset problems were laid most bare. Whoaaa, do you see what I did just there? Love scenes are not easy to do well, which is presumably partly why all the classy movie directors of yore panned away as the two lovers met and let you fill in the blanks with your imagination - - it wasn't just the censors or sexual repression. This book didn't do that. Cheap, cheezy, overdone, and unsubtle are the words that come to mind. One could almost picture a teenager carefully writing each impassioned line in her spiral notebook with an airbrushed unicorn on the front cover. "I'm going to be a writer. I'll show them all," she thought to herself as she read and reread each lovingly-crafted scene about a thing she had never done but had heard about, in a story she'd never share with anyone.

But where it veered from the adolescent into the disturbing was in a horrific gay rape/torture scene towards the end, with a nailed hand, lubricants, whimpering, and overtones of childhood incest. WTF? A spot of light summer reading, the shop lady said! To top it all off, the rapee had to recount the story to his friends afterwards in an awful phonetic Scottish accent. If I remember correctly, his words were, "Aye, he used me hard. An' I could nae but respond to his touch." Aaaand... SCENE!

Go forth, gentle readers, armed with the good reviews and the bad....less "

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