There was a part after Hamnet died, when Shakespeare (who is never named) returns from almost a year in London, that was so tender it brought tears toThere was a part after Hamnet died, when Shakespeare (who is never named) returns from almost a year in London, that was so tender it brought tears to my eyes. For most of this book I was not very emotionally involved, but towards the end there was a real increase in intensity for me that bumped this up to 4 stars....more
3.5 stars I'm just a fan of Adriana Trigiani's books. They won't make your pulse race or have you inching toward the edge of your seat. They're just go3.5 stars I'm just a fan of Adriana Trigiani's books. They won't make your pulse race or have you inching toward the edge of your seat. They're just good yarns.
Big Stone Gap is by far my favorite, and The Queen of the Big Time my least favorite of those I've read so far. It was still a very enjoyable listen, at least until we fast-forward a couple of decades and Nella is turning 50, when the immediacy of the story tapers off and settles. The book becomes less engaging when Nella isn't rising through the ranks of the garment factory or debating between her heart and her head the right choice of partner for her life. I appreciate that Trigiani wanted to show us Nella's whole life, and how the decisions we make in our youth play out across a lifetime, but the book was weaker for the indulgence....more
I found this reading experience to be so frustrating. The writing? I liked it. The setting? Exotic, beautiful. The backstory? Fantastic, legendary. ThI found this reading experience to be so frustrating. The writing? I liked it. The setting? Exotic, beautiful. The backstory? Fantastic, legendary. The actual book? Repetitive, slow. For the most part, boring.
With some more judicious editing, this could have been gripping. Ultimately, I'm granting it a neither-here-nor-there 3 stars. If you are like me, and you considered bailing mid-book, it definitely does improve.
Yet somehow I'm still thinking about it after finishing it. I have so many questions for Yangsze Choo!
There is quite a lot of symbolism in these pages, and herein my questions lie. The story itself is steeped in weretiger legend and slides between the natural and supernatural on nearly every page. Some parts - such as Ji Lin repeatedly encountering Yi in her dreams - I could have done without. All of the scenes in the dance hall, the traveling back and forth between her hometown and the hospital and the place where she was apprenticed as a dressmaker slowed the story down. The love story put me off quite a bit - it was strange and felt really inappropriate.
What I would love to explore further are the myths, the dynamic between men and women in Malaysia at this time period, the intersection between the British ex-pats and the locals, the significance of missing body parts (what does it mean after Ren's accident that he has lost a finger?), what happens to William, and more....more
Arduous and challenging to read. The cover is apt - this reading experience feels like drowning.
This trilogy is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Mantel possArduous and challenging to read. The cover is apt - this reading experience feels like drowning.
This trilogy is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Mantel possesses the astonishing gift to breathe life into history. Each of these characters is masterfully formed - they practically leap off of the page. At times I felt like I was watching a play rather than reading a book, the scenes were so vibrant, the details so real. Everything happens in its correct timeline, meticulously researched, and yet no scene or detail feels forced. Everything flows seamlessly forward in the river of time between 1536-1540.
Still - fatigue set in many times throughout the 3 weeks it took me to read this. I felt that Mantel referencing Cromwell's past, especially his childhood in Putney, was entirely unnecessary. This particular character study was weakened for those random meanderings into the past. They did nothing to aid in building Cromwell's character (already well-established in the history books and in the previous two books in the trilogy) and they detracted from the intensity of the events that occurred from Anne Boleyn's beheading to Cromwell's own demise.
I wish this had been edited down and that Mantel had continued to the end of Henry VIII's reign and through Edward's and Mary's and Elizabeth's. I wish this would go on forever. It is utterly brilliant....more
Toni Morrison is one of the authors whose work continues to grow and speak in the reader's mind long after the book itself is finished. I sat and thouToni Morrison is one of the authors whose work continues to grow and speak in the reader's mind long after the book itself is finished. I sat and thought for quite a while after finishing this one.
As I was reading the book, I didn't like it very much. I admired Morrison's writing, as always, but the story itself was difficult for both the way it is told, portioned out into different sections narrated by different people, and for the subject matter, which, in the eye of Morrison's hurricane of poverty and hardship, tells the rape and subsequent pregnancy of an eleven-year-old girl named Pecola by her father.
As always with Toni Morrison, there is the imagery, the allegory, and the symbolism to dissect.
- The bluest eye. Little Pecola, after being so thoroughly abused and disposed of, goes to the town fortune teller to beg for blue eyes. The new eyes will allow her to be seen by others differently, and will allow her to see herself differently. It is not only how she wants to be perceived by others - as beautiful - but also the fact that she cannot look at this thing that happened to her, cannot look at it in the eye, so needs different eyes, to see different things - beautiful things - that her black eyes in her black face in her black body and with her black soul cannot ever know.
- There is so much nature creeping into this story. The cold wind blows through the cracks of the window when our main narrator, little Claudia, is sick in bed. The marigolds refuse to grow, the seeds not sprouting into buds - a winter when so much goes wrong, when childhood is stunted, when a little girl stops growing. The book is even divided into seasonal sections. This invasion of nature, this penetration by nature into the human experiences in this book, and as explicit as the physical penetration of human nature into these girls' bodies and experiences, is perpetuated throughout the book. There is something perverse and destructive about this nature, something twisted, and it is inside of all of these adults and it is creeping into all of these naive little girls' lives.
Morrison writes right up to the edge of things and she dares to push over the edge, too. She could have written that Pecola's father, Cholly Breedlove, impregnated his daughter. But she didn't stop there. She wrote out the scene, she made us witness it, she painted it in detail, from his perspective, no less, and she didn't beautify it. She laid it bare in all of its disgrace. There are so many scenes of hardship, so many injustices and wrongs and hurts woven by different voices throughout this book. And then we watch as it pours over into the next generation, as the wounds of the parents bleed onto the children, and the parents open up huge gashes in their children's psyches and in their flesh, and the children are forever changed, the course of their lives veer inexorably into a different future, somewhere over the edge, beyond the picket fences and the neat homes and the blond baby dolls, into the abyss, where real things hide and fester, waiting to eat them alive.
If you lived in Lorrain, Ohio, in 1941, in an old furniture shop turned house, with the town whores in the apartment upstairs, and you knew you were ugly and you were worthless even to your own family, and the kids at school tormented you, and your daddy came home when you were eleven years old and washing the dishes and raped you, and then did it again, well - wouldn't you want the bluest eyes, too?...more
I am not one for fairy tales, legends or myths. But by the end of Circe, I could have continued reading of Circe and Odysseus and Helios for 3.5 stars
I am not one for fairy tales, legends or myths. But by the end of Circe, I could have continued reading of Circe and Odysseus and Helios for another 400 pages. The stories are so marvelous, and to see them as they were lived is fantastic.
That being said, I do have problems with Circe, many of the same problems I had with Madeline Miller's first book, The Song of Achilles. The beginning of each book is very slow and very repetitive. Maybe it's the way Miller writes about childhood that just does not work for me at all. The first half of each of these books is 2-star material. The ends, however... by the end I am soaring on the aching beauty of the work, the millennia-old mythology, the way the stories reach across time to touch us today, and here is Miller's magic at work. Like Circe, she weaves an incredible story on a one-of-a-kind loom and the final product is breathtaking....more
This is one of the best examples whereby the author should have applied the rule of "show, don't tell."
I understand that the story was told to her by This is one of the best examples whereby the author should have applied the rule of "show, don't tell."
I understand that the story was told to her by Lale, the flesh-and-bone man who talked out his story with her several days a week across the span of three years, the three painful years after his wife Gita, whom he had met while both were prisoners at Birkenau-Auschwitz, passed away and before he himself died. However, in that case, either fictionalize the hell out of it, to the point where it's the most chilling, life-inspiring book of all time, or tell the true story without fictionalizing it.
Instead of a devastating account of three years surviving a death camp, and the harrowing escape that followed, this is "Holocaust Lite". This is "Muzak". This is not MUSIC, it's not a symphony, there is no orchestra. I was so frustrated throughout this book because, once again, the author took a page from one of my least favorite authors, Fredrik Backman, and simplified the hell out of this story, which is a travesty because this story deserved to be told by a writer who wasn't painting-by-numbers, but who was navigating life and death, who was painting a blank canvas with this incredible story, in rich, deep, sorrowful colors. What we got was freaking Tomas Kincade. This is the sanitized, Disney version of the Holocaust, and that makes me feel sick.
The two stars are for the real Lale and Gita and their story, God bless them. Ten thousand stars to them and all of those who were killed in and who survived the death camps. But the telling of their story was almost offensive in how it was told....more
There are so many quotable, beautiful and memorable lines in this book. These are excerpts from the achingly beautiful and haunting Extraordinary.
There are so many quotable, beautiful and memorable lines in this book. These are excerpts from the achingly beautiful and haunting end:
None of it was real; nothing was real.
Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear.
These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and, in this way, brought them forth. And now must lose them.
I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant.
Goodbye goodbye good— roger bevins iii
* * *
Everything again possible. gene “rascal” kane
We Three had never Wed, nor truly Lov’d, but, once Night fell again, and if we found ourselves still Resident here, might strike the “never”— stanley “perfesser” lippert
For until we are ended, “never” may not be truly said. jack “malarkey” fuller
And love may yet be ours. gene “rascal” kane...more
This audiobook narrator was spot-on! Mary Jane Wells brought this book and its cast of rakish characters to life, making this such an enjoyable book tThis audiobook narrator was spot-on! Mary Jane Wells brought this book and its cast of rakish characters to life, making this such an enjoyable book to listen to while biking to and from work.
I particularly loved the beginning of the story, the jaunty, wry dialogue between West and Devon, and the way Kathleen and Devon whipped barbs back and forth, which had me chuckling. In a romantic storyline, I always dread the point at which the characters suddenly cool towards one another, and I definitely felt the deflation of the story's verve about 3/4 of the way through. Hoping for a revival in Book 2, and hopefully a lot more of Devon and Kathleen alongside the Helen and Winterborne story (which I'm still not convinced I like - not a fan of Rhys)....more
Elizabeth Gilbert writes astonishingly well. Though this book is over 400 pages, it goes by very quickly because of Gilbert's flowing prose.
While I adElizabeth Gilbert writes astonishingly well. Though this book is over 400 pages, it goes by very quickly because of Gilbert's flowing prose.
While I admire the writing, something about this book never clicked with me. I found the gimmick of Vivian telling her life story to Angela to be annoying. Also, by the end of the book, I also thought that the end didn't justify the means. I just didn't buy Vivian and Frank's relationship (nothing about it made sense to me or gelled with what I understood to be Vivian's character), and I didn't buy that Vivian would be sharing her journey in such glaring detail with his daughter, Angela.
The beginning, when Vivian moves to New York and becomes immersed in the world of the Lily Playhouse, was vital and immediate. I felt like I was there with Vivian, living through these times; the rest of the book, however, felt more like showing than telling, which was fine as well, though not as captivating.
My biggest issue with the book was that I didn't much like Vivian. I didn't like how she behaved at the age of 20; I didn't understand why Gilbert had to bang so hard on the promiscuity drum. Instead of telling the story, she kept driving this point home again and again, to the point where I felt I was being preached to. I guess she herself had a hard time believing a 20-year-old from the Morris family would move to New York and within two weeks have not only lost her virginity (in the most uncomfortable sex scene I've probably ever read), but also have slept with a horde of men (none of whom sound the least bit appealing, and all of whom seem to have been used simply for their ability to buy a decent meal). I found Vivian's return to New York and her life at L'Atelier to be anti-climactic, and then the whole conceit of the book, and the relationship with Frank, was not convincing or authentic. All in all, I think Gilbert tried too hard and, in the end, didn't really succeed, with convincing the reader (and therefore herself) that Vivian Morris was this person who lived this life and loved these people.
It's a shame because, wow, what a voice she has....more
Really enjoyed the story, which was unique and packed with Appalachian history and a love of books. The execution and the writing, however, was just aReally enjoyed the story, which was unique and packed with Appalachian history and a love of books. The execution and the writing, however, was just average. In another author's hands, this might have had less heart, but been more taut and compelling....more
Lisa See, have you ever heard the old adage "show, don't tell"?
This book was terrible on so many levels. Lisa See writes with the voice of a middle-agLisa See, have you ever heard the old adage "show, don't tell"?
This book was terrible on so many levels. Lisa See writes with the voice of a middle-aged, middle-class American on a laptop at a Starbucks in LA - not in the voice of a young Chinese woman who is fleeing from a Japanese invasion and family troubles. The author's voice was so transparent that she simply couldn't inhabit her main character, Pearl, and couldn't express Pearl's story with anything more than a storyteller's voice.
In addition, the characters are so wooden and childish and foolish and unlikable that they make following this 20-year saga a real chore. While the most interesting and challenging and terrifying things may have happened to these sisters, the way it's told is not at arm's length, but at world's length, and none of it rings true. It just sounds like someone describing something that happened to someone else; there is zero emotion, zero feeling, and zero creativity. It's just "she said yes", "Chinatown was bustling", "the wire mattress was uncomfortable". It gives me a huge amount of newfound appreciation for Pachinko, which is how a real Asian saga should be told.
Terrible, terrible, terrible. Needless to say, Lisa See is officially on my blacklist....more
- 2 stars - I was sorely disappointed by A Certain Age after really loving A Hundred Summers by the same author. That book was fast-paced and fascinat- 2 stars - I was sorely disappointed by A Certain Age after really loving A Hundred Summers by the same author. That book was fast-paced and fascinating, while A Certain Age is hampered by a dragging-its-heels first half, an unclear plot twist (view spoiler)[that Octavian actually grew up in the same Greenwich, CT house in which Sophie's mother was murdered (hide spoiler)], and then a very muddled yet admittedly faster-paced second half in which the plot twists arrive frequently, yet contribute nothing but confusion, until whatever you thought this plot was becomes so unraveled that arriving at the end of the story is a wholly dissatisfying experience. It's a complete mess. The only thought left in my head was, "What did I just read?"
It is well-written - no getting around the fact that Beatriz Williams is immensely talented. She does, however, have a tendency to overwrite. Here is an example: “I don't understand,” he says, in a voice like the spray of fine gravel at the apex of a crescent-shaped driveway. That grated on my nerves.
Chuck in a cast of unlikable characters, annoying "Twenties-isms" and dialogue, a title which has zero connection to the story itself, and an extremely unconvincing insta-love story (view spoiler)[between Octavian and Sophie (hide spoiler)], and what you're left with is a gorgeous cover and a handful of potential that was frittered away on a senseless and confusing plot....more
This book feels as though it's written for a very young audience, more for 12-year-olds than 17-year-olds verging into the YA territory I'm used to reThis book feels as though it's written for a very young audience, more for 12-year-olds than 17-year-olds verging into the YA territory I'm used to reading. The writing was incredibly basic and not at all impressive. I agree with some of the reviews I've seen saying that writing YA sometimes feels like the writer's excuse not to invest in their craft. Then again there are some YA writers who write magnificently (I'm looking at you, Laini Taylor), and those who just have the tone down pat (Jenny Han, Sarah Dessen). I wasn't a fan of Sepetys writing style and found it to be bland. The book did lift its head towards the end during the torpedoing of the Wilhem Gustloff, but throughout most of the 390 pages, the pace of the story crawled competently forward, but didn't show any signs of picking itself up and running....more
I listened to the audiobook and I'm sure that my opinion would have been different if I had read this book. The first half was quite slow. I'm 3 stars
I listened to the audiobook and I'm sure that my opinion would have been different if I had read this book. The first half was quite slow. I'm not a keen fan of The Gilded Age, and so descriptions of opulence, gowns and mansions did nothing for me (and that was a large part of the book). The last third of the book was much more engaging; Alva began to take her life into her hands rather than let circumstances lead her. I enjoyed the second half of her life and would have liked to have read/heard more about her involvement in women's suffrage. It's incredible that throughout the entire narrative, women were completely voiceless in government.
This is a book that shouldn't be abandoned early on because it takes the reader on a journey that is astonishing in its scope. The fact that the Kurc This is a book that shouldn't be abandoned early on because it takes the reader on a journey that is astonishing in its scope. The fact that the Kurc family survived - largely intact - the systematic extermination of the Jewish people from Nazi-occupied Europe should be enough to pique your curiosity. The story, as it unfolds, is almost unbelievable - and it's based on true events. It's competently (if not brilliantly) told by Georgia Hunter, the granddaughter of one of the Kurc siblings who survived by literally jumping ship from Europe to Brazil. Short chapters, slipping from place to place and sibling to sibling, keep the reader flipping the pages, following the trail of twists and turns that comprise this unfathomable, true survival story.
By the end, I had tears in my eyes. It's a phenomenal send-up to the power and persistence of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable pain and trauma. Above all, it's a love letter to big families and to doing anything and everything to save the people you love. The reunion was a sucker-punch in the best possible way....more
Great view into Greenwich Village circa the 1950s and Italian immigrant life in New York. Simple, elegant and engaging, but never cold. Adriana TrigiaGreat view into Greenwich Village circa the 1950s and Italian immigrant life in New York. Simple, elegant and engaging, but never cold. Adriana Trigiani's books are full of heart, warmth, family and lines of wonderful truisms without being preachy. "Talent is a gift, but perseverance is its own reward."...more
Interesting and different prose, the work of an artist who has slowed down and taken the time to get the details right. I found my own natura3.5 stars
Interesting and different prose, the work of an artist who has slowed down and taken the time to get the details right. I found my own natural reading pace trickle into Owens' tidal, marsh-like cadence. The prose and the lovely descriptions of North Carolina's coastal marshlands deserves more stars than the plot.
The story was fine - it didn't give me a strong feeling either for or against it. Mostly I found myself disappearing into the story when I read this book, not wondering whether I liked it, or how I would rate it. The trial was tonally very different from the first 75% of the book, but I did find myself wondering how the jurors would vote.
As some readers have written in other reviews, Kya's adult persona, as an award-winning author (view spoiler)[and criminal mastermind - I don't understand: did she become a professional makeup artist overnight? How did she disguise herself in two completely different get-ups and ride the bus back and forth between Greenville and Barkley Cove without being recognized? (hide spoiler)], doesn't quite seem to gel with her character; it's hard to believe that someone who has lived primitively, off the land, with little to no human contact, and zero education, has so much sophistication in her (especially given that her poetry is terribly simple and pretty awful).
Overall Where the Crawdads Sing was compelling work, but not life-changing for me....more
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