Jeffrey Zaslow, The Girls from Ames - I thought this story of lifelong friendship among a group of women would be a fascinating read ... but in the end, I really didn't find that it had much to say. They were a group of women, they were friends for a long time, that was pretty much it. I didn't think it made any particularly interesting points, and I didn't find myself interested in the women at all.
Craig Johnson, Kindness Goes Unpunished - It's a gutsy move, for your third book to take all your characters and move them halfway across the country to a new city, but it really worked here. I liked the way Sheriff Longmire and his crew dealt with the challenges presented to them in Philadelphia. There were a few too many coincidences, and I wasn't as enamored of Deputy Vic's whole family as the author was, but overall it was a fast-paced, well-written book, showcasing the character interactions that are some of Johnson's best writing.
Jan Karon, These High, Green Hills - I think with the Mitford series Karon achieved exactly what she set out to do - create a world people look forward to going back to. I enjoy every time I open one of her books and find myself on Main Street, walking past the Grill. They're simple people living their everyday lives, and yet they're so unique and so interesting and at the same time so homey that you want to keep going back.
Livy, A History of Rome: Selections - I quite enjoyed this translation. Livy (or, at least, his translator) has a candid, easy-to-read style that brings the events of Rome's history to life. Additionally, I enjoyed a brand-new experience with this book - it's the first time I ever got to cut the pages of a book! I don't know whose book this was before me, but they clearly hadn't read it from cover to cover. And I find that the newly cut pages provide a pleasing slightly ragged quality to the book. All the more so because I got to do it myself!
Friday, November 30, 2012
Thursday, November 22, 2012
book reviews
Elaine Viets, Final Sail - The most recent installment in the "Dead End Jobs" series begins to fix a big plot mistake in Helen Hawthorne's personal life, which is a big relief ... and offers a lively, interesting new pair of mysteries, to boot. While Viets's stories aren't flawless, they are fast-paced, filled with interesting characters, and transport you to a place you'd like to hang out.
Judith Redline Coopey, Redfield Farm - Unusually for a book group selection, I really loved this book. I found it well centered in its time period - Pennsylvania just before the Civil War - and I found the stereotypical female first person narrator to be not only grounded in her time and place, but a well-rounded, believable, and likeable character, as well ... a refreshing change.
Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., Time Out for Happiness - I'm an avowed Gilbreth-ophile, and I found this short biography of Gilbreth's parents delightful. In places it went back over material already contained in Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes, but there was a depth to it that those lighter books never quite reached.
Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving - This is a short, simple book about several children left at home alone on Thanksgiving and their attempt to make a nice Thanksgiving dinner on their own. None of the expected tropes occur, the dinner is not necessarily a success, but the warmth of the family comes through clearly and the book leaves you smiling.
Judith Redline Coopey, Redfield Farm - Unusually for a book group selection, I really loved this book. I found it well centered in its time period - Pennsylvania just before the Civil War - and I found the stereotypical female first person narrator to be not only grounded in her time and place, but a well-rounded, believable, and likeable character, as well ... a refreshing change.
Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., Time Out for Happiness - I'm an avowed Gilbreth-ophile, and I found this short biography of Gilbreth's parents delightful. In places it went back over material already contained in Cheaper by the Dozen and Belles on Their Toes, but there was a depth to it that those lighter books never quite reached.
Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving - This is a short, simple book about several children left at home alone on Thanksgiving and their attempt to make a nice Thanksgiving dinner on their own. None of the expected tropes occur, the dinner is not necessarily a success, but the warmth of the family comes through clearly and the book leaves you smiling.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
book reviews
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl - This was three different books in one: the first third a trite, cliched, predictable story about two self-involved spoiled hipsters; the second third a gripping and unexpected look into an unusual and finely drawn personality; the last third an author's desperate flailing attempt to write herself out of a box and come up with a "happy" ending for characters who don't deserve or know how to be happy. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough of the middle third of the book to be worth rereading or recommending.
Craig Johnson, Death Without Company - The second book in the Longmire series exceeded the first in almost every way. The characters were more comfortable as the author got more used to them and their interactions, the story more fully seated in not only the Western setting but also the fictional one, the pacing much tighter. (Example: I read the first book in two weeks; I read the second in a day.) Highly recommended, although you should probably read the first one first.
H. A. Guerber, Myths of Greece and Rome - Guerber has nothing on Edith Hamilton. His (I assume, given the 1912 inscription on the flyleaf) myth tellings are dry and pedantic and add very little to the overall body of myth literature. The book, however, is well worth keeping because of my Great-Aunt Jennie's inscription - in 1912, she was 17.
Alyson Richman, The Lost Wife - I had hopes for this when I read the opener, the story of an old man at his grandson's wedding meeting the bride's grandmother and discovering she was the wife he'd thought had died in the Holocaust. Unfortunately (spoilers), that's the end of that whole plotline. The rest of the book is an extended, pedestrian, expected, overly melodramatic, too painstakingly descriptive flashback of the extremely uninteresting, not to mention unlikeable, wife's experiences during the Holocaust, and the book ends back at the wedding again with the wife acknowledging her identity. The book I wanted to read was the one that came afterward, and I was highly disappointed that it didn't exist.
Craig Johnson, Death Without Company - The second book in the Longmire series exceeded the first in almost every way. The characters were more comfortable as the author got more used to them and their interactions, the story more fully seated in not only the Western setting but also the fictional one, the pacing much tighter. (Example: I read the first book in two weeks; I read the second in a day.) Highly recommended, although you should probably read the first one first.
H. A. Guerber, Myths of Greece and Rome - Guerber has nothing on Edith Hamilton. His (I assume, given the 1912 inscription on the flyleaf) myth tellings are dry and pedantic and add very little to the overall body of myth literature. The book, however, is well worth keeping because of my Great-Aunt Jennie's inscription - in 1912, she was 17.
Alyson Richman, The Lost Wife - I had hopes for this when I read the opener, the story of an old man at his grandson's wedding meeting the bride's grandmother and discovering she was the wife he'd thought had died in the Holocaust. Unfortunately (spoilers), that's the end of that whole plotline. The rest of the book is an extended, pedestrian, expected, overly melodramatic, too painstakingly descriptive flashback of the extremely uninteresting, not to mention unlikeable, wife's experiences during the Holocaust, and the book ends back at the wedding again with the wife acknowledging her identity. The book I wanted to read was the one that came afterward, and I was highly disappointed that it didn't exist.
Thursday, November 01, 2012
book reviews
Amor Towles, Rules of Civility - Towles writes well. He's got a way with words, and he puts them together attractively. Unfortunately, the book's characters were little more than paper dolls, emotionless and unchanging. The main character drifted through the pages, meeting people, parting from people, changing her life, and by the end of it, I had no idea why she'd bothered to do any of it, since she seemed to feel absolutely nothing.
Elizabeth Peters, The Hippopotamus Pool - Peters isn't a perfect writer, but there is no question that she has created dynamic, interesting, emotional characters. I want to know what's happening next to Amelia Peabody Emerson and her extended family, I want to spend more time in her head, and so I forget that I'm reading a book and simply immerse myself in her adventures. The plots of the books are remarkably varied for a series that takes place in the same rather narrow niche, and they call to mind some of the old adventure novels I love.
Robert Service, The Yukon Poems of Robert W. Service - Service's poems tell a story and take you to the land of the Yukon, with its varied denizens. They're not perfected, they're as rough as the boards of a shanty, and that gives them an added feeling of tangibility.
Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason and the Case of the Foot-Loose Doll - Gardner is another who takes what could be a formulaic setting and twists it around into what manage to be remarkably varied plots. In this case, the defendant is attempting to lead a life under a false identity, and gets herself embroiled in an entire world of complications ... and then doesn't entirely come clean to Mason until she has to. It's a clever denouement and has some nice twists.
Elizabeth Peters, The Hippopotamus Pool - Peters isn't a perfect writer, but there is no question that she has created dynamic, interesting, emotional characters. I want to know what's happening next to Amelia Peabody Emerson and her extended family, I want to spend more time in her head, and so I forget that I'm reading a book and simply immerse myself in her adventures. The plots of the books are remarkably varied for a series that takes place in the same rather narrow niche, and they call to mind some of the old adventure novels I love.
Robert Service, The Yukon Poems of Robert W. Service - Service's poems tell a story and take you to the land of the Yukon, with its varied denizens. They're not perfected, they're as rough as the boards of a shanty, and that gives them an added feeling of tangibility.
Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason and the Case of the Foot-Loose Doll - Gardner is another who takes what could be a formulaic setting and twists it around into what manage to be remarkably varied plots. In this case, the defendant is attempting to lead a life under a false identity, and gets herself embroiled in an entire world of complications ... and then doesn't entirely come clean to Mason until she has to. It's a clever denouement and has some nice twists.
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