Publisher: Little, Brown, and Company Page Count: 272 Nonfiction Genre: Memoir, Essays, Comedy, Short Stories Dates Read: September 20-22, 2015 Summary David Sedaris shares a series of short stories of his life, starting from the young age when his father decided they should have a family band, and forced Sedaris to take guitar lessons. Review Why does everyone love this book? I've had it sitting on my shelf for years knowing that one day I would finally get to it. So many of my friends loved it, so that had to mean something. What did I miss? I was bored reading this, and I have never cared so little about another human being's life. I found Sedaris's stories to be more sad and pathetic that I found them to be funny. It was dull and uninteresting - Like Jan Brady screaming "LOOK AT ME!!!!". Ratings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 4 Pace - 4 Plot Development - 3 Characters - 4 Enjoyability - 3 Insightfulness - 5 Ease of Reading - 5 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Rating - 2 out of 5 stars
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Publisher: Pocket Books Page Count: 400 Fiction Genre: Paranormal, Magic, Romance, Supernatural Dates Read: September 16-21, 2015 Summary The Spider has retired, but just at the beginning of her retirement shit hits the fan, and now she feels like she needs to dust of her trade tools and help solve a problem, and save an old friend of her mentor. Review NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!!!!! After this book I can never pick up another book by Elemental Assassin book again. Book 1 (Spider's Bite) in the series was pretty good, not great, but entertaining. I thought this series had great potential and would go somewhere. I do not know what happened between book 1 and book 2, but Web of Lies turned out to be one huge pile of steaming junk. About 3/4 of Web of Lies, Estep is repeating exactly what happened in book 1, or things that have happened so far in this book. She is constantly reminding us about the things that have happened, as if she does not trust that her readers have the cognitive abilities for any kind of memory retention. The other 1/4 of the book is actual plot development for the current book. Do not even get me started in on the weak love (lust) story between Gin (Spider) and Donovan Caine, detective. Estep is trying to build this hot and heavy romance between the two, but I am starting to feel bystander sexual frustration for them. The two characters barely speak to each other, but just seem to communicate through a series of grunts and pants. #NotABetterLoveStoryThanTwilight Someone please get Ms. Estep a thesaurus and tell her to stop using the phrase "get dead", she sounds ignorant with the frequency in which she uses it (about every 7 pages). Ratings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 2 Pace - 4 Plot Development - 3 Characters - 4 Enjoyability - 2 Insightfulness - 3 Ease of Reading - 5 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Rating - 1 out of 5 stars Publisher: Random House Page Count: 270 Fiction Genre: Short Stories, Book Club, Dates Read: September 19-20, 2015 Summary Olive Kitteridge is a woman who has seen a lot happen in her life. This book is full of short stories taking place in small-town Maine, and all revolving around Olive. Some of the stories are told from her perspective, and the rest from other town member's perspectives. Olive is not always a central character in each story, but will sometimes just make a passing appearance. Review What did I just read? I'm conflicted about whether I liked this or not. This book was very depressing, the stories were deep and personal. I felt like I actually knew the people in the stories. However, the book ran along the edge of boring and dived deeply into depressive. I have never thought about suicide and death so much in my life ... And my job requires me to go through yearly suicide prevention training. I did like how this book was structured, showing how many lives one person can touch, even in small, minute ways, and not even know it. I connected with all of the characters; they were very well developed. I laughed at their silly stories, and found myself crying at their heartaches. There was just so much heartache. I think my breaking point was when Henry has his life-changing event that alters his and Olive's lives in great ways. This book was good, but it was just very depressing. I found myself pushing to finish this book because it was depressing me, and the need to take constant and long breaks from it. Ratings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 9 Pace - 7 Plot Development - 6 Characters - 8 Enjoyability - 4 Insightfulness - 5 Ease of Reading - 6 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Rating - 4 out of 5 stars Publisher: Overlook Books Page Count: 256 Fiction Genre: Humor, Short Stories, Brit-Lit., Classics Dates Read: September 18-19, 2015 Summary Jeeves is a man's man. He works hard for Mr. Wooster, and always seems to get him out of trouble. Jeeves is always around at the right time with the right answer. Through a series of short stories, Wodehouse takes us through Mr. Wooster's life, from his perspective, with his ever present man Jeeves at his side. Review This was a decent set of stories. They do not connect to each other, except for the fact that Mr. Wooster and Jeeves are recurring characters in each and every story. We see watch as Mr. Wooster struggles with Jeeves being his hired help, but also balancing the lines of friendship with him. There are no crossover stories. Wodehouse has a good writing style, that is clear and concise, but sometimes it resembles an air conditioner maintenance manual. A good classic, but not the greatest thing I've read. Ratings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 6 Pace - 4 Plot Development - 5 Characters - 5 Enjoyability - 5 Insightfulness - 4 Ease of Reading - 6 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Rating - 3 out of 5 stars Publisher: Canongate Page Count: 352 Fiction Genre: Irish-Lit., Realistic, Mental Health Dates Read: September 15-18, 2015 Summary John is a young boy who isn't the most popular, but he does okay at school. Things are okay at home too, but he knows there is a lot of stress between his parents and his fathers mother. His life is turned upside down when his parents move him from their sleepy town, living with his grandmother, to the bustling city, far away from his friends, his most loved teacher, and his grandmother. John struggles to find himself in his new environment, always on the verge of poverty. Review This book while very disturbing, was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't all that excited about having this book on my list, but now that I am done with it, I am very glad it was. The book started off rough where in the first few pages an 11 year old boy describes in great detail his father murdering a litter of kittens. I nearly walked away from the book at that point, but I gave it a chance. There is no doubt that the Egan family in this book is dysfunctional, but you spend the entire book trying to figure out where/who this dysfunction is stemming from. There wasn't a big flashy ending to this book, and reading reviews from other GoodReaders, that was a problem. However, I felt the ending was perfect for the narrative and tone of Carry Me Down. The prose are so smooth and beautiful in these pages that I actually felt like John, half-child, half-man, was sitting in my living room telling me his story in person. I almost hated to close the book at the end. I felt like I was saying goodbye to a dear friend. Ratings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 9 Pace - 8 Plot Development - 7 Characters - 8 Enjoyability - 9 Insightfulness - 7 Ease of Reading - 9 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Rating - 5 out of 5 stars Publisher: Simone Pulse Page Count: 213 Fiction Genre: YA, Classic, Banned, Psychology, Drama Dates Read: September 16, 2015 Summary Alice is a normal girl from a privileged family. She worries about being popular, pretty and thin enough, and how her life is going to change once her family moves to a new town for her father's job at a college. After the move, Alice has some troubles adjusting and soon finds herself down a rabbit-hole of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Review Well .... I read this. I feel like I enjoyed this, to an extent, as a teenager, but that could have been because I felt like it was a forbidden thing, ie: hiding the book from my parents. Reading it 10 years later, I found myself laughing at the absurdity of this book. When I first read it, I think I though that this was seriously some poor girl's diary from the 70s. Now I realize the language used in the book was totally wrong, and I cannot imagine anyone who was using drugs would talking about bringing gelatin salad to her best friend Betty's party. Seriously, the language used in this book was just all wrong, and I could sense it from the first page. I did some quick research on Ms. Sparks, and I guess as an editor she had a habit of creating fake journals that were supposed to be from real teenagers who had experimented with things they shouldn't, like drugs and Satan. It was all part of the 1970s fear-mongering propaganda that happened. Scare parents into locking up their children so they won't try anything the bible says is bad. Ratings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 2 Pace - 3 Plot Development - 1 Characters - 1 Enjoyability - 1 Insightfulness - 1 Ease of Reading - 3 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Rating - 0.5 out of 5 stars Publisher: Viking Page Count: 402 Fiction Genre: Fantasy, Magic, Sci-Fi, Adventure Dates Read: September 8-15, 2015 Summary Quentin never quiet fit in, and always felt like a third wheel to his two best friends, that are dating each other. Unexpectedly, Quentin shows up at this school to take an entrance test that he was not prepared for. Now he's been admitted to a very exclusive school for magic. But like any normal teenager, he struggles, can be impulsive, and is just trying to grown up. Review While I loved that Grossman took on a book about a teenager suddenly finding themselves in the world of magic, but still acts like a normal teenager, this book was just a drain for me. It could have been about 200 pages shorter and told a decent story. I can't believe he's stretched it out to three books. It was humorous in places, but overall it was rather boring. It wasn't awful and there were some redeeming things about it, such as Grossman's quality of writing. The content was just too much in places and lacking in others. So many people love this book, I just feel like there was was something I missed. Ratings (based on a 10 point scale) Quality of Writing - 5 Pace - 3 Plot Development - 3 Characters - 4 Enjoyability - 5 Insightfulness - 4 Ease of Reading - 5 Photos/Illustrations - N/A Overall Rating - 3 out of 5 stars |
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