lisa's reviews
Reading is the only thing in the world I am good at. A lifetime of reading, fifteen years of working in bookstores, and libraries, and an obsession with the written word makes me qualified enough to talk someone's ear off about books. Now I am getting more ARCs than I have room for in the house. Let me get back to reading them!
After loving Olive Kitteridge I was looking forward to reading this one. The prologe intrigued me, but then the story completely lost my interest. All the characters annoyed me, and I finally gave up halfway through. I tried to skim the rest, but it was so boring I couldn't even care how it turned out.
I really enjoyed this book and it inspired me to think of the layout of cities in a different way. It was nice to read it when I did, since we are thinking about buying a house soon, so this book will be something we keep in mind as we look. However, (and this is my gripe with every book on this subject) I think one of the cool things about this country is that it was built from so much empty space. The author never addresses how we can make more rural areas accessible by alternative transportation, or how investing in alternative fuel sources could really benefit this country of small towns. We are not Europe, and much of the country doesn't have a big city close by. I love urban living, and would prefer to live in a place where I can run my errands without a car, but for much of this country that is simply not an option.
This book gets an A for effort, and a C minus for execution. I only read this because I am a huge fan of Alice In Wonderland, and have most of the book memorized. I liked reading about another take of the Wonderland characters, and I would LOVE to see a movie this book since it felt so visual. The plot seemed badly complicated for no good reason and I spent the whole book wanting to smack the main character, Alyssa. If the author was aiming to maker her tough and independent she completely failed. All the male characters in this book got the plot off the ground while Alyssa stood around and flapped her hands, I would go this movie the day it came out, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone but the most die hard Alice In Wonderland fans.
This book is obviously based on Justin Bieber, and after I got used to the voice of the eleven year old pop star I really enjoyed this. It reminded me a bit of Room, with the voice of the kid changing subtly as the character grew. That in itself made the book worth reading. I felt sorry for the protagonist, and gained an unexpected sympathy for Justin Bieber and all the teen pop stars who came before him.
Today many YA books are about lovely, mysterious girls falling in love with vampires, or other nonsensical characters. Every love story that appears in YA literature doesn't seem at all real to me, and most of relationships in these books are completely ridiculous. Is this really what we felt as teenagers? I don't think so. However, Eleanor and Park presents a beautiful and very real love story. There are no easy answers in this book. The relationships between every character is nuanced and flawed, yet every one rings of truth, with something that made me feel sad and happy at the same time. This is such a rarity in YA fiction. It was a lot like..... life. A lot like my life as a teenager actually, surrounded by people in situations that weren't unspeakable, but that weren't great. There were no easy answers. There still aren't. That's the way life was when I was a teenager, and the way it is now, and the way it will always be. Somehow Rainbow Rowell understands that and managed to translate it to an incredible young adult novel.
This is one of those books I feel like forcing everyone to read.
I admire Deb Perelman for being a self-taught cook, and for doing her awesome recipes in a tiny kitchen. She's an inspiration for urban cooks, and her cauliflower pesto was amazing. How are people this creative? I never could have dreamed up cauliflower pesto.
I didn't like the beginning, or the end of this book, but I really enjoyed reading the middle of this book. I had a hard time getting into the story, but once I did I couldn't stop reading it. By the end though I really wanted everything to be over and I felt like it was going on and on, with a bunch of annoying questions that I didn't care about. It took me longer to read the last fifty pages than it took me to read the first 350.
I so wanted to like this book, but I was so disinterested in every single one of the characters. I didn't care if they lived or died, or what happened to them. The first few chapters were interesting and I tried really hard to keep my enthusiasm up, but I just couldn't do it. Halfway through this slog of whining, and introspection, and stopping in the middle of a scene to back up in time to narrate some piece of history, I gave up and skipped to the end. I found the end didn't matter much to me since I was so disinterested in the book.
I think it's just me, that I am sick of memoirs, and I need to back off reading them. After reading Her and Chanel Bonfire, I really don't care to hear anymore about messed up childhoods and the women who rose above them. I didn't feel like this memoir took me anywhere. I was just reading the author's memories and they were okay, a little shocking, but not too bad. I didn't feel like she was on any part of a journey, or that she really cared to be on one. It was like she was writing down her history for her future generations, very vague and to the point, and not what I admire in a good memoir.
I refer to Sophie Kinsella's books as "candy books" because like candy they are delicious, go down easily, and make me feel guilty for consuming them. (I know I don't need the empty calories.) Candy books are different from chocolate books, which are my favorite books that taste amazing and decadent and that I don't mind wasting my calories, or my time on. However, a lot of candy books become some of my favorite books just because they are so much fun. Wedding Night was so exception, an amazing candy book that was just a fun read. It followed the formula of other Kinsella books, written in the exact same voice of all her other books, but this time told from the point of view of several different characters.
This book was ridiculous. The footnotes were ridiculous, the voice of the main character was ridiculous, his nonsensical chatter was ridiculous. The only thing that was somewhat enjoyable about the book was Meadow, the main character's daughter. She was smart, sassy, and the only well drawn character in this whole mess. Despite her, and the fact that the book goes by really fast, I still only give this book one star and recommend it to no one.
As a woman who has done a lot of solo traveling I have always admired Nellie Bly as a pioneer of female world travel. Ever since I first did a book report about her in the third grade I have been interested in her, and I was eager to read this book about her race around the world, especially when I realized the book was also about Elizabeth Bisland, the woman who set off around the world in the opposite direction, hoping to beat Bly's time. I had heard of Bisland before in one of the other books I've read about Nelly Bly, but the most I ever heard about her was that she also went around the world and she lost to Bly by several days. This book follows both women on their journey and I was thrilled to learn more about Elizabeth Bisland and the problems she faced on her journey. Anyone who has ever done any traveling will appreciate the journeys of Bly and Bisland, and sympathize with them as they fight their way from Brindisi to Ceylon, Ceylon to Brindisi, and across the Atlantic. I was struck by how harrowing international travel was before airplanes, and how brave and tough anyone must have been to take it on. Even moving at a leisurely pace must have been a million times harder than I could ever imagine. The fact that Bly only had a small bag with her makes me want to name her the patron saint of backpackers!
In addition to the travels of the two women the author also gives us interesting information on steam ships and the people who ran them, Chinese immigrants, how the nation adopted time zones and much more. This was amazing book and one that I had trouble putting down until it was done!
I just loved this book! Such a sweet memoir of growing up around food, not just preparing and eating it, but growing it as well. I rarely feel jealous of authors after reading their memoirs, but I was certainly jealous of Lucy Knisley. I've been finding that most cookbooks that are being published these days are about foodies trying to convince people to eat local, fresh foods that will inspire you to love cooking, but most of these cookbooks just don't hit that intended message. (Mostly I think because they come off sounding contemptuous of anyone who doesn't live on a sustainable farm.) This one did without putting in much effort, just giving colorfully illustrated glimpses of of life centered around food. It also doesn't overwhelm the reader with hundreds of recipes, just a few basic ones, several of which I've already tried. I can't wait to get online and discover more about Lucy Knisley!
The whole time I was reading this book I kept thinking, "Wow, this author really hates women!" The female characters in this book were of two types; the closed off, prissy wives and the lovely, sexually adventurous mistresses. They were completely one dimensional. However, the men were equally flawed. (And frustrating, at least from a female reader's point of of view.) I read this because it was said to be similar to Gilian Flynn's Gone Girl, which I loved. This book was nowhere near the caliber of the nuanced, chilling Gone Girl, but it was well written (expect for the characters) and it kept me turning the pages to see what happened next, so I didn't feel like it was a waste of time, and it was somewhat entertaining.
Some day I will sit down and read all three books together so that I don't get confused between one book and the other, so that I don't forget certain characters and plots. Until then this book will remain a complicated mess for me.
This book was hard to read since it has so much pain in every paragraph, but there are some beautiful moments within it. Much of the narrative seems to mean something to the author that was lost on me (and I suspect to other people outside her life) yet the small memories she shares about her children are so heartfelt and so joyful that the reader is struck more by the happiness they brought her than the sadness she is left with. This is a heartbreaking memoir, yet the writing is lovely.
