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!
At first I was really into this book, but then it completely unraveled. The longer the story went on the more ridiculous it got. With so many characters popping in and out, and so many "twists" that ended up being nothing, the plot became a confusing mess. By the end I didn't really care who had killed Liza and who was covering it up and what the Family's secrets might be. The other thing that bugged me was the constant descriptions of every item of clothing every single character was wearing. I am nuts about clothes and I love to read about them, but after awhile it became tiresome and ended up skipping whole paragraphs that talked about clothes. All in all a very disappointing read, and I will not be reading anything else by this author.
At first I was not impressed by this book. The writing didn't seem to flow quite right. The scene where Julia talks to her mother about her relationship with her father fell completely flat -- it just didn't seem like a real conversation, just something thrown in so that the reader would have a reference as to what the mother thinks of the father. Then I got into the story and I found I really liked it, and wanted to keep reading. I actually wish the book had been written as a story about Tin Win and Mi Mi because I think it would have been a lot more powerful, and the narrative wouldn't have been constantly interrupted by moving back in time to Julia and her petty frustrations. I didn't like her and I don't know why the author chose to tell the story through her filter. I would rather have heard the story without her in the background.
The thing that drew me into this book wasn't the plot or the characters, but the descriptions of Alaska. Eventually, I got into the story and I really liked it. It had just enough reality to be believable, and just enough fantasy to be fun. This could become one of my favorites!
In the first fifty pages I thought I wouldn't like this book. It seemed to be one quick character sketch after another, but then it became something more. The writing in this book is amazing. The author is a master at subtly changing the voice of the main character as she grows older. The other characters in this book seemed like real people you would know, and their flaws and assets are not overdone, or cliched. There is lots of great fiction about foster children, but so far, this is my favorite.
It took me forever to get through this book. I just couldn't get into the characters, and I didn't care about them at all. I didn't care if Josephine escaped from slavery, I didn't care if Lina discovered the truth about her artwork. I also didn't like the "mystery" of Lina's mother, which I thought was a terrible subplot. I should have just put this book aside, but I have heard such great things about it that I kept thinking that it would get better. It didn't, and the whole thing collapsed into a mess at the end.
The Busy Mom's Cookbook: 100 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, Home-Cooked Meals
I liked the look of some of the recipes, but there were none I could actually use.
The first half of this book was so depressing I almost didn't finish it. I'm not a huge fan of stories told by animals anyway, and the only reason I kept reading is that I was hoping not to be left with that sad feeling I get when I read those stories. Luckily, the book goes by really really fast (I read the whole thing in one afternoon) and I was very happy at the end. However, I don't know if this is the book I would have awarded the Newberry medal to. It didn't leave me feeling amazing, or super excited. I don't feel like rushing out and telling everyone to read this book right away. It ended up being a good read, but I wouldn't call it a great one.
Even though it took me weeks to get past the first chapter, I ended up loving this book. This book made me remember being in Europe, falling in love (not being in love) with a new boy in every city. The character of Allyson was so well done. I found myself liking her, sympathizing with her, and being completely frustrated with her. Her parents were a little one dimensional, but the friends she made and lost were worth reading about. I loved the fact that she took on a journey to find her mysterious boy again, something I wish I had done ten years ago.
I was so excited to read this book, but it took me almost 100 pages to get into it. Whoever said this book was like a European Gone Girl was deluded. I could see the twists coming almost from the beginning and the only thing I was kind of surprised by was fact that story was moving so slowly. The language seemed a little off too, but that was probably due to the translation. Every now and then I break my rule about never reading contemporary fiction that's been translated into English, but nearly every time I am reminded why I have that rule in the first place.
Too boring to be memorable; too interesting to stop reading. I kept getting tired of the characters and skipping over paragraphs, and then they would do or say something that kept me going. But the whole book was sort of blah.
Macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs.I liked how the book was organized by techniques, not style of food.
This was one of the books I chose to read based solely on the cover, a haunting photograph of two women poised to shatter. When I started it I didn't know the two women on the cover were twin sisters and that one of them was dead. The book was so painful to read that I can't imagine how horrible it was to actually live through. It was beautifully written though, with the words of the author's twin woven in with her own. I loved the honesty of the book, how she wrote the negative memories of her twin as well as the good ones. She created a loving, yet flawed picture of their relationship with more integrity than I ever would have. Toward the end I got a little bored; that part of the book seemed to be written more for the author's own peace of mind. (The weird chapter where she talks with a psychic is especially strange.) However the last few chapters really bring the story to the best kind of ending, one that makes you glad Christa Parravani got to the other side, so that she could talk about how she did it.
This was a good read, and it has inspired me to read poetry again. I felt like the stories didn't really go together though, and I would have liked each one as their own book,
I really enjoyed reading this book, and was so happy that it talked about the ineffective "brainstorming" nonsense. I liked hearing from artists like Yo Yo Ma and David Byrne. I was somewhat disappointed that expect for a brief jaunt into Israel, the author did not venture much into countries outside the US. I have always been interested in how children in Asian countries are taught creativity.
At first I really disliked this book, but after letting it sink in over a few days I find I don't completely hate it. It is well written, reflective, and insightful. The author comes off as very dislikable, and while I could appreciate her thoughts on marriage and infidelity, I was baffled by her take on it. The fact that she married someone just as needy and selfish as she is seems like poetic justice until you consider her children are made part of the mess of their lives. I found myself feeling the most sympathy for them, and they had almost no part of the story as part of their mother's attempt to protect their privacy.
I love well-written short stories, and these are among the best. I loved how most of them told the story from the point of view of many characters, so that you got a more complete picture of what was happening.
