Book Reviews Archive - Page 58 of 79

The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif: Book Review

The Map of Love tells two stories. Primarily, it is about Anna Winterbourne, living in the early 1900s, and her fascination with Egypt. In the present, Isabel Parkman and Amal al-Ghamrawi have found a trunk of Anna’s journals and letters and set out to piece together her story, while living their own. The writing in this book was beautiful. There were some parts where the author seemed to be trying to show what a colorful, vibrant place her Egypt is and those just glowed. But my problem with beautiful writing is that I very often get bogged down and get bored and wish I could just get on with the story. I wish it didn’t happen, but it does. That happened for me here. I really enjoyed reading Anna’s story. She’s an interesting, brave woman who isn’t afraid to break out of the mold that’s been made for her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand Isabel and I was indifferent to Amal. I’m not exactly sure what the point of the book was. There definitely was a message, I just can’t decide how to take it. As an American reading a book by an Egyptian author, I’m afraid of misreading something. But, right or wrong, what I took away was the author trying to tell me that there’s more to her country than what I see in the news, and the problems that exist began in colonial times under British rule, but now under their own rule they aren’t doing any better. The poor are still oppressed and nothing seems to be changing. I hope I didn’t read all that wrong. That being said, I got bogged down in the politics, both present and past. I don’t know anything about Egyptian history and it felt like that was almost necessary to be…

The Fixer Upper by Mary Kay Andrews: Book Review

Dempsey Killebrew is having a very bad day. She and her handsome boss, Alex, are all over the evening news, smack in the center of a political scandal. They're lobbyists accused of buying a Congressman's votes with a vacation to the Bahamas and, um, hookers. Not the situation that a rising young lawyer wants to find herself in. Injury is added to insult when Alex fires her. With no other options, Dempsey reluctantly accepts the deal her father offers--she can fix up the family mansion back in the tiny town of Guthrie, Georgia, and he'll give her part of the proceeds from the sale. Life in a small town is more interesting than Dempsey expects, especially when she realizes that the "mansion" is a dump, a belligerent old lady has decided the house is hers, FBI agents are sniffing around, and there are some very eligible men in town. I had a ball listening to this! I'll admit that this isn't really any new ground for Mary Kay Andrews, but she does this so well that I just don't care. Old houses/antiques, spunky heroines, and handsome men are a winning combination in her hands. Dempsey herself is a little whiney at first, but if I'm being honest, I would whine much more if I found myself in a similar situation. And then to go running home to Daddy! I just wanted to tell the girl to grow up. But when she gets to the house and she has to start dealing with contractors and Ella Kate, the mean old lady, and the FBI, she has to learn to stand on her own feet. And she handles it beautifully. I'm pretty sure I was cheering by the end. Speaking of Ella Kate, she is mean as a rattlesnake. I wanted to…

Everlost by Neal Shusterman: Book Review

Nick and Allie were traveling in opposite directions on a windy mountain road. After a terrible accident, they find themselves traveling down a tunnel toward a light. But they bump into each other again and don't get where they're going. Instead, they end up in Everlost, a ghostly realm that co-exists with our world and is populated with other children who didn't get where they were going. They have a hard time accepting their new status as "Afterlights," a name appropriate for the unearthly glow they have now in their afterlives. Of course, they decide to go home. On the way, they meet many other Afterlights and hear terrible stories about a monster named The McGill, a shadowy figure known as The Haunter, and a famous girl known as either Mary Hightower or Mary, Queen of Snots, depending on your view of her. Eh. I admit that I was a little taken aback by the opening scene and the car crash. It's not graphic, but I expected a YA/MG book to open after the crash, not describe a head-on collision. My big thing was that I didn't really like anyone. Nick was okay and Leaf was fun, but Allie? She quickly establishes herself as a bossy know-it-all who doesn't listen to anyone else. She gets worse from there--and she's a main character. I really need to like my main characters. I was never sure what to think about Mary either. She's so angelic that you have to suspect she's up to something. Plus, the narrator read her with a holier-than-thou tone which just set my teeth on edge. There's a twist toward the end that I saw coming from miles away, and I think a lot of other readers will too. This next bit is going to be way too…

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi: Book Review

4 Stars. I just read Art Spiegelman’s Maus about a month ago and loved it. I thought I would go ahead and give this other highly-acclaimed graphic novel/memoir a try. I enjoyed it, if that’s the correct word, but it didn’t affect me quite the same way Maus did. I’m not too sure why. Maybe it’s because I know more about WWII than [...]

Fluke by Christopher Moore: Book Review

Nate Quinn has spent his entire professional career following humpback whales around the ocean, trying to find out exactly why the males sing. He's currently in Hawaii, where the whales spend the winter, still researching. His world is rocked on the day that he is taking pictures of one singer and sees BITE ME clearly written across the whale's tail. Did he imagine it? Was it there? Surely he got a picture of it. He heads back in to get his film developed, only to find that someone has completely trashed his lab. So begins a lot of inexplicable events. Oh my gosh. I'm pretty sure Fluke just replaced A Dirty Job as my favorite Moore novel, and I can't help but wonder if it's because I listened to Fluke. I have never been interested in audio books. I don't take things in all that well just by listening. I've tried them a time or two, and while I found them interesting at the time, I never had any desire to turn the book back on and finish it. Then, about 6 months ago, I realized how much my new job was eating into my reading time. Out of desperation, I tried an audio book during my commute, and I haven't looked back. I'm now one of those people who sits in my driveway listening to my book, because I have to know what happens next. Still, the printed word is my first love. I wasn't too sure about this narrator, Bill Irwin, at first. His voice was a little dry. It didn't seem to fit Moore's laugh-out-loud, over-the-top, usually raunchy humor. Oh, but I was wrong. Somehow it was even funnier. I would be driving along, something outrageous would come out of this guy's mouth, and I'm looking around,…

Moloka’i by Alan Brennert: Book Review

Seven-year-old Rachel Kalama is living in Honolulu in 1893. Her life is punctuated with a child's hopes and dreams and drama. Her father is a sailor, and she loves it when he comes home on leave, mostly because she's excited to see him, but also because she loves to hear his stories about the wider world and for the exotic dolls he brings home to her. Then she's diagnosed with leprosy. Native Hawaiians are incredibly susceptible to the disfiguring, deadly disease. To prevent the spread, all who are diagnosed are sent to Kalaupapa, a lepers' colony on the island of Moloka'i. This sounds a little depressing. Seven-year-old girl sent away from all her friends and family to await death. But Rachel is stronger than that. She is lucky that has a very strong resistance to the disease, and she has a form that is slow-moving anyway. She has a hard time at first (who wouldn't in her shoes?) but she forms her own family in the colony, and she chooses to live. I loved her. I loved that she never gave up hope, that she lived a life that was as normal as it could be, she loved to read, she loved to surf, and she loved her chosen family. I loved that as she grew older she fought hard for improvements to conditions in the colony. She was a heart of this community. She always dreamed of and longed for the wider world. When something happens in her life that would have broken many women, she hurt but she kept on hoping. I missed her when I finished this book. Rachel was the biggest draw of the book for me, but I also enjoyed reading about this part of history. I had never heard about it until I came…

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey: Book Review

This started out a little slow for me. It dragged along for about the first 150 pages. Then the action started and I couldn't put it down. To oversimplify the plot, this is the story of Phèdre, a masochist who sleeps with her patrons not only for money, but also for state secrets. So, there were [...]

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly: Book Review

"My name is Calpurnia Virginia Tate, but back then everybody called me Callie Vee. That summer, I was eleven years old and the only girl out of seven children. Can you imagine a worse situation?" "That summer" is the summer of 1899 and it is a scorcher. Amid the heat and the drought though, Callie is finding out who she is. She is a born scientist. She is a little lost in the shuffle of all those brothers, but one day, desperate for an answer to a scientific question, she bravely goes out to confront her eccentric grandfather in his "laboratory." The rest is history. The two recognize a "kindred spirit" in each other and set out on scientific pursuits together. Granddaddy encourages Callie in all her experiments and dreams, seeing past her gender to her brilliant mind, but slowly Callie realizes that she is destined for a life of embroidery and children and cooking. She is not happy. I love Calpurnia Tate. She is a childhood heroine for the ages, joining the likes of Anne Shirley in my heart. I do not say that lightly. I have loved Anne for about 20 years, but now she has good company with Callie. Calpurnia is a thinker and a quiet fighter. When her mother tells her she can't cut her hair, she does it an inch at a time. I have utmost faith that her fighting spirit will help her get what she wants and prepare the way for women who follow. She is funny and honest and she tries so hard to make her family happy with her. She is far from perfect and gets into some hilarious scrapes. She has a gigantic heart and tries to help those she loves any way she can. I wish I could know…

Rising Tide by John M. Barry: Book Review

Telling the story of an epic flood of the Mississippi River in 1927, this book explores the early history of flood control efforts and a rivalry that made flood controls at the time practically a joke, the politics involved in decisions for handling the flood itself, the politics of disaster relief, and the impact of the flood into the future. It's too much. There is a ton of interesting detail in this book, but I got bogged down in the details. Any one of the above aspects of the flood would have made an interesting, shorter book on its own. Putting them all together made me read at a stupefying pace and left me confused as to who was who and what was going on where. Just too much. However. The author makes a lot of good points. He asserts that the flood was responsible for hundreds of thousands of African Americans migrating out of the Mississippi River valley, the slow decline of New Orleans, the death of a way of life in the South, the eventual shift of the black vote to Democrats, the beginnings of big government in America, and could someday lead to the mouth of the Mississippi transferring over to the Atchafalaya. It's interesting to see how one event led to so many changes in America. Reading this as the Mississippi is currently having another epic flood is interesting too. I have to say that I've gotten pretty good at keeping my head in the sand when it comes to national news, but this flood has even made it into my awareness. Today's flood is being compared to the flood of 1927. I read a brief article about it before I wrote this review, and I now have an understanding of the flood control measures that…

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson: Book Review

Jesse Aarons is the class misfit. Something of a dreamer, and a talented artist, he just doesn't fit in with his practical, competitive classmates. But Leslie Burke moves next door at the beginning of their fifth-grade year, and the two eventually become best friends. Leslie shows him that a different life is possible. I'll just say it--this book irritated me to no end. It was crawling with Southern stereotypes. For a book that's trying to show that there's a place for everyone in the world, I just really found that unacceptable. It seemed like most of the characters went by two names: May Belle, Joyce Ann, Wanda Kay. I'm sure there were more. And then there was the fact that everyone, except for Jesse, Leslie, and her family, couldn't speak without throwing a double negative in there. It happens. It's not as bad as this book makes it sound. And then there was the way that all the poor kids were stupid, narrow-minded, and ignorant, and their parents beat them when they weren't in jail. Give me a break. Had I read this when I was younger, I would probably have overlooked all of that and just focused on the story of the beautiful friendship between Jesse and Leslie and how she showed him that there is a bigger world out there and how we should always show each other kindness. That's a great message. But I didn't read it when I was younger and right now I just don't care. Reviewed May 25, 2009 Read an excerpt. Find author Katerine Paterson on her website. Buy Bridge to Terabithia at Malaprop’s | Better World Books Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to Angieville and her…