Book Reviews Archive - Page 71 of 79

The Haunting of Andrew Sharpai by Jerome Peterson: Book Review

Andrew Sharpai has his heart broken when he's engaged to be married to a Vegas showgirl. He moves away from the bright lights and goes to Pocatello, Idaho. There, he meets Iris Winkle and her daughter, Lily. Rumor around town has it that Iris is a witch. With her horribly scarred face and her pentagram pendant, she doesn't do much to dispel the idea. Andrew is attracted to Iris though and finds himself in over his head when he starts to experience supernatural events. Do you ever read a book and think, "This is trying to tell me something, but I'm either not in a place to learn it now, or it's something I've already learned and moved past?" That's me with this book. I really liked Peterson's first book, Thumb Flagging, and liked what he had to say about learning from everyone you meet. Unfortunately, I don't feel like I learned anything from Andrew Sharpai. It could be the subject matter. Mention anything even slightly demonic and you have given me a big-time case of the heebie-jeebies. There wasn't enough going on to even give me nightmares, but I was a little worried when I realized where this was going. It is fairly tame stuff--the point isn't to scare the reader, I did get that much--but I didn't have any way of knowing that as I read. I did like the three main characters. Poor Andrew just wants someone to love and he keeps getting hurt. He's such a good guy though. Iris has lived a hard life, but she's learned from her mistakes and is now trying to move on and do the best she can. Little Lily stole the show. She's so funny and wise beyond her years, but she's so desperately trying to look out for…

Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay: Book Review

Shen Tai's father, the great Kitan general Shen Gao, died haunted by an epic battle he led against the neighboring country of Tagura. He won the battle but in his old age he came to realize that the cost was too high. 40,000 casualties lie unburied in the beautiful meadow at Kuala Nor. Tai decides to spend his two and a half years of mourning burying those dead to honor his father's memory. Word of his epic task spreads throughout both countries until a Kitan princess married to the Taguran king hears of it. She honors him by gifting him 250 Sardian horses. "You gave a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You gave him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor." Tai finds himself thrust back into the quick-moving world of court intrigue as he tries to do the right thing for his country, his family, and himself, while also trying to stay alive. My expectations for this were too high. I tried to temper them, knowing that I might be disappointed, but c'mon. It's Guy Gavriel Kay. It's China. How could it be anything other than a 6++++ star book? Yeah. They were too high. I just kept waiting for the story to start. And it kept not starting. And then it was over. So I missed something somewhere. GGKay isn't exactly about the action, he's definitely more about the characters. But there's usually some action going on somewhere. Not here. Tai just sort of went along, reacting to other people's plans for him and his horses, unable to gain much of an initiative himself. It's…

Dear Jane Austen by Patrice Hannon: Book Review

Imagine, if you will, that Jane Austen can somehow receive letters from her modern-day readers, asking for her sage advice in love and marriage. That's the premise for this charming little book. Part "autobiography", part self-help book, and part critical analysis, Dear Jane Austen is full of practical advice for all women, no matter what era they're living in. Told in a tone that is mostly pitch-perfect, Austen weighs in on topics ranging from beauty to friends and family, to sex. The only thing that jarred was when she used modern phrases in her answers. There's something of an explanation included, but it still bothered me a little. There are some spoilers included if you haven't read Austen's entire body of work. I haven't yet, but this didn't really bother me. I think I'll have forgotten the little bits and pieces I learned by the time I actually get around to reading all of her other books. Fans of Austen will love this little book, especially the single women still looking for their Mr. Darcy. Review written April 18, 2009

The Vision of Emma Blau by Ursula Hegi: Book Review

Stefan Blau runs away from his home in Germany when he is a young man. He's always dreamed of living in America. He eventually finds himself in New Hampshire, building a beautiful apartment building, running a restaurant, and doing his best to provide for his family. Honestly, this book might have suffered from too many interruptions. My review is definitely suffering from allowing too much time to go by between finishing the book and reviewing it. I mostly enjoyed this, my problem was that I felt a little too distanced from the characters. An immigrant acclimating to America, German-Americans living through WWII, love, loss, family, strange neighbors--any of these should have made a book that I loved. The third-person narration felt so very distant from the action though that I just couldn't click with anyone. Also, this family is just desperately unhappy. The narration changes from Stefan to Helene to Robert to Emma and not one of them is happy. I just can't take that. The meaning of the title just dawned on me. I was understanding it as "Emma Blau's Vision," and it has a little to do with that, but mostly it's about "Stefan's Vision of Emma." If that had clicked earlier, I might have gotten a little more out of this. I kept waiting for Emma to show up and she didn't make her appearance until page 268. That's a lot of waiting. Once Emma did appear, she was actually my least favorite character. She's so very pushy and clingy, I felt a little smothered just reading about her. As an adult, she makes horrible choices in her life and doesn't really understand why she's unhappy. She's terrified of change and fights it however she can. She's one character in a line that takes care of the…

The Magicians by Lev Grossman: Book Review

Quentin Coldwater is the top in his class. He's also in love with his best friend's girlfriend and unhappy at home. One day, he receives a manuscript that looks like an unpublished addition to his favorite fantasy series, set in a fantasy world called Fillory. In a roundabout way, this manuscript leads him through a portal to a school called Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy and Quentin thinks he's found the happiness he's always been searching for. Let's get the obvious out of the way. I've seen the reviews that call this a Harry Potter rip-off. There's a boy in a school of magic, and a few intentional winks sent Harry's way, but this story felt like much more of an homage to Narnia than Hogwarts. Since it fell into Narnia territory for me, I started reading it and looking for the "deeper meaning." I don't know if I was exactly supposed to but I did; I couldn't help it. It worked that way for me. If you're looking for it, there's all kinds of stuff about childhood dreams and disillusionment, how there are so many distractions in life that really don't help you in any way, and how you won't find happiness externally until you find it internally. One character tells Quentin, "I will take some chances. If you will, for just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever....{You} can sure as hell decide to be miserable." All that stuff aside, this worked as…

The Confessions of Catherine de Medici by C. W. Gortner: Book Review

Catherine de Medici. I picked this up not knowing exactly who she was, knowing only that if she was "de Medici," there would be lots of the drama that make the best historical fiction. Her parents died when she was young; she was held hostage in a convent in Florence when the Medicis were overthrown; and her uncle, Pope Clement VII, married her off to the second son of King Francis I of France when she was only fourteen years old. Her life in the French court was not easy. Catherine is fascinating. I found myself Googling her to find out more once I finished because I just hadn't quite gotten my fill yet. These are her "confessions," so we are given full access to her thoughts. I loved watching her grow from a slightly spoiled girl, to a frightened girl, to a young wife, to a woman in her prime and at the height of her glory. Gortner took the approach that some of the bad things that happened during her reign were due to others' actions rather than any complicity on her part. That made it easier to understand her motivations, but it also made her seem like a bad ruler. She had no control over her court, she ignored threats when she should have taken preemptive action, and she didn't think through all the implications of what she did. Politics play a fairly large part in the book, and I didn't always follow why things were happening. I don't think that I'm someone who would ever be good at intrigue. At most I might think one step ahead of where I am. So when Catherine was making deals, or she all of a sudden had to support one faction over another, or she chose whether to assassinate…

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters: Book Review

Miss Amelia Peabody is a confirmed spinster. Her father died and left her a comfortable inheritance and she has decided to start traveling to those ancient sites they both loved. She acquires the lovely yet troubled Evelyn as a companion in Rome and she sets off to visit Egypt. There, she meets the Emerson brothers. Younger brother Walter is a nice lad, but the older Emerson? Has a towering temper. The group accidentally fall in together and begin investigating some mysterious appearances around the Emersons' archaeological dig. I loved Amelia! In real life, I would probably chafe against her decisiveness and take-charge attitude, but safely on the page, she was great! She just ignores facts, people or attitudes that don't fit with what she's trying to do and goes about her business of leading everyone around. Fortunately, she's an intelligent woman, so her plans generally do work out for the best. Of course, she has a good heart under her tough exterior, and I was glad to see her friendship with Evelyn softening her up a little bit. I do love how she writes about Emerson. She calls him a big, hard-headed, stubborn bully every chance she gets, but when she gets close to him, she physically melts a little every time. She admits to it in her writing in moments of softness, then she goes on her merry way, arguing with him again. Emerson was great too. I didn't feel like I got to know him quite as well as I would have liked in this first book of a series, but he's a good match for Amelia. He's just as stubborn, but he's also passionate about archaeology and quietly yet fiercely loyal. Amelia exasperates him to no end, but he acknowledges her as an equal companion. The mystery…

Daughter of My People by James Kilgo: Book Review

Hart Bonner is the son of a formerly prosperous plantation owner. Jennie Grant is his cousin's biracial cook. In South Carolina in the early 1900s, she is considered a "Negro" and it is a felony for a white man to have "relations" with her. She and Hart carry on a secret affair for years though. The strain of the secret and outside influences take their toll on the relationship and things come to a head in 1918. White man, black woman, South Carolina, 1918. Can you say trouble? I rarely read synopses of books if someone recommends them to me, so I didn't know what I was getting into. When I figured out that this was the background of the story, my reading slowed to a crawl. It wasn't that the writing was bad or anything. I was just afraid to become attached to these characters when I knew that bad things had to be coming for them. In that place at that time, there would have been almost no limit to exactly how bad things could get. So I would read until I found myself caring for the characters, and then I would find something else to do. When I had gained a little distance again, I picked the book back up. This is not a good way for me to read and that's probably the biggest factor behind the three stars. This was so much more than just the obvious story. Looking inside this relationship was interesting and heartbreaking in an entirely different way than I had expected. Jennie and Hart truly love each other, but the secret meetings, the constant hiding and being careful, the sneaking out of Jennie's house before dawn inevitably take their toll. Hart would just put their love out in the open but…

Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe: Book Review

I decided to read this because Thomas Wolfe was from my area and I only had to read one short story of his for an English class. I wanted to see what he was all about. This is basically the slightly fictionalized story of his childhood and young adult years growing up in the mountains of North Carolina in the early 1900's. I read the very first sentence of this book and my heart sank. So I read it again. And again. After about the fifth reading, I finally had some idea what he was trying to say and moved on. The second and third sentences blew me away. He was an amazing writer. He wrote with a richness of imagery that is hard to find. That being said, this book was very hard to get through. Taken a paragraph or so at a time, I could appreciate the beauty of his language. But the very beauty that I admired made the actual story drag by. And I'm very story-oriented. That's one of the reasons I only gave this three stars. The other thing that bothered me was a small vein of racism that was present throughout the book. It's not at all the point of the story, it's just there in the background. And somehow it's made worse by the fact that there doesn't seem to be any active dislike behind it. It feels like he thinks he's just stating the facts. I tried to write it off as just being a different time period, but that didn't really work for me. It wound up detracting a lot from my enjoyment of the book. But if you think you can overlook that, and you love beautiful language, you might enjoy this one.

Thumbing Through Thoreau, compiled by Kenny Luck: Book Review

Synopsis from the book's website. On July 4, 1845, when Henry David Thoreau moved into his cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, he was probably unaware that his abode in the woods, and the impact and influence of that endeavor, would forever echo through time. Thoreau was an uncompromising idealist; an ardent maverick who criticized his fellow man. He urged that men and women ought to live more simply, and more deliberately. “The mass of men,” he famously wrote, “lead lives of quite desperation.” Yet the scope of Thoreau’s message is much wider than social criticism. He speaks of spiritual transcendence in Nature and the unbounded potential of the individual. Thoreau is a dreamer and he speaks to dreamers. In a word, shun dogmatism and demagoguery; see beyond the immediate conventional religious explanations to reap a higher understanding. In our commodified contemporary American society, with the rise of religious intolerance and fundamentalism, materialism and mass consumerism, Thoreau’s message is needed now more than ever. Author Kenny Luck has thumbed through Thoreau’s voluminous journals, correspondences and other publications to make this the most comprehensive collection of Thoreau aphorisms available. Illustrators Jay Luke and Ren Adams lend their talents to artistically interpret Thoreau's vision. Each quote is accompanied by an original drawing. A collaboration of three individuals breathes new life into the immortal words of Henry David Thoreau. Thanks to the publicist for sending me an unbound galley for review. I see this review as being in two parts: the quotes and the format. The quotes are pretty easy. I think most people already have at least a vague idea as to what Henry David Thoreau was all about. I enjoyed studying the transcendentalists in college, and I enjoyed reading more from Thoreau now. Here are some quotes that I marked…