Rhonda
Solid collection. A couple of stories really hit home, a couple weren't my favorite. That's the way of short story collections.
Specifically, the few pages of The Torch stirred some intense feelings. I enjoyed Occupied, and The Language of Cats and Dogs will probably resonate with most females on the earth.
I wanted to love this book. I did like it. It was a quick and easy read, and I believe the author will improve since this is a debut novel. Spoilers included.
I thought the relationship between 4 women who had been friends in college was interesting enough, and we can all related to growing up and growing in distance from our “childhood” or young adult friends, and many females will relate to the competitive nature of close female friendships. That being said, the climax of the book kind of reminded me of that weird feeling you get at the end of the Wonder Woman movie, where everything is going great, and then it's kind of a strange show down that feels a little out of place. The connection between the Julie and Elise never felt so strong that what would happen happened, it kind of felt thrown together. I know I read over and over again that their bond was closer... I also got pretty tired of the shortened cutesy names “Maebs” and so on.
You never quite know what Elise is except some kind of “other” being, all the while getting alien abduction vibes, and I never really understood why the hotel itself seemed to be doing creepy stuff, unless just the nature of Julie's being caused it to feel creepy?
That being said, it was overall enjoyable, I wouldn't work actively to dissuade someone from reading it, it comes in right that 300 page mark that doesn't require a lot of effort, and it was a pleasant Easter weekend read from my hammock.
I wish I could say I loved this book. I did not. Penman tries to write a historical novel that is one part text book, one part traditional historical fiction, wherein the characters have conversations that sound like historians talking centuries later. For instance: “...You've outwitted or outfought two English kings, unified your people, secured the succession for Davydd, and engendered a sense of shared identity amongst the Welsh, an awareness of their common identity.” ... I do not think any one having a conversation, in the moment, with their husband would speak of their deeds like that. “Ooh, you gave them a shared sense of identity! No, that's the line a historian uses.
That being said, I learned a ton of English/Norman and Welsh history. Before picking up this book I knew nothing of Llewelyn, of Joan/Joanna, little of King John or any of this era of history, some by choice. I studied Native American as my graduate school specialty, and left the English history to, well, basically everyone else trying to get a history degree. Thus, this is the reason I keep Penman's book as a 3 star and may even read some of the other Welsh Prince's books. It gave me the information I needed to launch into study I enjoyed.
This isn't a book I would ordinarily pick up, so I was surprised when I kind of loved it. It's not a hard read, nor is the writing so dumbed down that it bored me. It took me about a day to read it, but I found I didn't really want to put it down.
Will I read other Tarryn Fisher books? I don't know. Probably. This was entirely on a whim, it was on the new shelf at the library I work at and it just seemed to say “read me.” I'm glad I did. A lot of twists and turns, but not the sort that made me feel she had written them just for the sake of trying to make me feel like she was trying to trick me.
Solid book.
This was donated to our library by some random patron, and before I consigned it to the box of books destined for the local jail because it's a paperback, I decided to read it as a palate cleanser. I devoured it in about 4 hours, 3 last night and one this morning. I enjoyed it a good bit more than I thought I would, and typically I'm not into memoirs. I appreciated the journey this girl (now woman) took to fill a void, which we all try to do. I've spent a lot of hours on a therapist's couch trying to observe my own behavior and crippling loneliness from my childhood trauma, and as we are coming to know, childhood trauma doesn't have to just be abuse–it's divorce, it's the death of a parent, etc, which changes your brain and your thinking. Top marks for a good, easy, and interesting read.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I
I first read Bardugo's short story collection, after inventory here at the library. Something about the cover just sort of stuck out to me. I saw Six of Crows while inventorying the YA Room, noting it's black pages and filed it back for later. Later, after talking with our acquisitions librarian about my love for Bardugo's short story collection, she reminded me that they somehow tied in with her other books we have and I should go check those out. I was reticent to pick up more YA because I keep thinking at 33 I've somehow aged out, but I was not disappointed at all.
Without trying to include spoilers, I always enjoy heists and I always enjoy revenge. This story offered me both, with, of course, some fantasy. I dreaded getting caught up in teenage love triangles, having to pick a “Peeta or Gail” sort of situation, but the love wasn't too over the top in Six of Crows and I didn't find myself distracted by the love components. I enjoyed each of the characters, with Brekker sort of reminding me of many of the “bad guys who ultimately do good ruffian” types I enjoy in a lot of my favorite shows.
Honestly, I could say a lot more good about this but I am getting verbose. I immediately checked out book two, and I'll backtrack to the other Grishaverse books and happily follow Bardugo on goodreads.
This was really not my favorite short story collection I ever read. I still gave it three stars, because I enjoyed some stories throughout. Honestly, I found a lot of them kind of forgettable. The final story, which the collection is named for I didn't enjoy at all. In fact, by the time I got there I was just trying to power through to the finish.
When I started the book I felt really enthusiastic, a book about women making it through situations, coming out on top, discovering themselves... but it really got tedious... “The Woman Who...” such and such. Over, and over, and over. And, in the end, it was entirely forgettable. Still, it wasn't bad enough I cast it aside. Nor did I rush to pick it up and complete it in one or two sittings. So, there we have it. A thoroughly average book.
Please white man, try to tell us what the Sioux were thinking...
3 stars because for the time period it was a groundbreaking work. However, Rex Alan Smith said it was mostly a battle (hard to have a battle with people you have disarmed). It's out of date–anthropologists and archaeologists have worked to reconstruct the scene at Wounded Knee, we can answer some of these questions now, and finally, you just can't justify a massacre... To say Wounded Knee was “partly a massacre” hardly captures it.