Blue sky, green trees.

This book destroyed me.

Leicht aber herzlich. Es erinnerte mich an unsere eigene Katzen, die gute alte Damen.

I thought that having the boyfriend randomly show up to drag her out of the burning building was lame. There was no logical reason for him to be there and to look for her in someone else's office, of all places. Very weak plot point in an overall strong and smart book.

Fantastic book. My only complaint is that section 3 - The Experts - was really a slog. It starts out pretty good, but most of this section is made up of the interviews and court testimonies of the experts, and is frankly boring. We cotton on pretty quickly that the prosecution thinks one thing and the defense thinks another, and so several chapters diving into how this can be is, frankly, boring. The authors will state that the defense attorney is a blow-hard gasbag, and then quote verbatim whole pages-worth of his speeches! This section is necessary for the historical record, but casual readers are going to suffer through it. Actually, I just skimmed through (read: skipped) most of this section, and picked it back up at the next one, when it got good again.

I had read The Maltese Falcon and didn't like it, and had read The Thin Man, and thought it was terrific. So I figured this book would be the tie breaker on if I liked Hammett's work.

Turns out I don't much like his work. Our main guy, Ned, makes all these moves and all these statements and gives no explanations or context for any of them. He doesn't even explain himself when the other characters in the book ask him questions, he only ever looks at them “obliquely” (Hammett is in love with this word). The story doesn't flow, it's a jumble of moments that have to all be explained at the end.

So it seems I am not a fan of Hammett's, I am only a fan of The Thin Man. Pass, and wish I had my €3 back.

Absolutely fantastic. This book went a good way in restoring my faith in the field of journalism, which had plummeted during the past 6 or 7 years due to today's sloppy and biased reporting. Seeing the lengths Woodward and Bernstein went to in order to corroborate information (at least 3 sources) was refreshing, especially given that today reporters regularly quote a pair of anonymous Twitter accounts and call it a story. Eye-opening, compelling read. Highly recommend.

Unexpected.

I loved it, the story was gripping in how it revealed itself. Also the writing was extremely good, clear and direct, which counts for a good bit in my book.

Well I wanted to like this book, but I have to admit that I'm pretty over the whole broke-down-alcoholic-detective-who-can't-have-healthy-and-normal-relationships thing. It's just not really believable in this day and age that one could behave like this for years upon years and still have a professional, government job.

So there's that. But worse, the story just isn't very interesting. Time to move on.

Good, not great. Showed a different kind of Bond than we see in the movies, which was interesting. Is this because it is the first book, and the later books will be more typical? Or did the movies change things to be less nuanced?

I didn't finish this book, and yet I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's weird but I just felt like I had my fill of Neanderthals and I was ready to move on. I own this book, and I've got my place in it marked, so I can always come back to it if the mood strikes.

I read 210 pages, which is more than half of the novel itself (not the added journal), so I'm calling this read. I really liked the format, with the different changes, but not very much happens. I've read plenty of slice-of-life books, ones that don't have a plot so to speak but talk about people, and some of them have impacted me deeply; this isn't one of them. Glad I gave it a shot, but it's time to move on.

Picked it up on a whim on vacation, so glad that I did. It wasn't at all what I thought it would be, it is so much more. Highly recommend.

I really liked it a lot. The writing was very stripped down, almost flattened, but in a good way. It felt like the author was telling you about things that happened, just the facts, and you could read into it what you wanted. Do you want to place symbolism on this thing? Go for it; the author won't stop you, or help you. Do you want to psychoanalyze why this character reacted that way? Go for it; the author won't stop you, or explain it to you. This could feel like the author abandoning the reader, but instead it felt like the author trusting us. It was exciting, both in plot and in style.

Good book but ended on a surprisingly downbeat feel. Actually, the whole thing was pretty downbeat, which isn't a huge surprise given the content, but usually these books pull it back up into happy land for the ending. I think I respect the writer more for keeping it like this.

I really liked the story but I didn't like the ending.

Absolutely fantastic, highly recommend. I loved how the author looked at the particular via the Myrtle Hill Commune and via her own parents' back-to-the-land experience, but also looked at the bigger picture via the context of American history far past and in the time of the 1970s. It all worked together to make just the right reading magic.

This book also made me wonder if maybe this back-to-the-land movement explains why the dominant colors of the 1970s were mustard yellow, carrot orange, and every shade of brown imaginable? Just a thought.

Goddamn fantastic.

Absolutely incredible. I loved that it covered so many aspects of life, from theft to theater to love. I suspect that many readers will be extremely curious about denazification, as was I, and the chapter does not disappoint; frankly, it stunned me.

One thing that I particularly loved was that Brigitte Eicke's diary was one of the sources of information for this book. See, she grew up on the street that I now live on, in fact I can see her door from my living room. So her input for this book had particular meaning to me, and gave me a little thrill every time I saw her name. For the curious, Eicke's diary is called Backfisch im Bombenkrieg (Teenager in the War), available only in German as of this writing.

Absolutely incredible. I loved that it covered so many aspects of life, from theft to theater to love. I suspect that many readers will be extremely curious about denazification, as was I, and the chapter does not disappoint; frankly, it stunned me.

One thing that I particularly loved was that Brigitte Eicke's diary was one of the sources of information for this book. See, she grew up on the street that I now live on, in fact I can see her door from my living room. So her input for this book had particular meaning to me, and gave me a little thrill every time I saw her name. For the curious, Eicke's diary is called Backfisch im Bombenkrieg (Teenager in the War), available only in German as of this writing.

I loved the book, but I hated that the author gave Shakespeare's wife super powers.

Absolutely wonderful, I loved every bit of it.

I found the writing to be a little stilted, which was a surprise. The movie felt, in a word, lyrical, and I expected that a lot of that came from the book but nope, not the case. I had picked up this book because I wanted the feel of the movie, and also because I felt like, for all the lyricalness of it, the movie had some gaps; I thought that the book would fill those. I think that the book did a good job of telling us about Eilish and her immigrant experience, but it was very much telling from a remove, not inviting us in to feel it with her.

I was very surprised at how clearly the book showed that she only went back to Brooklyn because she was caught out in her deception, and that if she had been able to get away with it she would have somehow stayed and married Jim. In the movie I remember it being much more "I left Ireland because of catty bitches like you!", and Eilish feeling glad to leave. Much more ambiguity, which was interesting.

This book is more of a thought experiment than a story. It reminded me very strongly of the book Einstein's Dreams, by Alan Lightman, which is a thought experiment about time, whereas Calvino's is about cities. Between the two I strongly prefer the former, although it's hard to say why.

I loved it! Very satisfying mystery.