Judy
Very well-written story of two older people slowly getting together despite the racial and cultural barriers that the younger people around them cling to.
Major Pettigrew's voice in this novel is so droll and whimsical, you can't help but love him.
A very engaging read for people who would enjoy a low-key romance plot within a broader theme of social commentary.
Puts the war in Iraq/Afghanistan in a grimmer light and contributes a real-life narrative understanding of the futility of the current war and its strategies. The stories of these 19 & 20 year old soldiers and their families, with their horrible physical and mental wounds, combine to create a almost incomprehensible picture of horror and anger and frustration that makes me question all the opinions I had about this war before reading the book.
I listened to a podcast interview with the author ( http://fora.tv/2010/02/27/David_Finkel_The_Good_Soldiers ) and felt compelled to read the book. The author spent time physically embedded with the Army unit he writes about, and does not editorialize about the facts and experiences. Great journalism at work.
Easy to remember descriptions and real-world application of identifying the Rider(logic), the Elephant(emotions), and the Path(environment)in any change situation. Suggests actions to get these three aspects working together so change can happen and endure. Applies to individuals, teams, couples, corporations, society.
Recommended read for personal & professional development.
Enjoyed reading this well-written biography of the 28th president of the United States, especially with the History Book Club moderators guiding the discussion. Wilson became a real human being to me, with nuances of personality and attitudes brought in, making me want to examine his actions and speeches in a more thoughtful light than the one-dimensional portrait most people get from today's “sound bite” commentators. This book always comes to my mind now when I try to understand other presidents and leaders in history, and a biography that can do that deserves a recommendation.
Extremely readable explanation and discussion of how monotheism developed in response to human social evolution and the surrounding facts on the ground, i.e. political and cultural circumstances. I've already bought another book of his (The Moral Animal) so I can enjoy even more of his writing style. He writes with a pithy, down-to-earth attitude, and I find myself chuckling at the way he boils down difficult concepts into a one-sentence reality that I repeat to myself long after I've shut the book.
Doctorow has imagined the lives, thoughts and motivations behind the real figures of Homer and Langley Collyer, elderly brothers whose compulsive hoarding made national news when the brothers were found dead, one crushed by the horrendous accumulation of newspapers and debris in their New York City home, the other starved to death. Told completely from Homer's point of view, who has been blind since childhood, we learn about the brothers' lives and how they coped with their emotional and physical burdens, while also experiencing the historical progress of New York City through the early 1900s to the present.
I found Doctorow's mastery of the rhythm and flow of Homer's thoughts and observations astonishing. With a subtly comic thread running through all of Homer's narration of his life and events, Doctorow's reveals his “love” of the character of Homer, a voice that a reader can care about.
While the story left me feeling sad about the awful result of the brothers' isolation, I also think I've developed my sense of empathy a little through Homer's insights, an awareness that everyone, even strangers, have an inner life that I can never know.
I gave the book 3 stars because I didn't feel Doctorow paid as much attention to developing the other characters in the book as he did to Homer. As the story progressed into the 1960s and 70s, I also felt my interest lagging and I was less inclined to believe the storyline.
This was my first introduction to Doctorow, although his name was very familiar to me. I think I will continue to read his books and see if his sense of language and style is even more apparent and enjoyable.
Liked this book as a whole and the way the author explored the “Culture” goals of utopia and the hubris of imperial ideology when making contact with other civilizations. The author really knows how to do dialogue well, yet you don't feel like you're reading the author's views in a heavy-handed way. I felt I was experiencing truly different opinions from various characters on the themes. I'm anticipating reading the whole series because I really enjoyed the first two, but actually, this one didn't quite live up to my expectations.
The structure of the novel, with alternating chapters dipping into different timelines of the main character's life, one line progressing forward, and the other line working backward from the start of the protagonist's life, just didn't work for me. It kept taking me out of the story as I needed to figure out where the plot was going. Even with the chapter titles written as numbers going forward, and as Roman numerals for the backward line, I still felt confused too often. I tend to prefer one plotline over the other when a book splits like this. I was more comfortable reading the forward-moving plot, but I was more engaged with the character in the regressing plotline.
Didn't really care for the ending, but that didn't spoil the rest of the book for me. If you enjoy military sci-fi, but with a less emphasis on glorifying war, this book works well. The author explains battle tactics and strategy with the right amount of detail that I could visualize easily.
Even though this is only my third book to read in the series, I feel I would recommend this one only after reading at least the first two, and maybe even skipping this one until you have read more.
A lonely, single, 60-year-old man, recently laid off from an disappointing job as a history teacher at a private school, is randomly attacked in his new apartment and left with no memory of the assault. The memory loss is so upsetting that he starts investigating ways to somehow recover the episode, in a variety of unobtrusive ways, but ends up stumbling into a relationship that forces him to re-evaluate his entire life. He's always just bumbled along, avoiding confrontation and living only half-aware of the world and people around him. But this relationship makes him pull his head out the sand and attach some meaning to the memories he's avoided for so long.
A wandering, superficially aimless story, but it still expresses some understated life lessons that seem quite relevant to people who are going through transitions, or who feel like they are just going through the motions of living.
Engaging, thoroughly entertaining narrative explaining and supporting the evidence for evolution. Would make an excellent spine text for an introductory course on understanding evolution. Dawkin's “footnotes”–dry little asides that feel like you're having a real-time discussion with the author–adds more than a little touch of humor and wit to the book.
I've never thought of myself as someone who would like listening to opera and I mostly just like reading about the history of opera, but this book has actually encouraged me to try listening to the music. The author wrote so beautifully about the way the music makes both the singer and the listener feel, that I'm intrigued. However, the plot was somewhat melodramatic with the love stories and the foreshadowing of the unhappy ending, which is why I gave it the 3 stars.
In 1844, Henry David Thoreau accidentally set the woods surrounding Concord, Massachusetts on fire, burning over 300 acres of forest and several farms. Luckily, the fire was contained before it could reach nearby Walden Pond, where Thoreau would eventually live as a recluse and write his famous transcendentalist reflection,[bc:Walden 16902 Walden Henry David Thoreau http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348462004s/16902.jpg 2361393][b:Walden 16902 Walden Henry David Thoreau http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348462004s/16902.jpg 2361393], the following year.This book takes the Concord Woods fire of 1844 and uses it to frame an exploration into the minds and personalities of not only Thoreau, but also several other people whose lives were affected by the fire. A variety of narrators tell how and why they are in the Concord area on the day of the fire, and we come to know a range of different backgrounds and philosophies that might have been found in the New England area during the early 19th century.I enjoyed the deep, introspective writing style and intense description of events, but I felt mixed about the obvious environmentalist message being shoved into the reading. “Man's inability to conceive of the world's limits does not render the world limitless. And there is no longer a new world for the empty-handed to flee to from here.” I found those kind of pronouncements off-putting rather than inspiring. The author did such a good job of writing about the place and describing the fire, that he shouldn't need to explain and insert himself so much into the story. I'd suggest this book to anyone who has, or wants to enjoy the writings of Thoreau or any of the transcendentalist writers of the 19th century. The book is also a good example of writing with a sense of place, so if you enjoy natural history, especially in the early New England area, you would also find the book quite readable.
Another excellent novel from this author. Enjoyed the attention to detail and foreshadowing that reeled out the plot in this trial/flashback novel. Great book to read if you are interested in childbirth and midwifery because the author's extensive research creates believable characters and story within this factual framework.
Quite a engaging and witty little book, with some quotable one-liners that make you think. I also appreciated the pointers to books and authors to read that Hitchens points the reader towards. I chose to read this book in preparation for reading the much larger book of his essays[bc:Arguably: Selected Essays 10383597 Arguably Selected Essays Christopher Hitchens http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327934041s/10383597.jpg 15287191]With his recent death, I'm sure people will be revisiting his works even more.
Book started out quite strong bringing this topic of women/nurses in the military during WWII into awareness. However, I thought the book began dragging as the author used quotes from letters/interviews more often to tell the story, rather than using those quotes to build sharper portraits of the women, the experience, and the history involved.
By strongest criticism is that the last third of the book seems more like it was an outline draft, slapped on without much fleshing out.
I'm glad I spent the time reading the book and learning about a historical topic I'd never known about before, but I wouldn't suggest it as a great read.
Atwood has a unique flair for creating a dystopian future that seems entirely possible, but also a world with little descriptive spices of ironic humor that relieves the horror. Definitely have [bc:The Year of the Flood 6080337 The Year of the Flood Margaret Atwood http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1282858720s/6080337.jpg 6257025][b:The Year of the Flood 6080337 The Year of the Flood Margaret Atwood http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1282858720s/6080337.jpg 6257025] ready to read next when you're finished with this one.
After finishing the author's Raj Quartet series, I decided to read this epilogue/continuation to the story, although it isn't necessary, and doesn't really tie up any loose ends or answer any lingering questions left at the end of the Quartet. “Tusker” and Lucy Smalley, who are minor characters in the Quartet, are basically the last of the old British Raj, staying on after everyone else has gone. The novel begins with Tusker's sudden death, but then circles back around to how the Smalleys found themselves in this predicament of hanging on to a tradition and lifestyle that was finished years ago.
Paul Scott writes his characters so well, and this book is another experience of his mastery of developing characters and observing small details that speak volumes. There is more humor in this book as compared to the Quartet series, and I suppose that comes because the characters are performing roles that became useless or irrelevant long ago. I often think that reading characters like this is more helpful to someone studying human psychology than any textbook, and this book reinforced that view.
The book does a remarkable job of portraying an aging couple with all their quirks and accommodations made over a lifetime, and the people who they have come to rely on to keep their story intact, even after that story no longer makes sense.
A book meant to stay with you for long after you read it. Deeply complex characters that you meet as children and live with as they grow, a suspenseful story that at times seems so ridiculous that you can't imagine an author actually making it up, and a strong sense of reality in place and time, all combine to create a novel that makes you think about the value of friendship and if there is such a thing as destiny.
Once I got into this book, I felt swept along with the story, almost like watching a movie. While I know it's not a book for everybody, I think it's a good novel to stretch your reading comfort zone. I also found myself looking at America's involvement in the Vietnam War from a very different perspective than the one I was raised with, which makes me feel the book was well worth the time.
Audiobook read by George Guidall—need I say more? Suspenseful and intriguing, but also paced so the reader can be part of the forensic profiling and psychological philosophies forming as new investigative techniques.
A very readable and in depth look at the lives of Islamic women throughout the Middle East. The author had many contacts and access to the women interviewed in the book, with an eye toward getting at the women's stories without their being afraid for their reputations and their lives.
I especially appreciated the organization of the book, starting with individual issues involving what female children within the Islamic family are faced with, progressing into their family roles and marriage, then the larger world of school, workplace, and politics. Finally, there is the international stage of sports and the arts. Each chapter is written to show the hidden reality of women's lives in these sociological niches, and also contrasted with what the Koran says (or doesn't say!) and/or a hadith (sayings of the prophet) interpretation concerning the role or status of women in that setting. Invariably, historical/cultural practices from within the various countries seem to be the reasoning for most of the restrictions and rules placed on women, rather than something revealed from the Koran or through Mohammed.
If you enjoy reading nonfiction that reads like fiction, you'll enjoy the writing style of this book, whether the topic interests you or not. But I hope readers will feel compelled to at least pay more attention to current events in the world that work against women in the Islamic world and bring more awareness to the issues and debates.
Historical fiction that follows the imagined path of a Vermeer painting from the brush of the painter into the hands of the Nazis. The details of the settings and characters bring to life each historical era the author delves into.
I loved reading this book simply because I felt like I now have the vocabulary and framework to investigate the books I read in a more critical, thoughtful way. Sounds nerdy, but when you love to read, things like that become terribly important. :-)
The annotated list of 101 books the author writes about isn't meant to be a list of the best books or even the best examples of the various aspects of what a novel is meant to communicate. It's a review of novels evolving and becoming important or at least memorable in readers lives and why these novels might be lasting. The synopsis of each book and the discussion of what is striking or salient about the story and/or the author will be a great resource for choosing new books to read.