Shawn Towner
Has some of the things I don't like about YA fiction (clumsy love triangles, a fascination with describing the flawless physical characteristics of love interests/rivals), but an otherwise captivating story. I read the first 250 pages or so in one sitting, stopping only because I had managed to wedge myself into an uncomfortable position in my chair. I don't really get much into YA fiction, and especially not YA series, but I'm really looking forward to reading the second book in this one.
It'd be interesting to see what this book would look like if someone were to take the Navidson parts and put them together in the fashion of a regular narrative. I think it would hold up well, if not be even better than the disjointed, experimental, Pale Fire-meets-DFW style of the novel. While there are portions of the book that are totally engaging (like some of Truant's stories or when the explorers first enter the mystery room/corridor), the structure of the book (by which I mean the way the story is actually printed on the page) breaks up the story to a point where the novel gets really annoying, especially the pages only partially printed or printed at strange angles.
Hugely disappointing. This book got a metric tonne of great press, including a nomination for the National Book Award, so I was expecting something worthy of such acclaim. The book deals with themes of memory and loss, much like Krauss's first novel, [b:Man Walks Into a Room 44380 Man Walks Into a Room Nicole Krauss http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170260388s/44380.jpg 43730], but in a much less enjoyable fashion. While Man Walks Into a Room had a riveting story, Great House is less a novel and more a collection of slightly interrelated stories.
In a book that features a giant squid, Bigfoot, a pair of genius Asian prostitutes, and an impromptu lesbian-vs.-man boxing match, it's a remarkable achievement on Giralidi's part to craft a narrative voice that is by far the strangest thing in the novel.
Do you like Scooby-Doo? Of course you do, it's a classic TV show. But we all know it was missing something: Necromancy. Fortunately, Edgar Cantero's Meddling Kids corrects that obvious oversight. Negotiating the fine line between self-indulgent ironic/meta spoof/homage and straight horror-comedy, Meddling Kids is an absolute blast to read.
The parts of the book that deal with adventurer in equatorial Africa and hunting gorilla are wonderful. Reel's mixture of narrative storytelling and information gleaned from primary documents make for a riveting history. The middle part of the book, where explorer/”discoverer” of the gorilla Paul Du Chaillu goes from darling to pariah amongst the London intellectual social set, is less engaging. There are some interesting facts about the reception of Darwinism and London's first lending library and its influence on the Victorian publishing industry, but there are so many people involved, only a few who are described in any real detail, that it takes away from excitement of the ‘jungle' sections. Still a good read though, and a testament to the interrelation of knowledge and storytelling.
The story of the moon rock heist is an interesting one, but it takes up a very small portion of the book. Most of the book is spent playing up how awesome and smart and charismatic the thief is. It gets a little fawning at times. Strangely, the best parts of the book aren't ones that deal with the heist, but the parts about the random Belgian rock aficionado who tips off the FBI to the heist and the scenes that give a view of what it's like to be a genius working for NASA. After reading this book, one of my new goals in life is to bathe in one of the computer-controlled showers described in the book.
An enjoyable read, but it's a book whose plot skips over huge parts of the story and whose titular protagonist is the second or third most interesting character in the book. The resolution is disappointedly contrived, but the final page or so leaves the opening for a sequel (Johannes Cabal the Detective) that has some promise.
An incredibly introspective and thoughtful zombie apocalypse novel, although it does get a little too introspective and thoughtful at times. In much of the first third of the novel, there's not much in the way of zombie action, or any action. If I hadn't been for the relatively short length of the novel (~250 pages), I very well may have given up on the book. But I'm glad I didn't. As the characters begin to share their stories about the apocalypse and how they survived, the book becomes addictively readable.
A novel that often reads more like a collection of related stories than a unified novel. While the entirety of the novel deals with the narrator's investigation of her Grandfather's life and death, it takes a good long while to see how all the pieces fit into place. It's really not until the last 20 pages or so when everything starts to come together. What makes the novel worth a read is the quality of Obreht's prose. All the praise that she's been given is well-deserved. I said the novel felt like a collection of short stories, but a couple of those little “stories” are magnificent. The villagers hunting the tiger and the story of the narrator and a friend trying to smuggle contraband skulls across the border are downright perfect. I really look forward to reading whatever Obreht produces in the future.
The line “I fertilized the Queen and kept my endophallus” might be the best I've read all year. In fact, anything concerning Branford, The Best Bee in the World is sheer joy. The rest of the book/collection/box of comics is good as well, although I had the same problem that I often have when reading comics: my vision is so terrible that to read much of the little writing in some of the panels, I have to hold the book/pamphlet/newspaper inches away from my face.
An interesting book, but not all that interesting. The early scenes between young Alice Liddell and Dodgson are awkward and creepy, which is fine, but as Alice grows older, and moves further and further away from the young girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland, the book becomes continually less interesting. In a way, you could say that the novel mirrors the life of Alice herself; interesting at first, but continually less so as time goes on. Honestly, reading Martin Gardner's Annotated Alice gives about as much insight into Alice Liddell the girl and her relationship with Lewis Carroll as this novel does. But strangely, the author doesn't list the Annotated Alice in her acknowledgements or lists of sources, which disappoints me. Any Alice scholarship should, at the very least, start with the Gardner's text.
Any novel that opens with references to demented pimps, whoremasters, and dick-smacking the Soviets is fine by me.
I just couldn't get in to this collection. The best story (“The Dungeon Master”) I had read in The New Yorker, and there weren't any other stories in the collection that really jumped out to me. It's been a pretty good year for story collections (Saunders and K-Russ), so maybe that's making me view this assess than it actually is.
I'm a sucker for anything that involves someone who's not a detective being put in a situation where they have to act like detectives, like North by Northwest or xXx. Normal fits into that trope or genre or whatever you want to call it. The ending is abrupt and a little unsatisfying, but the book is short enough to be a quick, fun read. If you've got a free afternoon or evening, give this book a shot.
On the back cover, Alice Sebold writes, “As the story of a victim, it is gripping; as work of literature, it's a triumph.” I would agree with the first half of that statement. I'm not a fan of the memoir in general, and in this era of super-awesome creative non-fiction, this book was probably too straightforward. But that shouldn't take away from the content of the book. The presentation of a pedophile is chilling, as is the effect the man has over the young girl he essentially brainwashes.
I'd heard such good things about The Good Soldiers and I'd been on the library's waiting list for it for so long that I was probably setting myself up for disappointment. And disappointed I was. The Good Soldiers is a book about an incredibly interesting topic: an Army infantry battalion assigned to Baghdad during the surge. Unfortunately, the book reads too much like a series of AP wire reports than a cohesive work. Maybe I've just been spoiled by all the good literary non-fiction that I get from my subscriptions to McSweeney's and the Believer, but I found The Good Soldier a relentlessly dull read. Which is a shame, considering the events described in the book provide an insight into the lives of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians that most news reports, even long-form stuff, just doesn't manage to equal. If The Good Soliders had been published as a series of articles, it would have been fantastic. When read straight through, however, it leaves a lot to be desired. I'm interested to see how The End of Major Combat Operations (included with McSweeney's 34 compares.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't make it even a quarter of the way through this novel. (The only reason I rate it 2 stars instead of 1 is out of the guilt I feel for giving the lowest rating to a book I didn't finish.) I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I cannot suffer Franzen's prose. He's supposed to be one of the titans of modern American lit, and I have to struggle to keep myself from falling asleep after just one or two of his pages. I didn't like what I read of the novel–it was dull, cranky, and filled with too much depiction of the sort of suburban malaise that I find so incredibly cliched–but what I don't like even more is the fact that I can't even keep engaged in reading one of the most important authors of my time.
Initially reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's [b:Anathem 2845024 Anathem Neal Stephenson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1224107150s/2845024.jpg 6163095], Embassytown starts off as a fantastically interesting sci-fi story of a world where language is everything. As the book progresses, however, it becomes more and more conventional, to the point where the last 20% of the book is a marauding alien army that can only be stopped by an unexpected hero injecting a sudden change into the system of the world. It's like Independence Day, but without the Macs.
A book filled with frustrating characters, sensationalistic themes, and a masterfully constructed plot. Box 21 tells the story of Swedish police investigating a hostage/murder-suicide incident at a hospital. The perp is a young girl who has been kept as a sex slave for three years. The police have to uncover the dark secrets of modern slavery and sexual abuse, while struggling with the ethical behaviour of their own force. The blurb on the cover compares the novel to Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy and, in some ways (mostly the repeated references to forced sodomy, the comparison is apt. But Box 21 is not as overtly political and it is far less meandering.
The structure of Box 21 is a thing of beauty. Each chapter deals with a day in the investigation, with brief flashback chapters framing the main story. A chapter-for-a-day isn't all that innovative, but the authors build the drama and suspense in each chapter with such meticulous timing that each chapter ends and seemingly the perfect moment. The book is also divided into two larger parts, signaling a shift in the tone and focus of the story (like the two books of Lolita, or the change in Psycho after the shower scene.) The characters are presented as real people, which makes their selfish and often vindictive actions all the more believable. The last second plot twist is a little less believable, but it does give an appropriately frustrating end to the novel.
Maybe this would earn a four-star rating from some readers who are familiar with Gallagher's and Kittle's previous book as it covers some of the same ground as Write Beside Them and In The Best Interest of Students, but I think this is the best encapsulation of what they do as teachers. The book is clearly the result of good discussions about teaching philosophy and practice. Although Gallagher and Kittle always write about the reasoning behind what they do, the intersection of the What the Why is clear and explicit in this book.
This is a solid read for veteran teachers who are familiar with providing student choice in reading and writing, and it would be an amazing PLC or professional book study text. I think this book would prompt in its readers the same type of reflective thinking and discussion that Kittle and Gallagher must have engaged in to produce this book.
Also, it's a really well-made book. Kudos to the designer.
As much as I love Kelly Gallagher's Readicide, Book Love is probably the best book about reading that I've ever read. It's a book that you'll read from cover-to-cover in one sitting, stopping only to find where you left your little post-it flags to mark the pages you'll want your colleagues or students to read.
[b:The Passage 6690798 The Passage (The Passage, #1) Justin Cronin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327874267s/6690798.jpg 2802546] is the first book I usually recommend to people. After all, who doesn't love a well-written book about the vampire apocalypse. Reading The Passage got me back into reading in an entirely different way. I began seeking about more genre fiction, rather than just reading the books recommended in the NY Times Book Review. It shaped my path as a reader. So the final book of the trilogy has been my most anticipated book since [b:The Twelve 13281368 The Twelve (The Passage, #2) Justin Cronin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331230956s/13281368.jpg 14373498] came out. But with great anticipation comes the great potential for disappointment. This book does not disappoint. Although there is one big dead spot in the book (you can skip the entire part of the book that's about Zero's past), Cronin manages to do what so many series authors have failed to do and actually provide a truly satisfying ending.
A very different novel from The Passage. Probably not as good, but still a very good book.
Much of the opening of the novel works like a prequel, going back to the chaotic aftermath of Year Zero. And when it gets back to the present day, the novel often focuses on how humanity is still surviving in Texas and elsewhere. It takes a while for the action of the book to focus in on the titular twelve original lab virals, but when it does, holy crap is it good.
The major problem that I had with The Passage remains, which is that the main characters always seem borderline indestructible. There's even one part in The Twelve where it's pointed out that there is no logical reason for a character to have survived, but whatever, there he is. If the books weren't so amazing, this would be a problem. But Cronin's storytelling easily overwhelms the flaws of the books.