Last Ten Books Reviewed
I wasn't expecting to be so enraptured by this travelogue/recipe book, but Vanderhoof added enough of her interactions with the local people, history, the food and where it came from to keep me from getting bored with one thing or the other. However, like her boat Receta, Vanderhoof knows exactly when her writing needs to change tack and bring it around to a new topic. Readers will be thrilled, but not overwhelmed, with descriptions of scenery, humorous anecdotes about cooking or eating failures, and brief tidbits about the various spices and dishes of the Caribbean. ...
Freinkel does an excellent job of compressing the problems and promises of plastics into a book far more readily digestible than plastic compounds will ever be. The voice of the book changes from chapter to chapter as we are first presented with the inception and introduction of plastic into our society. The chapter about combs reads remarkably like Bill Bryson's "At Home", without quite so much wandering from the original topic. The chapter on plastic chairs presents some of the ingenuity plastic allows while reminding us of the limitations of what is both functional and practical to use and produce. This is quickly followed by issues in the medical field which are both promising and dire as we are shown the advances plastics have made in life saving technology, while possibly contributing to later health problems, and what the medical profession is trying to do about it.
Perhaps the most hopeful or at least my favorite chapters in the book are regarding plastic bags and recycling. It includes a reminder of how unnecessary most plastic packaging is, information about how other countries are recycling (something US is not very successful at, and what steps we can take to improve our personal and national carbon footprint. ...
Perhaps the most hopeful or at least my favorite chapters in the book are regarding plastic bags and recycling. It includes a reminder of how unnecessary most plastic packaging is, information about how other countries are recycling (something US is not very successful at, and what steps we can take to improve our personal and national carbon footprint. ...
I was hoping for something that took itself a little less seriously, instead I got a fairly typical coming of age story with vampires and werewolves tacked on and little extra added melodrama. It even came completely with a Jerry Springer-like Afterthoughts tacked on. Toby isn't a particularly interesting character and he sometimes comes off sounding more like a 13-year-old girl than a 13-year-old boy, maybe the 13-year-old inner monologues all sound the same: whiny and self-entitled. He is obviously an inventive and resourceful kid, but the only scenes we see this side of him is during pranks and when he "saves the day," but even then there's a back up squad and so his resourcefulness isn't even necessary in the end. ...
An interesting concept that didn't quite go far enough in its experimentation. Rather than doing something new or fresh with the idea, we get a fairly typical teen paranormal drama with fairly unexceptional Missy Miller. The book had the issue of opening with the scene of Missy killer her cat, which automatically raised my hackles and prevented me from getting to know Missy. Since there was no context about how or why she killed her context I kept wondering if she had a history of animal abuse or if it was going down that road, instead I had to read graphic descriptions about her cutting herself or how much she wanted to cut herself hen she wasn't busy making her life more difficult by obsessing over her ex-boyfriend. ...
While this is not a well crafted novel, I did find myself enjoying Cypher's adventure. I found a lot of the language to be a little too repetitive, Goodkind goes so far as to repeat himself in the same paragraph. Luckily this made it very easy to skim through the book without the fear of having missed an important detail. If I missed it the first time, I had a chance of reading it again only a few sentences down, convenient.
That being said, I did personally enjoy the story told. I especially loved the portrayal of Denna's character as being far more complex and heartbreaking than even the forbidden love between Richard and Kahlan. The creatures and features of the Midlands were interesting and Zed was a great character all around. Strangely, I liked the side plots best as I found Richard kind of obnoxious and got really tired of hearing what a "rare" person he was, this is the same problem I had with the TV series after awhile. ...
That being said, I did personally enjoy the story told. I especially loved the portrayal of Denna's character as being far more complex and heartbreaking than even the forbidden love between Richard and Kahlan. The creatures and features of the Midlands were interesting and Zed was a great character all around. Strangely, I liked the side plots best as I found Richard kind of obnoxious and got really tired of hearing what a "rare" person he was, this is the same problem I had with the TV series after awhile. ...
This book didn't pick up for me until nearly the last third of the book. Getting there was too much of a struggle for me to really enjoy it and most of this had to do with the way the story was told.
I'm just not a fan of novels that are told through dialogue, and this is mostly what happened with A New Birth of Freedom. Most of the dialogue consisted of Edwin Blair, our time traveler, trying to convince everyone around him that he really was from the future. In fact, most of the book is taken up by this laborious process and continued any time a new character was introduced. At some point, for the sake of the story, it would have been nice if people had just looked at his super futuristic jeans (created a whopping 10 years after the Civil War) and sneakers from 2200 and just believed him. Additionally I found the insertion of Blair's thoughts to be somewhat tedious and added almost nothing to the book. I didn't care about Blair's thoughts, mostly because I did not care much for Blair. ...
I'm just not a fan of novels that are told through dialogue, and this is mostly what happened with A New Birth of Freedom. Most of the dialogue consisted of Edwin Blair, our time traveler, trying to convince everyone around him that he really was from the future. In fact, most of the book is taken up by this laborious process and continued any time a new character was introduced. At some point, for the sake of the story, it would have been nice if people had just looked at his super futuristic jeans (created a whopping 10 years after the Civil War) and sneakers from 2200 and just believed him. Additionally I found the insertion of Blair's thoughts to be somewhat tedious and added almost nothing to the book. I didn't care about Blair's thoughts, mostly because I did not care much for Blair. ...
This is an amazing memoir about the struggles of a middle class white teacher trying to change the world through his teaching. Little does he realize how neglected these children are. Instead of trying to play catch up for seven grades worth of neglect, Conroy tries to equip them with enough knowledge of the world around them, their own sense of worth, and enough education to get by. While this may sound somewhat defeatist, Conroy understood exactly how much he was up against and tried to make the best of it. Forty years after the publication of this memoir and things are getting better, but there are still areas of the country where the quality of education is greatly in need of reform. ...
When we first meet Andrea she is interested in becoming a knight in her father's kingdom rather than a lady. However as the story develops, Andrea is exposed to different forms of femininity as well as what it truly means to be a male in her world (i.e. forced to participate in violence). While I found Andrea's personal transformation to be fairly positive, she still ended up leaving her world at the end of the book for a man rather than because it was best for her personal development, and she made no attempts to improve or even think about the lot of other women in her kingdom. In this sense she remains a "princess" but gives up all the duties that it entails in caring for the lives of her people. ...
Gleick raises some excellent questions about the safety and sustainability of relying on bottled water over tap water. However, the main focus of the book seems to be on the advertising done by bottled water companies and how outlandish the claims are. Much of this information filters its way into other chapters and does become a bit hammer-over-the-head repetitive.
The chapters on the overall environmental cost of producing bottled water were far more informative, but could have benefited from an overall breakdown. The historical analysis about where our fear of tap water comes from, the creation and regulation of tap water, and it's current problems was excellent and could have been expanded on as it was one of the more interesting topics covered. ...
The chapters on the overall environmental cost of producing bottled water were far more informative, but could have benefited from an overall breakdown. The historical analysis about where our fear of tap water comes from, the creation and regulation of tap water, and it's current problems was excellent and could have been expanded on as it was one of the more interesting topics covered. ...
I think comparing this work to Douglas Adams or Vonnegut is a disservice to everyone involved. While Mandery has some excellent literary moments in this work, it is not quite on the same caliber, this sets the bar of expectations rather high for the reader and Mandery doesn't quite have the mastery to reach those heights...yet.
Highlights of the book include the characterization of the President as a bit of a ten-gallon buffoon, the adorable courtship between Ralph Bailey and Jessica Love, and the antics of the alien Ambassador. I would also say Mandery has a fairly good message about fanaticism, of any religion including atheism, agnosticism, and even logic. ...
Highlights of the book include the characterization of the President as a bit of a ten-gallon buffoon, the adorable courtship between Ralph Bailey and Jessica Love, and the antics of the alien Ambassador. I would also say Mandery has a fairly good message about fanaticism, of any religion including atheism, agnosticism, and even logic. ...