Tag Archives: book reviews

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Posted by melydia on October 13, 2009 None comments

The Stranger by Albert Camus: This is not a good choice for audio. First off, it was four discs but only took up about two and a half (the rest was some talk on existentialism I didn’t listen to), meaning that George Guidall said “the end” almost two hours before I was expecting him to. Luckily, I had a paper copy so I reread the last few pivotal pages of the story. I could sum up the story but that’s not really the point. There’s a guy and a murder and lots of absurdity. By and large I think I enjoyed it, though it was quite slow to start. I probably would have appreciated it more as a student, with a teacher there to tell me when to pay attention. Perhaps I’ll read it again someday.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Posted by melydia on October 9, 2009 None comments

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides: I picked this one up because I loved Eugenides’s other book, Middlesex. It certainly doesn’t have the scope of its successor, but it was a decent read nonetheless. The story takes place in 1970s Detroit. Though its focus is the five teenage Lisbon sisters who all commit suicide in the span of one year, the actual subjects are the teenage boys in the neighborhood who are obsessed with them. The narrative is in the unexpected first person plural, which actually works quite well in this instance. I’m having trouble summing up my thoughts; the story was interesting but didn’t really go anywhere. You only get to know the characters – even the boys – on the surface, never delving more deeply into motivation or real emotion. It’s a sad tale, and I enjoyed it on that level, but at the end I felt the same as at the beginning: a little puzzled, a little sad, a little apathetic.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Posted by melydia on October 4, 2009 None comments

The Hours by Michael Cunningham: Sometimes I wish books came with reading prerequisites listed on the cover. There are very few novels with which one can assume the average person will be familiar. In The Hours, I suspect it would have been rather helpful to have first read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Or be, you know, at all familiar with Woolf in the first place. Not that a quick skim of the Wikipedia plot summary wasn’t enough for me to understand the story, but I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it were I able to pick up on the subtle references to Woolf’s characters. All in all, I wasn’t too impressed with this one. It wasn’t bad; it just didn’t really pull me in at all. I didn’t care much about the characters, the depressing bits felt meaningless, and the introspection was nothing I hadn’t heard before. I suspect I might enjoy a Cunningham novel not based on another book. I’m just not sure I’ll ever get around to picking one up.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Code Book by Simon Singh

Posted by melydia on September 30, 2009 None comments

The Code Book by Simon Singh: A history of cryptography from ancient Egypt through quantum computing. My favorite parts were about WWII, with Turing and the Navajo Codetalkers. Some parts were a touch slow – cryptography isn’t nearly as thrilling as the activities associated with it – but by and large it was an informative read. My only real complaint was how long it took me to read. Though Singh’s text was thorough and readable as ever, it took me nearly a month to finish. I think I just wasn’t in the right mood for a math book.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Posted by melydia on September 29, 2009 1 comments

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame: A book that appears to have been part of everyone’s childhood except mine. We had a lovely hardbound copy as long as I can remember, but I never read it until now. And it doesn’t translate well to adults. Having been written a century ago, I expected it to be dated, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so…odd. Each chapter is more or less a separate story about the same group of characters: poetic Rat, generous Mole, selfish Toad, gruff Badger, and friendly Otter. Toad has by far the most personality, what with his utter conceit and his obsession with motorcars, but he’s less entertaining than tiresome. I don’t have any issues with the idea of talking animals in general, but when they begin interacting with humans it can get a little strange. For example, the illustrations in this book show Toad at roughly half the height of an adult human – which he would have to be, given part of the storyline. Maybe I would like this book more had I grown up with it, but as it stands I just see it as a really bizarre little tale that I will most likely never read again.

Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

Posted by melydia on September 26, 2009 1 comments

Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card: The League Wars are over, but the struggle continues between various world powers. Someone kidnaps all the Battle School kids who served under Ender during the Bugger War. Bean alone escapes this fate. Though he must go into hiding, he seeks out the only person who can help him free the others: Peter Wiggin. Most of the story revolves around Bean and Petra, but I didn’t feel like I got to know her any better than I did in Ender’s Game. Of course, I’ve noticed Card’s difficulty with writing realistic female characters before. The continuation of Achilles’s tale was kind of interesting but not especially believable. I hear the series improves as you go along. Not that this is such a bad book – it just didn’t do much for me.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Posted by melydia on September 15, 2009 1 comments

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer (unabridged audiobook read by Ilyana Kadushin): Edward wants to get married, but Bella, who is perfectly willing to spend eternity as a vampire with him, is balking at the idea. To complicate things, Jacob’s stepped up to the plate, offering himself as a saner alternative to the living dead. (Which says something, considering he’s a werewolf.) Not that either choice is all that appealing for most of the book: both men act like pretentious assholes and treat Bella like a child incapable of making her own decisions. And for two people who are supposed to be perfect for each other, Edward and Bella sure do spend a lot of time arguing. Yet, they can’t handle spending even a few hours apart. I don’t find obsessive co-dependence to be all that romantic, but then I’m an old married lady – what do I know about love? ;)

“‘Yes,’ I agreed.” “‘Sorry,’ he apologized.” The writing has marginally improved in this volume but is still distractingly amateurish. The literary allusions were less heavy-handed and repetitive (New Moon’s constant Romeo and Juliet references grew quite tiresome), and I’m now actually somewhat curious to read Wuthering Heights and see what all the fuss is about. Like the previous two books in the series, the action doesn’t really get going until about the last quarter of the book. It felt scatterbrained, tossing around Victoria and the Volturi almost at random to add some actual drama to the romantic shenanigans. That said, I did get a kick out of quite a bit of the craziness. Jacob’s brash arrogance was more funny than annoying, and horny Bella amused the heck out of me. I’m looking forward to seeing how the story wraps up in the next book: if Bella finally takes the plunge into vampiredom, if her father has a coronary when Edward asks for his daughter’s hand, if Jacob imprints on somebody, etc. I’ve read that all the loose ends are tied up far too conveniently, but I’ve come to expect that from this series. In short: better than Twilight, not quite as strong as New Moon, but a decent enough continuation of the story to keep me looking forward to the next book.

Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card

Posted by melydia on September 12, 2009 1 comments

Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card: This is more or less the same time frame covered in Ender’s Game, only from Bean’s point of view. It begins with his life as a street urchin in Rotterdam and continues all the way through the end of the Bugger War. There is some overlap between the two books, but since it’s from another point of view it doesn’t feel repetitive. Bean’s train of thought is fascinating and I enjoyed the new characters that were introduced like Achilles and Sister Carlotta. I think of all the other children at Battle School, Bean was the best choice to get his own story, but Ender is still my favorite character. And despite Card’s hope for this book to work on its own, I don’t think I’d enjoy Ender’s Game as much if I’d read Ender’s Shadow first. A lot is lost if you already know the ending. Ender’s Shadow seems almost predicated on audience understanding. That said, it’s still a worthy addition to the series, and I look forward to reading the other books and learning what Bean’s adult life has in store for him.

Also posted on BookCrossing.com.

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers

Posted by melydia on September 11, 2009 1 comments

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers: In the tradition of Jansson’s Moomintrolls and Juster’s Phantom Tollbooth, here we have a story told by Optimus Yarnspinner, a dinosaurish creature whose entire life revolves around books. As our tale opens, Yarnspinner’s authorial godfather, Dancelot Wordwright, is on his deathbed. He gives Yarnspinner a short story that is so good that it caused him to stop writing. Yarnspinner then journeys to Bookholm, a city entirely devoted to writing and bookselling, to track down this amazing writer. This book is a real treat for bibliophiles. The illustrations are darling and the literary references are fun to spot. Not a book I probably would have picked up on my own; I’m glad I gave it a try.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

Posted by melydia on September 4, 2009 3 comments

Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe: I have several overlapping collections of Poe, so I decided, once I’d finished reading them all, to put them all together in a single post here. I think by and large that I like Poe, but he seems to alternate between marvelous horror at his best and boring nonsense at his worst.

  • The Assignation – I couldn’t follow this one. What did the drowning child and the art aficionado have to do with one another?
  • The Balloon-Hoax – Wow. That was really boring.
  • The Bells – Fun to read aloud.
  • Berenice – Delightfully disturbing.
  • The Black Cat – Deliciously horrific.
  • The Cask of Amontillado – I think makes Poe so memorable is his vivid first-person accounts from the point of view of a killer.
  • A Descent into the Maelstrom – Not too memorable.
  • Diddling – A random essay on swindling.
  • The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar – Enjoyably bizarre.
  • The Fall of the House of Usher – Not as interesting as his others, but good atmosphere.
  • Hop-Frog – Um. What is this man’s obsession with orangutans?
  • The Imp of the Perverse – A strange little story on why we knowingly act not in our own interest – such as lying, procrastinating, drinking, and other things sure to get us into trouble – to explain a confession of murder.
  • Ligeia – Didn’t really go anywhere.
  • The Man That was Used Up – Silly, amusing, but ends a bit too abruptly.
  • The Masque of the Red Death – Meh. Weird for no reason and kind of boring.
  • Metzengerstein – I’m not sure I entirely understand what happened in this one.
  • MS. Found in a Bottle – Good suspense, but the ending confused me.
  • The Murders in the Rue Morgue – A rather silly Holmes-esque mystery tale.
  • The Mystery of Marie Roget – Needlessly complicated and hard to follow. There’s a reason Holmes became famous and Dupin did not.
  • The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym – Some good bits, but I think I just don’t like maritime fiction.
  • The Pit and the Pendulum – A delightful tale of suspense.
  • The Purloined Letter – Not bad, but far too wordy.
  • The Raven – An old favorite. I love the contrast between the subject matter and the singsong cadence.
  • A Tale of the Ragged Mountains – Kind of weird. I’m not sure if I liked it or not.
  • The Tell-Tale Heart – Funnier than I’d remembered. One of my all-time favorites.
  • “Thou Art the Man” – Clever but very predictable.
  • William Wilson – Brilliant piece of horror.

© 2010-2025 kate weber All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright