ralovesbooks's reviews
1431 reviews

Would recommend: Not really

I can understand why people enjoy A Thousand Splendid Suns because it's incredibly compelling and quite the page-turner. I sped through it because each chapter ended with a hook that made me need to continue on, but I felt manipulated, as though Hosseini inserted marketing elements to make up for what I felt was subpar writing.

I felt beaten over the head by the obvious symbolism and full-circle-ism I expected from reading The Kite Runner. Could the parents be any more Shakespearean? And, please, could we wave the foreshadowing flags any more wildly? When the foreshadowing is fulfilled, I don't need to be reminded of that first time that I read that it was going to happen, thank you.

It was a good experience for me to read about the lives of Afghan women, but I would prefer a less flowery, less contrived version. I'll take an authentic memoir, please.

Would recommend: Maybe

The Other Boleyn Girl was a really captivating novel, but I am more compelled to read a nonfiction account of the Boleyn family than recommend it. The history is really fascinating on its own, but I kept getting distracted by wondering what was true and what was fictional. I'm sure the more lascivious aspects of the narrative help to make this book a bestseller, but it only made me sad for the female characters. Maybe that was the point.

I wasn't planning on seeing the movie version before I read the book, and those plans are now confirmed.

Would recommend: Probably not

The content of Bringing Down the House is certainly exciting and intriguing; who wouldn't want to win thousands of dollars without cheating? But I couldn't get past the prolific profanity (accurate though it may have been), and I found the style too colloquial for my liking.

Would recommend: Probably not

Practically every woman I've met has recommended this book, as well as Jodi Picoult's entire body of fiction, so I was hoping to love My Sister's Keeper as much as they did. I was primed for it: I am a younger sister, I edit medical articles, and I internalize traumatic situations. It should have been a slam dunk.

But, no. I didn't appreciate Picoult's mechanism of shifting the narrator from character to character (or the publisher's choice to switch up typefaces accordingly) because I view it as a shallow method to avoid committing to a narrator for the book's entirety. The ending was unsatisfying and predictable for me, and I'm just glad it only took me a week or so to get to it. I don't intend to read any of Picoult's other books.

I also found three blatant errors that should have been found by any rookie copy editor, and these only served to raise my ire even more.

Would recommend: Maybe, for skimming

I thought I would really love this book, but then I read the introduction and realized that the author is the managing editor of the illustrious publication, Accuweather.com. Uh, what?

It's not to say that Paul Yeager is not knowledgeable, and he makes a valiant effort at explaining the subjunctive tense, but if we were to follow the edicts of this book, we would never speak in figures of speech, employ trendy phrases, or be even the slightest bit lax in our spoken language. His overall message of being precise, intentional, and creative in language gets lost in a sea of snark and unnecessary points of emphasis, which is a shame.

Oh, and I found a typo. Interpret that as you will.

Would recommend: Probably not

I enjoyed one-third of this book: the middle. There were stories of children in the Pakistan mountains getting their first lessons, progressing, moving their villages along, and it was all very animated and exciting. The beginning and the end were slow, expository, and not compelling at all. It was a struggle to finish this one. The third-person narrative was really awkward to me because of how much direct dialog was incorporated; I never felt like I could trust it completely.

Would recommend: Maybe

I approached this book as a novel, rather than a memoir, in light of the controversy with Oprah and whatnot. As a novel, I liked it. James Frey's style is percussive and repetitive, but it drives home the repetitive nature of his rehabilitation. Some of his descriptions were agonizing; I clenched my fists through a particularly painful episode at a dentist's office. All in all, I enjoyed this book much more than I expected.

Would recommend: Probably

My relationship with this book was rather odd: I sort of dreaded going back to it every night, but as soon as I opened it, I was completely drawn in. I'm just not sure why I wasn't looking forward to reading it because it was very insightful and thought-provoking. Certain concepts (the noonday demons, the catch-22 of capitalism) really resonated with me, but other parts did not, so much. I would definitely read other books by Os Guinness, though. I appreciate how well-researched this book was.

Would recommend: Probably

I read this book in two days, and I can enthusiastically say that it was compelling and a real page-turner. Jeannette Walls's stories about her childhood are unbelievable; that is, I was unable to believe them. In the same vein, I was utterly annoyed with her parents the entire time. The author and her siblings were awfully resilient and resourceful in the face of their circumstances, but I just wanted to slap her parents the entire time. To me, calling their family's hardships "adventures" seemed like pure evasion and disillusion.

Would recommend: Maybe

This book meandered along at a moderate tempo until it slammed on the accelerator in the last quarter. I was completely caught off guard. Up until that point, I was practically sedated by the comfortable, townie characters -- in a good way, I think -- but that last quarter of the book left me shaken and disconcerted. Ultimately, I don't know how much change occurred. The small town, its inhabitants, and mindsets seemed to stay the same, with the exception of some hard lessons and sad losses. I was sad to leave the characters behind, but I didn't mind getting out of Empire Falls.

Before I read this book, a friend told me that Richard Russo won the Pulitzer for it because he simply didn't win it for any of his prior works, even though it was widely held that Empire Falls was not his strongest. After reading it, I am curious to read his other books to see what else he's got up his sleeve.