sonia_reppe's reviews
1293 reviews

"I thought that by not going to Vietnam, I would have no contact with death, but every day I carried bodies to the morgue. Sometimes on the el I felt I was choking to death. Once a rock flew against the el car window where I was sitting and shattered the glass in a weblike pattern. There were people out there who wanted to do me harm, even though they didn't know me."
This is a piece of Americana that is underexplored: the life of a conscientious objector. In 1968, Jim Holder tries to avoid the draft by doing "alternative service" as a CO in a Chicago hospital. He has to work for two years and then he's free, but if he is found unsatisfactory and is fired, to boot camp or prison he goes. He escapes (temporarily?) the clutches of the national government just to find himself at the mercy of sticky hospital politics.
The writing is infused with ironies and black humor, and takes us into Holder's head and makes the reader relate to him. He is no revolutionary, although we do meet some in the book, and you could say he is not a true CO because he makes his girlfriend get an abortion, and he is not religious. Yet, somehow, he seems like the only sane person in a crazy world.

This children's book about a china doll is a sweet adventure/morality tale, written with a classic english feel. Why was I reminded of Oliver Twist?

This lion doesn't speak, but he's a sentient, helpful, cuddly creature who comes to the library everyday for story time. He's the star of this story that asks: do rules ever need to be broken?

The kind of hopeful, short story that reminds me of Mitch Albom. Each of the thirteen chapters is told by a different person from this diverse Cleveland neighborhood. The characters only get one monologue each but they appear in the background of other speaker's accounts, entwining to give us a tale about a community that comes together and helps each other and themselves.

LINDSEY LIkes the PINk-A-BOO part. The pink cupcakes look delicious; no wonder the girl couldn't stop eating them. She gets an acute case of pinkitis, which can only be cured by eating GREEN. Good thing she ate greens and didn't become obese.

In this non-fiction novel, Fuller somberly tells the story of an unsung American hero, Colton H.Bryant, a young oil drill rig worker; one of many who support this country's oil industry, thereby providing much of the country's wealth. You might call this a true crime novel—the crime being capitalist greed and unfair treatment of workers; or you might call it a modern western for all the broad sweeping Wyoming landscapes, and the timeless struggle of its inhabitants ("who appear as tiny dots against the great swell of land") to work and prosper.

Getting into this book was really slow for me. It was kind of like watching a boring documentary...There is no plot focus at first, just short snippets of people and scenery. Also, I thought the writing was pretentious. We are told Colton's walk was "like he had never really found the difference between sky and earth." Another sentence was about a wild mare "tossing its head in serpentines of willfullness." I thought, why not: "willfully tossed its head in snake-like motions"? This is not to pick on someone's style—I'm just giving examples of why I didn't love this book. I stuck with it because my friend liked it, and the chapters are short.

I was indifferent to Colton's character for the first half of the book. This is a boy who "put ketchup on his ketchup" and almost froze himself to death—twice. Things pick up when his horse runs away and he searches for her everyday; but mainly I just thought he was a goofball.

What saved this book for me is that Colton grew as a person, into a responsible husband and father. I liked this last third of the book, and also the descriptions of the weather that takes on a life of its own; but I can't give it three stars because the first half annoyed me so much. It took me six weeks to read this because I could only take so much of it at one time. Even so, I have to admit that Fuller is a good and effective writer. Even though her writing don't get an approving "Whee-haw" out of me, it got the job done.

This is a memoir from JA's English childhood through her early Broadway years in America, ending with her departure for Hollywood. I enjoyed reading about her musical family and the parts about her classical voice training, of course, but also I enjoyed her tone and writing, which was deep and insightful. In this chronology she finds all the moments in her life that were significant, like a certain revelation or a realization that steered her life. There's also humor. The childhood part I liked the best.

After reading the prologue I put the book down, not wanting to read about fat guys sitting at a bar. But it turns out this book is about a boy's life (JR) and he's a great writer. The prologue was unnecessary, as most of them are, which is why they annoy me. Epilogues, on the other hand, I love; and this one was really sad.

JR gets into Yale, and one of my favorite parts was where Frank Sinatra gives a speech at Yale.

Lots of literary allusions as a bonus.