Nicholette Anand
This book was OK. I enjoyed reading a new version of Emma, and a well-done version, but it didn't really grab me.
My 10-year-old daughter recommended that I should read this book, and I was prepared to be bored by fiction for kids. I actually enjoyed it! And I also learned things about the royal family and about World War II that I did not know before. I would definitely recommend this for young readers!
Although this book was well-written, received a lot of critical acclaim, and somehow compelled me to finish it, I can't say it really made an impression on me. It didn't particularly interest me, and didn't really care about the characters. Very forgettable.
Before starting this book, I didn't research the author at all, and when I eventually did realize he passed away many years ago, I was very disappointed. He seems like such a lovely person and offers up so many insightful and thoughtful observations about learning to play the cello. His book is as relevant today as it was when it was first published.
There are so many passages in the second half that I read and reread. He is able to put into words things that I have experienced during practice and orchestra rehearsals, that I was never able to fully express. His documentation of his growth as a musician really reflects my experiences and is inspiring to anyone feeling frustrated or discouraged.
Near the end of the book there is an amazing paragraph where he writes about stage fright and how, to overcome it, one has to achieve complete musical focus and “musical immersion.” I read this on the day where I had finally achieved that in a performance, and it was so validating and interesting to read this perfect description of my experience.
There are many quotes and paragraphs I would love to copy out of this book and stick on my fridge. And in fact, I probably will do just that! I highly recommended this book not just to anybody learning the cello, but to anyone attempting to learn any musical instrument.
The only thing that prevented me from getting this book 5 stars is that it required a good editor. There are quite a few pages in the first half that I skipped over because they were just about his general experiences with music or with elementary school teaching, and I wasn't very interested. I suppose they provided some kind of context for his musical journey, but I don't think it was relevant enough to actually include in the book.
Really enjoyed this book after having taken a break from the 44 Scotland Street series for a while. I had forgotten the brilliance of McCall Smith's insights into human nature and the significance of all our daily interactions. Wonderfully rich, complicated characters and very well written. I don't know how he writes so many books a year without sacrificing quality.
Of course, as a former Waldorf school student with a psychologist parent, I particularly love Bertie. His adventures with psychotherapy and school, his tolerance of his so-called friends Tofu and Olive, as well as his mother - it all just kills me. Some of the dialogue in this book was so clever and so funny I kept having to read it out loud to my husband. Excellent bedtime reading and a great antidote to all the post-apocalyptic stuff I seem to have read and watched lately... Looking forward to “Bertie Plays the Blues”, the next book in the series, which is on my desk.
A real page-turner. Sanj nagged me to read this and I was somewhat reluctant because of the “vampire-ish” apocalypse theme, not usually my cup of tea. But this book is quite unique and very engaging. It is well written (by an English prof!) and the characters are welll-developed so I became interested in their outcome and relationships. Now I'm starting the sequel, The Twelve...
Because of the author's reputation and the cover art, I initially thought this book was intended for children. But it is an action-packed account of an incredibly adventurous life that can be read by anybody. Roald Dahl battled snakes and lions in Africa in the 1930s and struggled not to be killed by the incompetence of the British military in World War II. He truly had nine lives!
I was excited to read this book because of the author's illustrious reputation, but it was a bit disappointing. It was very slow moving, most of the book felt like it was still the introduction, and when various secrets were finally revealed it was pretty underwhelming.
If you read only one thing this year, let it be this book. I can barely find the words to describe it. It is so... beautiful and definitely the best thing I have read in years. Verghese has done it again!
I am already a big fan of Liane Moriarty, but I think this is one of her best accomplishments! After listening to me going on about it forever, my husband also read it and loved it. He is a huge tennis fan and was convinced that Liane Moriarty must play a lot of tennis to have the insights about the game that she put in this book. He was very impressed when he researched it afterwards and discovered that she is not in fact a tennis player. I myself am not a tennis fan, but that didn't matter at all. This is a book about a family and the interrelationship of all the complex characters within it. Moriarty stats her writing chops by handling the multiple points of view with clarity and skill. Each character is interesting and compelling, and the way she brings them all together is genius. The red herrings that Moriarty threw into this book created a lot of suspense, which I really enjoyed, and as usual I was impressed by her insights into human psychology and what makes people do the things that they do.
This thriller was excellent. One of the best I've read in recent years! It was really well written, probablyLisa Jewell's best work, and the audio version was superbly narrated. I completed this book in record time, and it kept me guessing. Although I did figure out a few basic elements of the plot, I certainly wasn't able to guess how they were used by the characters, and my theories kept changing every few chapters. The characters were really well developed, the various settings were well described, multiple timelines and points of view were handled with apparent ease, and the book was wholly absorbing. I'm a sucker for protagonists who are writers, so I enjoyed that aspect with of the novel, as well as the themes it explored: controlling people, friendship, family, classism, narcissism, etc.
There was only one very tiny thing that didn't seem plausible and that was the protagonist not recognizing an element from one of her own books. While it is believable that a writer would perhaps forget plot details, I just couldn't accept that she would've forgotten this particular thing, and it's still not clear to me why she even needed to temporarily forget. Perhaps someone out there can enlighten me...?
This book was a fun read. A plot-driven page-turner that definitely kept me engaged and wanting to see what happened next. The plot is somewhat complicated, so I really applaud the author for planning it so carefully and figuring it all out. Also, her level of legal knowledge and research is impressive! My only criticism is that sometimes it felt a little bit tedious wading through all the legal wording and intricacies, and I didn't necessarily feel like I cared all that much about the characters because they felt kind of secondary, especially in the second half.
I loved this book! I don't read a lot of comedy or humour, but this one was great. The narrator of the audiobook made it even more funny by bringing grants lisp to life. But the thing that made this book great is Rowley's exploration of the serious themes beneath the superficial wit and humor. His exploration of grief, and how we can use humour as a coping mechanism to deal with it, is insightful and heartwarming. The writing is excellent. I thought this book was really well structured, with nothing extraneous, and some of the turns of phrase were so good that I had to rewind and listen to them again. I have recommended this book to several people, who have also enjoyed it, and it has motivated me to now begin reading The Editor, also by Stephen Rowley.
Fans of Liane Moriarty and The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion will really enjoy this book. It's funny, it's poignant, features well-developed characters, is well written, and it's also a really good mystery. The audiobook is very well narrated too! I particularly enjoyed the deal points of view at slowly developed each character and played with the idea of an unreliable narrator. It really sucked me in, and for the first half of the book I was convinced I understood both characters, only to realize that I did not. The themes of dysfunctional family and neuro diversity were developed with humor, insight, and suspense. I will definitely be reading more books by this author!
I was fortunate enough to win an advanced copy of this book from a contest on Jennifer Robinson's Facebook page. It arrived just before my Christmas break, and I got up early every day to read it before my family was awake. I could not put it down! It had a little bit of everything: suspense, romance, history. The narrative is beautifully written and confidently dropped me deep into the plot within the first few pages. All the historical research the author brought to bear on this novel felt very natural and made it both realistic and vivid. The characters are well developed and memorable, and I don't think I will ever forget this moving story that is a tribute to the remarkable people who survived World War II in Italy. I have read Jennifer Robinson's previous novels, and this one did not disappoint. I highly recommend it! I
One of the best books I've read this year. I can't recommend this one highly enough! The characters are so well-developed and unique, they will be undoubtedly stay with me for years, and the descriptions of place are extremely well-written. I dog-eared many pages just so I could return to the descriptions and savor the writing. This book has a little bit of everything: drama, friendship, adventure, and mystery.
I have to say, after all the hype about this book I was pretty disappointed. I read upwards of 50 books a year, both fiction and nonfiction, and I almost never quit, and I can appreciate lots of different kinds of literature. But I quit this one after about two hours of reading because I was bored. The first chapter was really well written and was quite a good hook to bring one enthusiastically into the book, and I had high hopes. But the more it went on the more it was just kind of repetitions of the same theme, and I lost interest. it just didn't really speak to me. Maybe I wasn't in the right mood or at the right time of my life to read this, but that's the way it is. If you want to read memoirs about women discovering their purpose and true identity, I would highly recommend Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad and My Own Blood by Ashley Bristowe.
I finished this book 5 months ago, and I am writing a review now because it has stayed at the forefront of my mind during that whole time. If that's not the mark of a good book, I don't know what is! The premise of the story, that someone could live undetected in a family's home and be privy to all their secrets, was absolutely chilling and fascinating to me. And then the stowaway involves her self in the families life! The way that Fisher takes this premise and then develops it into such a twisty plot was excellent. She develops her characters in a very compelling way and rates so atmospheric Lea and seamlessly, that I was reading late into the night and recommended this book to lots of people.
This is the second Lisa Jewell book I have read, and it only made me more enthusiastic to keep reading her. This atmospheric story is filled with suspense and interesting characters. Even the characters I did not like were intriguing, and I was curious to learn what made them the way they were and what they would do. I was truly transported to the Hampstead Heath area of London, and I was immersed in the lives of everyone who populated this book. The plot was tight and suspenseful. It kept me guessing through the whole book, and the research that Jewel obviously did on in-cells and misogynistic culture was woven seamlessly into the narrative.
I absolutely adored this book and forced my family to listen to many excerpts. The unconventional family is utterly charming and their adventures with each other and with the animals of course you are absolutely hilarious. The poetic and evocative descriptions of Corfu were magical. Incredibly well written and a delight to read. The fact that I had already watched the TV show did not detract from the book at all.
Wow, what an amazing book! Definitely the best book I have read in a while. It has unusual emotional depth and insight. Beautifully written and a powerful, moving story. I can completely understand why this has been called “the great American novel of our time.” But really it's just a great novel of our time because it tells a story that is international in nature and could probably be representative of the struggles people are facing in many places around the globe.
Great mystery! Maybe not quite as good as Something in the Water, which has quite a unique plot, but still quite excellent!
I finished this book a while ago, but it still bothers me that I don't understand the title. I love the book, but it just doesn't make sense to me. Can anyone explain? Who is the me? Who is the you? Is it the deceased Mom??