Phil James

Definitely good, ticks all the boxes, but it wasn't as good as I might have expected.
I really liked Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. They wrote together and continued in the Mythical-realist style but went in different directions.In this book he seems to take the whole, personification of mythical gods and forces, too seriously and it made me miss the humour of terry pratchett or even Christopher Moore.

For me there is one great mythical-realist book. Little Big by John Crowley. But, maybe coming to it from this book, one could find it long and winding and a little twee. Still, for me, it started the genre, and remains the best.

Hilarious black humour. Dark, dark humour but the satire is buzzing and sparking with ideas. As nearly always, in a Coupland book the ideas are more important than plot or even character, but after just slogging through Don Quixote, this was exactly what I needed.

A nobody becomes, one day, a “death merchant”.
I've found a new favourite author, someone who makes me laugh as much as Terry Pratchett, Tom Robbins, or Douglas Adams yet wears his learning very lightly.
I never felt that I was being lectured at, but saw underneath the hip cynicism a sacred respect for the dying.

Loved it. The voice is unique, funny and tragic, and now I'm hoping the author's other books are as enjoyable.

This is I'm sure a very literate and well written book but it just became too much hard work.
I can take the post-modernist view ( “Dorian” by Will Self ) of the world and don't wear rose-tinted glasses, (I loved “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy), but the endless list of rapes and murders was not my cup of meat.
If this will lead to the solving of some of these murders ( or the prevention of new ones) then it's worth anybody's distaste, but I don't think it will...review fades to ambiguity and obscurity...

Congratulations to the author for the ManBooker Prize.

Although I liked this book very much it did keep reminding me of Neil Gaiman's “The Graveyard Book”
Just to find out if I was the only one who thought so I went googling. Here's a link to a short critical article from someone else who liked the book and drew parallels to Gaiman and several others.
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/book-review-lincoln-in-the-bardo-by-george-saunders-1-4393571

I rarely re-read books because there are so many, and so little time. I made an exception here because I read it it first in a delirious whirl of Murakami books. I was falling in love with a writer and was giddy with his peculiar mix of the banal and surreal.
For some reason I didn't see beyond the oeuvre to the exceptional nature of this work so I only gave 4 stars. I fixed that now with 5. I was so totally absorbed in each section that I didn't see how all the parts were played out as a whole.
I recently listened to Patti Smith's “M train” where she becomes enamoured with the book so I knew I had to go back and give it the time it deserved. I'm glad I did.

Wonderful. I was wary of Pynchon for a long time. A reputation for denseness or difficulty, obscurity, but this was like a burst of light. OK, I couldn't say what the story was about in every detail, but it enjoyable in it's self and also for the gap it filled in my literary education.
Drugged up, psychotic conspiracy theories have never been written so well.

Masterful, subtle and deep and very enjoyable.

I'm re-reading this so I that can read the rest of the trilogy. I was lucky enough to find “spook country” second-hand and I'll have to get hold of his latest somehow.

Review after receiving book as Giveaway.
I really liked this even though it wasn't quite like my usual styles or genres. i.e. no post-modern trickery, magical-realist fantasies or ironic humour.
With the title “All true not a lie in it” I was expecting the opposite, a bunch of tall tales from an unreliable narrator, but instead Alix Hawley has set herself a harder task. How to tell the exact history, from the facts of Daniel Boone's life, and also make it vividly new and interesting.
She succeeds by giving us the thoughts and impressions of a man dragged into a mythical life almost as a spectator in his own tale, surrounded by the ghosts of people he has survived.
Remarkable.

Thanks to Megha's review http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/39133771. I had lowered expectations of this, after all the other rave reviews.
I realise it has several flaws and doesn't innovate in any way but if you're looking for a good old story to relax into, you couldn't do much better.
Somebody coming from chick-lit might be amazed that a woman could take on the voice of the male narrator in all his male adventures, but for this man it didn't ring quite true. Still it never distracted me from the two threads of the story while my imagination was fed with details of travelling circus life.

Totally superlative. I loved every bit of this, as much or maybe more than “Cloud Atlas”
There are his usual hints and references to his previous books but here is a suggestion that they are all included in one overall meta-fiction or indeed all organically grown from one central idea— The reincarnation or transmigration of souls.

If you've heard that this book has been nominated for all sorts of prizes you might be expecting something different; but if I tell you it reminds me of Anne Tyler or Joanna Harris you might not be disappointed and might even be a little surprised at the steel edge under this tragi-comic family story.

Made me think of Tom Robbins “Jitterbug Perfume” crossed with the film of “Moulin Rouge”. Started off pale by comparison to these two, but I grew to like it in it's own right.

In the last year I watched the two Bela Lugosi films of Frankenstein and was curious to read the book. They are remarkably different,yet complement each other. If you can cope with a lot of gothic gushing and emoting it's a worthy read.

I probably would have enjoyed this a lot more if it hadn't been the audio version. Personally I didn't get on with the voice at all. A dreary monotone most of the time.

Wonderful nature writing that brought me back to all the books I loved as a child: Gerald Durrell, James Herriot, Richard Adams and Joy Adamson.
He writes about the year, from month to month, of the intimate life of one meadow on the border of Wales and England, not far from where I grew up and rambled around in the countryside.
He has the eyes of a child, the inclinations of a farmer and the patience of a old-time naturalist.
This isn't at all fluffy; sometimes nature “is red in tooth and claw”
All in all a very satisfying little book.

I started this book 45 years ago and just finished it now!
I got myself this magnificent edition of all the novels, with a few short stories and the author's comments , to finally catch up from where I left off in Mrs. Cooper's primary school class.
At 10 I was avidly reading anything that looked interesting in the little book stand in the corner of the classroom. “ The Wizard of Earthsea” blew my mind, but although in later years I re-read it I never read the others.
Funnily enough I'm glad I waited, because I can see now how the experience and wisdom of Ursula K. Le guin developed over a lifetime as she carried on writing of the world I loved so much.
I can see also how my taste in books and even my world-view was informed by that one book and how my philosophy and politics have evolved in parallel with the following books.
Thank-you Ursula.

I was glad to win a copy of this book even though when I applied I didn't realise it was for kids or young adults.
Although I'm a long way from being a young adult the book immediately appealed to me. An overview of world history that avoids an overly Euro-centric view and yet doesn't become too PC. Illustrated with watercolour paintings that avoid most of the stereotypes too, I wondered whether it would attract the ipod generation. I needn't have worried. My 12 year old son and 16 year old daughter both asked to read it after I was finished.

Multiple points of view and stories of monsters, angels and historical characters circle around a forest in Africa that might be Eden. It doesn't quite pull together it's huge ambitions but there again it's only the first part of trilogy so maybe it will.

This makes a very hard history easy to read. Thomas King's wonderful black humour doesn't whitewash any of the tragedies but adds poignancy to the absurd errors and deliberate evil of colonialism in North America.

This is a re-reading but the first time with this particular edition. The Royal Shakespeare Company Modern Library edition is just beautifully clear. When I picked this up I just had to buy it and now intend to get hold of them all.
It's the combination of modern font, clear, unfussy layout and the obvious accessibility of the notes on the page that make it so much easier to understand and enjoy.
The scholarship brings out all the earthy, bawdy double meanings and brings old Shakespeare to life.

I'd read anything by Bill Bryson, he makes me laugh without fail. Even if he wrote out his shopping list I'm sure he'd make it funny, unfortunately this is more or less what he falls back on a bit too often.
The unique circumstances of a fifties american childhood are captured with an alien anthropologist's eye but the lists of products or TV shows I could have done without.

I was full of trepidation at the heaviness of the subject here, but in the end I am very glad I read it. He investigates depression from every angle including the view from his own break-ups, and talks to all sorts of people in many walks of life and parts of the world.