Blue sky, green trees.
The subject was interesting, but the writing style did not grab my attention and hold it.
I think this book should be read by all school kids in addition to or in place of “The Diary of Anne Frank”.
I gave up on this book at the halfway point.
The structure of the book is really scattered. The author tries to weave his personal situations (e.g. the birth of his son) into the already complicated story of the island of Tasmania, but he makes abrupt shifts and leaves out context which make the whole book feel like a jumble.
Among the fluff and nonsense are some nice anecdotes about the island that stick in the memory. These give a narrow but interesting view of Tasmania.
Way too much use of original sources quotes. Now normally this is a great thing, but in this case the quotes use the original 1600s spelling - highly distracting. Also, this book is a bit of a bummer. Heavy on describing torture, light on describing any successes.
This book is actually a collection of newsletter columns that appeared in a local neighborhood newsletter. In their original form they were probably fantastic, consumed in small doses and offset with lots of other neighborhood information. As a book, they quickly become tedious.
The three short stories in this book are for people learning German, however they are actually fun and engaging to read. With murders, revenge, love, and money in the mix, these are certainly not the typical boring classroom stories. Every other page or so has an exercise to help you learn vocabulary or grammar; some exercises continue the plot, so you need to do them, and some are just for fun and can be skipped if you want.
This book is rated at the A1 level, according to the Gemeinsamer Europäischer Referenzrahmen (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). I have taken classes well into the B level, and while I was fine on the grammar the vocabulary really tripped me up. At first this was frustrating, but then I realized that not a lot of schoolwork focuses on crime, murder, and words relating to police investigations, so it's natural that these words would be new.
Gossip cleverly disguised as commentary upon the citizens of Savannah, Georgia. Mmm, good.
This was the book I read to wind down before bedtime most nights. Interesting without being provocative or overly stimulating, it helped settle my thoughts and was quite calming. I highly recommend it for this purpose. In addition, this book is marvelous for anyone doing research into the history of food (naturally). Meticulously cited.
All the narrator does is complain. At first is seemed likably cranky, and there were spots that made me laugh. But by page 40 the narrator's complaints that the trip was boring had become, well, boring. By page 50 I realized that they were stuck having to complete the trip but that I did not have to complete the book.
Positive note: made me realize that driving through the Outback is kind of like driving through the Great Plains - monotonously beautiful and filled with tiny crappy towns. We are now flying into the Outback...
She takes the slightest bit of circumstantial evidence and tries to turn it into fact. She presents situations initially as hypothetical, but then bases later conclusions upon the belief that these are true. When read with an unbiased mind it is clear that the author started with the presumption of guilt and built a convoluted and laughable tale to try and justify her verdict.
Looking back on it now, I had thought there would be funny little stories behind how these flowers got their common names (forget-me-not: imagine the possibilities!). Turns out most of them are just named after a botanist, a friend/family member of a botanist, or someone with whom the botanist was trying to curry favor.
This is a biography that reads like an action novel. I loved learning about an Asian pioneer woman's experiences because they are so different than the ones my European pioneer ancestors went through.
At page 80 and I'm just not interested in what's happening. There's no depth and hardly any description of people or settings; it feels like a sketch instead of an oil painting.
I liked it okay, but lost interest around the 150 page zone. Reading in German is hard work for me, so the story needs to be really gripping in order to keep me motivated; the grip of the story slowly weakened and stopped being worth the extra effort.
This is a great book to read if you want to be more informed about the Mexican side of the Mexico-U.S. immigration situation.
This book is essentially a guide for breaking into America's black upper class, and it says as much in the introduction. In this regard it is very good, but as a leisure read it is not quite as enjoyable. The main fault is the detailed listing that the author often falls into when discussing the notable people involved in the various black elite institutions. Overall, it was cool to learn about this affluent and tight-knit community.
This book is great because it reads like a conversation with your most interesting friend.
As a huge fan of Sarah Vowell's work on NPR, it was pretty much a given that I would enjoy her book. This is a witty account of her pilgramage to sites of importance to the assassination of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. The only thing that was surprising, and a little unsettling, was her injection of current politics into the narrative. Don't get me wrong, I definitely share her views, but they distracted from the flow of the story. Overall, it's a fun and interesting book.
This book focuses mainly on the calendar of that the Western world uses, and how it came into being. It does touch on various other calendars (Hebrew, Mayan, etc.) but does not explore these in depth. There is a good amount of math, which I found myself either going over several times to try and understand or skimming over in order to maintain focused on the story. Don't let this stop you though, because the book is really very interesting and quite well written.
Mary Ann is a lot harder to connect with in this book. Her actions in this book are a far cry from the Mary Ann of the first three Tales of the City stories. Still a great read if you're in the mood for a well-written San Francisco soap opera.
This is the book I wish I had written. There is a specific plot - moving from San Francisco to Hay-on-Wye - but there are a lot of tangents that are all about books books books, which to me is great great great. This is now in my top favorite books.