Joshua Tree
This isn't so much a book as a series of really long guest lectures from a university professor. I half expected Power Point slides with the audio book.
For a book, the writing style is unprofessional with a snarky attitude. He half sounds like Barney Stinson, quite often using the constructions and wait of it..., or using the same descriptions over and over, such as blew away like autumn leaves.
The author's reading of his own book only added to the lecture feeling. He had a hard time not laughing at his own “witty” remarks and apologizing for plugging his other books.
Despite the fact that I have no training and very little knowledge of linguistics or etymology, I found myself less sympathetic to his view of the history, because of his style of writing and reading.
I really enjoyed all three of the books in the Night Angel Trilogy. Even though it was an “epic” story saving the entire world from catastrophe, the characters are not run-of-the-mill, but deep, and interesting, and so too is the story itself.
The only real negatives for me were the superficial similarities to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. None of it was the same, but some of the points were similar enough to pull me out of it every time I came across them, it pulled me out of the story because I recognized them.
The first of these are the Lae???knaught???an army without a country that dislikes magic; similar to the White Cloaks from The Wheel of Time. The second is the Chantry and the maja are, on the surface, similar to the White Tower and the Aes Sedai. In both cases, the differences are more important to the story and define it as something different, but unfortunately the similarities were enough to bring me out of the story, if just for a moment. This may be because of my mixed feelings about The Wheel of Time books.
All in all, I???m glad I finally got around to reading them. I???ve had the series in paperback in my collection for a few years???I was drawn in by the covers, but never had the time to read them, even if it meant spending my Audible credits on them.
I look forward to reading more by Brent Weeks.
Pretty good read. Not light hearted and funny obviously, but it caught and held my attention. Not sure how it would have been to actually read it (I had the audio version from Audible), but listening to it in 30 to 45 min segments too and from work was good. I really liked the weaving of actual cancer patient stories into the narrative of the history. The most interesting part, for me, was the relationship between cancer treatment and treatment of HIV/AIDS in 1980's and how that fed back into the cancer treatments in the 1990's.
It was a fun read overall. I was a little dubious about reading a John Green novel assuming that he was at least partially overhyped due to his YouTube followers, but the idea of running into your ???name doppelganger??? trumped my hesitation. I was surprised at how much I liked it; the characters were believable and the plot was interesting.
I enjoyed the book. I waffle between 3 & 4 stars. I try to rate based on the context of the work; not evaluating it in a vacuume. As I've disclosed before, I'm probably not in the target demographic for this book (high school age), so thinking back to how I was back then (despite the huge changes to everything since those days ;) it would have been close to spot-on.
The ending was one of the best and worst parts for me. I liked and understand why it ended that way, but I'm also enough of a romantic to want a "and they lived happily every after" ending too.
It is a fairly interesting story of falling in love for the first time. The story starts out by Jordan (the author) coming out via a poem in his Senior English class, but judging by his description of himself, everyone probably already knew or guessed , and he ends up finding love and friendships via a mistaken identity on the internet. Had I only judged this book on the story alone, I probably would have given it 2.5-3 stars. Unfortunately, this book suffers from a lack of a proof reader and a strong editor. It contains numerous layout, spelling, grammar and fact errors, which I find especially disappointing considering the price from Amazon for my Kindle version compared to other better quality writing from independent authors. In the end I didn???t care enough about the author or his friends through most of the story to give it a higher rating.
The story itself was pretty good. However, what really bothered me was the constant speaking directly to the reader and explaining something about the people from Maine, or his dog. For example, the following is typical, and it always pulled me out of it.
???Plan on staying for supper,??? I said. ???Unless, of course, you have other plans.??? In Maine we still use the term supper for the evening meal.
Stanley, Stephen E. (2009). A Midcoast Murder (Kindle Locations 1084-1085). Stonefield Publishing Co. Kindle Edition.
It was pretty good-very movie like in its presentation. It is somewhat riding the coat tails of Dan Brown's [b:The Da Vinci Code 968 The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2) Dan Brown http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1303252999s/968.jpg 2982101] but written better, and it's enough of its own story. One thing I will say about the Kindle version of this book: the publisher did a bad job–whole streches of the book are improperly formatted like a block quote instead of normal text making the paragraphs hard to distinguish, and as a result conversations not as easy to follow.
This is a great character driven story with characters you can identify with immediately and that you want to learn more about. They inspire empathy and are engaging so that I spent a couple nights with very little sleep because I didn???t want to put my Kindle down. I can???t wait for the next book from this Author .
This book is targeted squarely at the junior high/high school audience. In a spirit of full disclosure and since one of the themes of this story is to be honest and up front, I must confess that I am not in that group and have not been for many years. I picked it up because it had ???Iowa??? (my home) in the title, and it sounded like it could be a fun story to read.I started reading it as the free sample from Amazon on my Kindle and almost didn???t buy it. The main character???s ego, attitude and manner (not to mention his attitude* toward my home) had me on the brink of hating him. However, that is exactly how kids that age can be: the pendulum swings from completely self-absorbed to something approaching maturity and then back again. Also, I found the description of Iowans as flannel wearing hicks especially annoying. But I soldiered on and bought the book. The character became more likeable and much more mature as the story progressed.The overall story was pretty good and kept me engaged???I wanted to know what happened next, especially in the latter parts of it. In the end, it embraces the ???teen??? too much (it even feels as if part of this could have come nearly verbatim from someone???s high school diary). There few similar books I???ve read recently that I think have an appeal beyond the demographic of their main characters: [b:Something Like Summer 10682947 Something Like Summer Jay Bell http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1302546853s/10682947.jpg 15086656] and [b:The Cranberry Hush: A Novel 10768069 The Cranberry Hush A Novel Ben Monopoli http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51R05YZHWbL.SL75.jpg 15679574].*Coming in to my home and pointing out the short comings that I already know about is not an endearing trait.
First off, the “edition” I have lists on one of the the inside title page that it contains 6 new stories (from his other books), which are not mentioned on the actual cover.
I really liked the “SantaLand Diaries” (the first part), but I did not like the “Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!” story at all; it was way too dark and twisted. The rest of the original 6 were pretty good. The 6 from the other books were all pretty good and they had a note of familiarity about them, which when reading I chalked up to having heard them as segments on NPR, but when I looked at the copyright page, is when I realized why they looked familiar–I had read them before in his other books.
I really enjoyed this book. The story was fun and exciting to read. I didn't want to put it down at night, despite how tired I was. The author's other book ([b:Something Like Summer 10213367 Something Like Summer Jay Bell http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1294956195s/10213367.jpg 15086656]) is just as good and even thought it is not fantasy, it is still worth checking out, too. I am really looking forward to his next book, whenever that might be.
