Mer Barr
Another fun read from the author and this particular series. We're getting to know the gang that's gathered around Fred since the first book and we see them working together as a team.
This is a set of short stories that chain together nicely to create a solid book. This structure made me realize what I hate about short stories is that they rarely provide depth to a character or closure to a storyline. Each short story here, brings a particular challenge to a close and each successive short story, picks up shortly after the previous ends, nicely cutting out the uneventful "recovery" periods and taking you right in to the next challenge.
There are also a lot of concepts and characters to interest a mind grown cynical on too many stories with the same plot just a renaming of characters or a slight spin on the storyline.
The author does a great job of rotating through three different topics
- Share details on the daily duties of wilderness fire fighting across the western US
- Provide historical and cultural context to the particular area she's working in at the time
- shares the physical and mental challenges she struggled with during this time; trauma from her childhood as well as being the only female in a testosterone-heavy, hostile-to-females, environment.
I applaud the author for taking the risk to bare their soul to the public eye.
While listening to this book, I kept wishing I'd read this BEFORE my trip to Morocco. Many of the cities and towns she describes are places we toured or stopped in! I've always found I appreciate a place more, when I have a bit of history and cultural context.
Ms. Warton writes about her journey just after World War I which is new enough to my time to probably recognize some of the places she describes. She had unique access to the rulers and their families, saw people and their environments at all levels of quality of life; lavish to squalid. She also had access to mosques which are today forbidden to non-Muslims.
There are alot of books out there about the 1940s-80s and the US's missions to the moon. This one focuses on John F. Kennedy from his youth to his death (and a bit beyond) and his interactions with:
- space exploration,
- the "Space Race" with the USSR,
- the "Cold War" with the USSR,
- the astronauts,
- the technology involved, and
- the people who pioneered alot of the technology like Werner von Braun.
Well written and organized, stays on target with only short side trips to provide background on important characters like Lyndon B. Johnson and Werner von Braun.
Not too technical so a great first book for someone just starting out on these topics and time period.
This book helped me figure out why I don't like short stories. It's because each story is only a snapshot of a bigger story not completed. I prefer a fully fleshed out story with deep characters.
I will say this book has some stories unlike most of the author's books that I have read and enjoyed, so I found theses intriguing. And there were some that were they fleshed out would be of the same dreamy quality of her novels. But I really dislike stories that stop mid-story so I didn't complete this book.
I can't put my finger on it but there's something about the author's choice of words that I absolutely enjoy! Every one of the books that I've read give me a sense of dreaming that I'm reading. And her storylines are always of personal experiences of the characters.
It's sad that her books are so rarely accessible in libraries and when they are available they're usually in physical formats only.
A unique topic, which is incredibly rare these days! So refreshing!
Unfortunately, it's a novella and could have used a bit more fleshing out on the transitions from one scene to another and a bit of a preamble rather than diving right in mid-conversation-like. But what's there is a great story that's just too short for my taste.
A good first read for the subject, however it only covers the first six months of 2020 and makes the situation sound like everything sort of ended on a high note when it came to Covid. If I remember correctly, things really kicked in later that year as the cold weather set in and people were back to being inside together for the winter and governments and institutions had to come to terms that this was not a short-term situation.
It does do a great job of putting the reader next to each of these early-graduation interns; their personal lives and their interactions at their various jobs. I hope someone is still following this year of medical and nursing students to see the longer impact positively and negatively across many areas of their life and writes a book on it for me to read.
As I'm from a different culture, I had a hard time distinguishing similarly sounding names to their respective characters and found it difficult to figure out who just had what happen to them. I did enjoy the growth of the main character and how the author addressed a grown woman in mens' clothing in a male dominated world.
I understand there's a second book after this but this isn't a series I'll pursue.
Still quality writing and storytelling by the author.
It's been four years since I read Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes so not sure if some of the references to Snow and the snake and bird on Hamich's pin in this book, are connected to anything in Ballad. I will say I find it suspicious / gratuitous that the author has loaded this new book with alot of the people associated with the District 12 group in the Hunger Games main books. They can't all come into the storyline with Hamich.
There was alot of good storyline and I was just starting to understand the new environment and main character when a new character was introduced. Then there was so much stalling of the storyline, introducing backstory (which didn't apply to anything told so far) that I dropped the book.
I see there's another book that just came out. The title is about a character I'd love to understand better and it seems to carry on from this book. Can't decide if I give it a try or call this series quits.
Intriguing (but not new) theme of symbiotic body inhabitation. The publisher is clearly using font and paragraph inset to distinguish characters in the ebook format but it's not done in a consistent manner and causes me confusion. I probably would have found another way of presenting multiple interior and exterior characters in the same scene, easier to follow. How did they handle this for audio mediums?
And I am a fan of the cold-war era spy stories, especially the dark, gritty types of Le CÃ rre, which this seems to be like. I'm just not interested at the moment.
A deceptive and slow start with a boatload of world building and "see how tough a person has it before things change." I just about dropped the reading when I realized I was only about 10% in to the 16 hours; wondering "Is the rest of that 16 this slow and no real plot? And if so, what can the author have to say? But if you hang in there the pace slowly builds, and you get an education in politics, strategy, psychology, sociology, extreme makeovers, and more.
Well written and unexpected as a class in 'ologies'. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.
I saw the movie version of this story and it progressed slower than the majority of movies I usually see. I do love a spy story and hung in there for all the gaps in the story to close. It turns out the movie plot is pretty faithful to the book's. Closer to the realistic grit of John Le Carrè than Ian Fleming's James Bond. And more modern than either.
Holy cow Batman! I thought I could handle alot of lewd and foul language but this kicked my butt. Much more than "Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Unabridged." I couldn't finish the book.
Outside of that, the plot and the viewpoint were interesting and unique; probably because I've never read Shakespeare's "King Lear."
Sort of like book 2 of Ready Player One, not because they're in the same universe but in the homage to the music and video games of the 80s.
I was not a video game player but I definitely know the majority of movie, book, and music references which makes me feel I'm a part of a community of geeks.
The storyline is constantly moving and doesn't get bogged down with too much universe builting or technology explanations, the author doesn't sidetrack on to topics not related to the storyline, and the characters have depth to them. All this makes this a book I enjoyed but there's nothing really complex or surprisingly unique or mindbending to rate more stars from me.
I should've read the synopsis closer. I was thinking the title meant across a larger and older part of history but this is specifically the period between Henry VIII's son Edward dies and the reign of Elizabeth, about several women I was not really aware of among the movers and shakers of that time. I had been hoping for pre-Roman times.
Well written, relatively easy to follow along if you know some of the names and can place these women amongst the men and women you always hear about.
I was introduced to the Longmire universe by way of the t.v. series which seems to be well into the book series somewhere. This is a great book because it fills in details of things that are hinted at or referenced in the t.v. series.
Smooth storyline, lots of interactions that aren't connected until the end so the mystery is nicely drawn out. And George Guidall is always good to listen to.
The summary says the storyline starts out dark but then shifts after awhile. The beginning is just too dark for where I am right now and there are so many people wanting to read this next, that I returned it.
What I did read was well written, especially when trying to describe the technologies involved in the world. The main character's longing for her family is described in a way that is very clear and convincing.