Phil James

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.

I loved every moment of reading this book. While I was away from it I needed to get back to it, which for me, is my definition of a supremely successful novel.

A book unlike any modern genre but also deeply rooted in the tradition of travellers that use their travel in the exterior world as a way to talk about the interior life.
To be taken at a slow walking pace. When you have plenty of time for contemplation. The audio version is read in an agreeable, deep richly rolling voice. Good before bedtime, I suppose.

I was given this to review.
I'd already read a book by Ruth Ozeki that I really liked http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/917346.All_Over_Creation
and so I had high hopes for this one. It didn't start too well though, two different voices, and neither seemed to speak to me. One a teenage girl sitting in cafe in Tokyo writing a diary and the other a japanese-american woman reading the diary she's found on the beach, on an island in British Colombia.
Her writing is simple, uncomplicated but this is deceptive and as the strands of the story weave together and the layers are built up the characters deepened and I became hooked.
She made me think of Barbara Kingsolver in her realism and Haruki Murakami in her dreamy mystical resonances.
Recommended.

Tom Sharpe wrote brilliant farces, David lodge writes campus novels, here frayn mixes them up and sets the result on a Greek Island. Very competent and readable , but light holiday matter.

I loved this book.

I loved “White Teeth” but with genius debuts you never know if the experience will be repeated. Her second “Autograph Man” I didn't really enjoy, too much abstruse Kabbalah and obscure symbolism, trying too hard.
The third “on Beauty” i enjoyed but found a bit of a slog in parts, maybe again writing too many words, too much Writing.

This one is a masterpiece.Dialogue driven, every word counts to drive the story on. Each part, as in poetry, has resonances and undercurrents, but none of it seems contrived, it looks effortless. A joy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book; perhaps the first of Chabon's that I've enjoyed unreservedly. I think it helps that I am already often preoccupied with obscure music and films. the references to Tarantino were obvious before they became explicit.
But don't worry there's very little gore here and that is in a childbirth related storyline. And unlike Tarantino films the substance wins out over the style: friendship beyond dividing lines of race, gender or blood.

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 would recommend this book to anyone who desires to inhabit a character, to really sink their mental mandibles into some good meaty writing and to almost sense the world described.It makes no difference if you're not attracted to historical fiction, this is just top level lit, and amply rewards a little patience, in getting into the style of the first book.[b:Wolf Hall 6101138 Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall, #1) Hilary Mantel http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1336576165s/6101138.jpg 6278354]

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.

I found this supremely well written, balanced between the smooth telling of a suspense (who-done-it?) and just enough grounding in science history to keep both strands readable.
He kept the human context alive with the patients he followed and he showed humility in the way he never presumed to be more than a learner even after he became a qualified specialist.
The best science books are those that kindle the feeling of awe at life and the universe. Here there is awe at the perseverance of many to find cures and even awe at the incredible wily supreme survivor, the disease itself.
The only reason I didn't give 5-stars was because there wasn't enough of the patients perspectives, but perhaps I'm being unfair, the subtitle is “a biography of Cancer” after all.

As another reviewer already said this “ticks all the boxes” but is ultimately disappointing. After Nick Harkaway's brilliant debut novel “The Goneaway World” that was edgy, creepy and seriously mind-blowing scienc-fiction I was expecting more. After reading Neil Gaiman and China Mieville's takes on the secret London conspiracy plot I did feel as if I'd read it all before, and was just looking for the climax and the end.

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.

I was lucky enough to win a copy of this book, which I would have been interested enough to seek out anyway.

It suffers slightly by comparison to another steampunk sci-fi favourite of mine, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/827.The_Diamond_Age_Or_a_Young_Lady_s_Illustrated_Primer
but it is well worth the tour of this debut writer's dark imagination.

Even though I felt it was, at first, a gothic horror version of Charlie and the Chocolate factory crossed with Angela Carter's “Nights at the circus” [leaving aside the obvious “The Tempest” and “The Wizard of Oz”:] the plot soon grows into it's own unique creature.

Populated with mechanical men, monsters and wizards this is a fantasy world that is strangely like our own in it's noise and loss of faith in “the age of miracles”

This gave me everything I could have asked for from a new Ian McEwan, a topical subject,[ global-warming:] and a totally human, messy character making a mess of his life as we make a mess of the planet.
My criticisms, if any, are very small ones.
If one thinks of a random number to put in a story the usual choice will be 23, and this happens several times.

Unfortunately the packaging doesn't convey the interesting and lively quality of the writing inside. Joan Baxter has a rhythm in her writing that goes from personal anecdote to investigative reporting to broad sweep history that never lost my interest.
Recommended to all fans of Naomi Klein and Ronald Wright, and anyone who wants to know Africa.

Stunning. I was really excited to get this book and it kept me that way right to the end. After reading her “Oryx and Crake” I was already anticipating a dystopian masterpiece but this parallel story brings the two of them into the league of modern classics.
I think anyone would benefit from reading “Oryx and Crake” first, although it's not strictly necessary, but then they wouldn't get all the resonances I did.

I was tricked into reading this, but I'm glad because why else would I have started in on this 2700 page trilogy? Years ago Neal Stephenson intrigued and thrilled me with his cyber-punk classic "Snowcrash" so that I could see where he was going with "Diamond Age" a neo-victorian culture in an incredibly futuristic world. By the time I read "Cryptonomicon" I had enough trust in him as an author to take me through a lot of reading involving multiple characters and time periods and to know it was going to come together satisfactorily.

He goes through a lot of history and technical details in these books but the main story and the excitement is sustained all the way. I can't put it any better than the inside jacket blurb from Entertainment Weekly “...he might just have created the definitive historical-sci-fi-epic-comedy-punk love story. No easy feat that.”

I'd heard how good Alice Munro is and how she's the best living short story writer but as a guy, the domestic detail themes were putting me off, a little.
If you are male and think this writer isn't for you, you'd be wrong. If you are a feeling human being you'll get something from them. She has a way of letting the stories resonate with each other, so that they move deeper feelings like really good poetry, yet on the surface there is nothing flashy, just “ordinary” lives, being lived out.
Some of the stories are connected with the same characters and some are separate, but I come away with the feeling of a unified force.

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.

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...

I'm going to give up on this one. Life's too short to listen to all this foul-mouthed egotistical babble.
I get the point, the author inhabits the caricature of himself to play with your mind and undermine the foundations of “literature” and the publishing industry, but I just got bored.

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.

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've read Sherman Alexie before, but this is going back in his writing history. It shows; the stories are more raw, which can be a good thing but also leaves plenty undone.
The pain of poverty and oppression of life on a reservation is more evident and his dry humour less so. Still, it's not one to miss.