Sara Martin

So embarrassed to be giving TS Eliot 3 stars, but now that I've read it, I probably won't do a re-read. I liked Prufrock more than The Wasteland. I could spend days reading the commentaries and then the literary allusions from the poems. I felt Prufrock was delightful and read it several times. I felt I read The Wasteland multiple times (with commentary) because it was imperative to a decent poetic education. It seemed like a lot of World War I angst and soldiers returning with PTSD - a sad poem, really. I read this small book which I've owned for years because my sister decided to read his poems so we might have a discussion about it.

Very easy to understand linguistics book. I loved the author's writing style. This is current enough that I understand the author's pop culture references (2007). Recommended for anyone who is curious about linguistics. This book follows pretty much the same outline as Linguistics for Dummies, including similar examples.

The Year of the Comet tells the story of a Russian boy growing up in the 80s and 90s in Moscow. Most of the story is internal - all of the deep thoughts and reactions/actions of a young boy trying to make his way in the world and understand what is in the silences, those spaces outside of the daily narrative that no one speaks about.

Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil. Members of the family mourned but never spoken of. The missing grandfathers. The empty brown book. The GSE (Great Soviet Encyclopedia) that is missing volumes.

I became aware of how much the people of the USSR suffered during and after WWII. Also interesting was the idea that the world began in earnest after the Civil War, 1917. As for the boy, his childhood didn't seem that bad; he ran free with his friends in the summer, exploring the fields, ponds, and forests that surrounded the dacha, having adventures.

The values of his family - hard work, frugality, sharing with others - are intertwined with his need to know who he is and will be as a person.

At times, the story was long and I grew restless with the constant introspection, but I did enjoy the book.

Where to go, what to say? I had never heard of this until this Christmas when I looked for a Christmas book. And what a book!

Everything goes wrong - Jimmy is fired, his girl leaves him, he gets robbed, and P.S. his cat dies.

At least he ties up the burglar. And then things get REALLY strange!

I liked the feel of 1972, the anti-establishment attitude. I got a little tired of the give and take and talk between the burglar and Jimmy at times, but I kept reading.

It ended as it should. I didn't love it, but I liked it. Happy New Year!!

This is the story of a young woman with a mental illness, inherited from her mother. The story progresses as a straightforward story at times, then meanders back to the past or maybe to the future, maybe memories or truths or alternate realities. I knew not to expect normal but I didn't quite expect this.

This story definitely got me thinking, but I'm still unsure how to put the threads together and I think that was the plan.

I am not familiar with the Nutcracker story and have never seen the ballet. It was all too silly and fanciful for me. I had to google the story after reading this book.

I didn't particularly care for this book that tells the story of Drosselmeier and how he came to carve the nutcracker. The story starts from when he was little and living in the forest. I did not quite understand that. There is magic and mystery in his young life but that disappears, too, like childhood I suppose, but I missed it in the story.

I did like Drosselmeier's life story better than the story of Klara and her fanciful imagination, though. Seeing him go from boy to man was good, but I kept expecting more from this story. So many plot threads seemed to just end.

I really disliked this book. I do not understand British Cryptics, they completely mystify me. This book was all over the place and I seldom understood what the author was talking about. It was all clever word play, I'm sure. Over my head. I will pass this on to my mom who can actually finish the New York Times crossword in one sitting and go back to studying linguistics.

Short rewrite of The Little Matchgirl without the depth of sadness and bleakness present in the original. I was always moved as a child by this tale, but this version did not elicit a strong response in me.

I was definitely interested in an archeological mystery so I picked up The Xibalba Murders. Unfortunately, it wasn't exciting or engrossing. Perhaps the series gets better.

Lara, the archaeologist, takes it upon herself to investigate her friend's death in Mexico, apparently over a precious Maya artifact.

I can appreciate the names of the chapters being the names of the days in Mayan and there being a bit of a mystical twist with her dreams of the Lords of Xibalba, but it wasn't enough to make this a really good, interesting story. Perhaps if it had been longer, allowing for more depth of character and plot development, I wouldn't have cringed every time she snuck out of the hotel or broke into the museum like a little kid.

I may or may not read another in this series.

This book is both horror and fantasy about a monster in a man's body and a sorcerer that he meets. The town is Elendhaven, a place full of death and decay where the sea is black and the snow falls 10 1/2 months a year.

The story is as dark as the setting, the characters as slimy as the rain that falls on streets perpetually slick. The sorcerer, a man from old money long gone, passes his days dreaming of revenge when one day he meets - the Monster.

The book is short and the pages turned quickly on a need to know desire. Critics called this book Gothic and Violent. Combine that with a bit (or a lot of) Gore and you touch the surface of the novel. Admittedly, I was a bit confused at the end. I was not entirely sure what happened but I still enjoyed it.

I had no idea what reading this book would be like. Three siblings in Syria in 2015 are trying to get their father's corpse from Damascus to Anabiya to bury him and the difficulty of a journey in war-torn Syria becomes almost impossible.

The civil war permeates this book, along with the memories of each member of the family of their lives before and during the war. The siblings are not close. During the spells on the road where travel is not so difficult (although the stench of the putrifying body in the minivan never goes away), the author takes time to go back to the past and reminisce about the lives led by members of this family.

I saw the horrors of this war and the emptiness in people's souls, the uselessness of living, and the inevitability of dying. In the interim, the siblings seek to find some sort of comfort zone, if only to escape for a time the ugliness of the world.

This book was amazingly good! I had never given much thought to Magellan circumnavigating the globe before but this book promised to be a gripping page turner according to the reviews. It was just that.

For a nonfiction book, this flowed well and kept up a good pace. I learned and relearned about the Age of Discovery and about life on a ship in the 16th century. It wasn't pleasant. It seemed if the storms didn't get you, the scurvy would.

Everything is presented here: the good, the bad, and the ugly. The self-righteousness of people claiming other people's countries with the idea it was their due is the sad, unsettling, and very real undertone of this book. These men discover new lands, new wildlife, new cultures. They also burn down villages, kill native peoples, baptize them in the name of Christianity, and trade trinkets for treasure. They often consider mutiny against their Captain General but are usually punished according to the ways of the Spanish Inquisition. Read: Torture.

Knowing next to nothing about this journey, it was definitely a page turner for me. I had no idea what happened when they got to the Phillippines, for instance. I appreciate the work the author did in his research and also the epilogue he added. I love epilogues as I like that sense of closure.

Now I want more! There's no end of exploration novels, I expect. This was certainly a good one.

I didn't really understand this book. I had never heard of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, but I know the song I Put A Spell On You. This book promised to be a fictionalized account of his life, filled with myth and truth.

So what's really true? What's fact?

I didn't care for the writing style. I never got to know Jay, really. He isn't portrayed in a sympathetic or flattering way. The narrative was disconnected. I like odd books but this one sure fell flat.

No spell on me, here.

I feel almost guilty giving this melancholy book with some beautiful phrasing only two stars. The narrator, name unknown (I think) is an odd woman, apparently affected somehow from falling into an icy river in Berlin, and the book shuffles between realities - the present and the past.

This format - the nonlinear narrative - was somewhat confusing but I enjoy a literary challenge at times. The issue was that the three main characters (the narrator, the girlfriend, the boyfriend) are not likeable people. I can forgive the boyfriend for being rude because he was relatively “normal”, but the girlfriend? She wasn't appealing to me. Too smart? Too sickly? Who talks like that? And the narrator! She came across as pretentious, precocious, and depressed.

There is some beautiful language in here, sometimes evoking a dreamscape, but ultimately it was very unsatisfying to feel judged by a narrator who thinks she is better than me.

FYI: This story of a Korean woman going to school in Germany was written in Korean originally.

A teenager, alone with her mother dead and her father in South America (how convenient), inherits an old house from an aunt she has never heard of (of course) and surprise! it's haunted!

Perhaps that describes a typical plot, but I love books about old houses filled with ghosts. Gretchen's entire family seems to be into photography - both of the living and the dead and much study goes into a major catastrophe that happened in the 1870s. This horrible occurrence needs a resolution or people will die and photos are an important clue in figuring out how to end the “accidents”.

That being said, this book had big social and racial issues to discuss. I had never read a ghost story that went this direction before. It was good in that these are important historical and current issues to discuss but bad in that it seemed a little forced.

I felt like the author had an agenda and wove the story around it. It wasn't terribly scary and it wrapped up quickly and crazily at the end. I liked the pacing and the characters at the beginning but by the end, stuff just happened so fast I couldn't keep up. The ghosts seemed too real, too.

So, it was okay for me but a little disappointing.

What I thought was going to be a modern day take on an old school hard-boiled detective novel turned into a philosophical diatribe about life and death. What?

I never could ride the vibe of the storytelling, but I tried. Could have been because he was a tax accountant/detective and that just wasn't working for me. Okay, I admit, I never really understood what was going on so I have no idea of any of the why's.

And the end. That was a weird letdown.

This book was immensely enjoyable. This is the story of two girls and their friendship and their family spanning the course of many years. Their life is not without hardship, especially Gretel's life. This story is told without being maudlin and has flashes of magical realism. Life is not all roses for Gretel and Jill but I was drawn into their story, always rooting for Gretel but realizing that no one's life is perfect and you need to make what you can with what you are dealt. I will try to read more of Alice Hoffman's books.

Offshore, set in 1961 London, is a story about people living on houseboats on the Thames. They are an odd lot, all of them there for different reasons. The tide comes in, the tide goes out, lives are lived, aspirations rise, hopes fall. What can really be changed by altering where you experience life?

It is not an action packed book, but rather the story of a few lives during the course of a few months in the early sixties.

Wow, total trash. Found this free at the Kwik Mart. I knew it was going to be a trashy pulp paperback from the 60s so I read it just for fun. It was so bad. Supposed to be a take off on James Bond but they didn't even credit an author for this book so there it goes. Totally sexist - the women are bimbos who are either dumped or killed after Nick Carter has his way with them. Ugg.

Some catchy sentences from this book:

“A stingy little mouth, a pale and anus-like mouth.” Gee, thanks for that.

“She clung to him like a delectable soft fleshed leech.” Now THAT'S romantic!”

Well, I've read it and I'm amazed these even sold. What WAS the world like back in 1965?

That was a fun, fast-paced book. Nothing too deep, lots of action, some evil villains, and some heroes. All unbelievable, but a good escape.

A story about being a woman in Mexico and what that means. A story about the old ways, the men, their needs, sex, cultural expectations, of finding oneself in spite of and because of this.

Magda has seen poverty and riches and had learned and loved and lost. So much she wants her daughter to know, to experience, to really understand.

I enjoyed the feel of it, but at times it seemed to drag. I was anxious for more action. Some of the years of Magda's life were narrated in one sentence, others had chapters devoted to them. I would have liked the focus to be somewhat different to illuminate some parts of her life that I feel are still in the dark.

I learned, though. Much to think about.

A fun fantasy horror book that reads like a hardboiled detective novel. John Taylor is a finder and he finds things and he finds people. He's from the Nightside, a bizarre alternate reality that exists somewhere in London, full of neon and sex and drugs and demons and aliens and talking horses. You get the picture. A dangerous place.

Fast paced and fun but definitely on the dark side. And I didn't see THAT ending coming!

Ugh, glad this only took 2 days for me to read.

Billed as a funny chick-lit type of story about a woman with a philandering husband, a rock star therapist, and a job with an avant-garde theater group, I thought it would be fun. At least quirky and weird.

I was terribly disappointed.

I wanted a strong woman who was going to shake off her insecurities and go out there and find meaning in her life. I wanted to chuckle a bit, too.

Instead, no one in this book is likable. The main character, Babette, is moderately likable but she doesn't seem to like herself. And what's with that sister of hers?

I think we came full circle here by the end of the book. Glad this is not my life. Maybe I was supposed to relate to this somehow or find some sympathy for these New Yorkers, but no. I didn't.

Crab and his 14 year old boy take a trip across America. Crab's been in jail, his boy, Jimmy, doesn't know him, he's been in New York, living with Mama Jean. A little late for bonding, and as the story progresses, we learn a little about Crab's life and Jimmy's struggle to take this all in.

Crab's sick, real sick, and he gets money any way he can. Jimmy helps, Jimmy's confused, It's real, all the way from Chicago to the conjure man in Arkansas.

A haunted house tale that's more of a haunted neighborhood tale, this book has its share of unconventional ghosts.

Katherine leaves her boyfriend Larry and moves into an old house set in the woods. She's an artist; she paints and apparently has enough money to live on. This is not the first novel with that type of scenario. (Wish I could do that!)

From there, the book fills up with unlikable characters, both living and dead. I had a hard time getting inside Katherine's head. She's easily manipulated and not very strong and totally surrounded by manipulative men. However, in the end, I found I never liked her, either.

As for the horror aspect, its not terribly scary and not easily resolved at the end. That's fine as far as horror goes, but I do have unanswered questions.