Judy

This book just didn't stay with me like Bohjalian's books usually do. It started out strong, but fizzled about 1/2 way through.

While he allowed each character in the story to be a narrator for a time and excelled in creating personalities that rang true, by the middle of the story, I was bored. The intricacies of the legal arguments and all the dialogue between the lawyers just didn't strike me as interesting enough to follow.

Written in my favorite style of travel writing, with personal anecdotes and unforgettable descriptions of people and places, so I enjoyed the time I spent with this book. Sometimes I found it hard to follow his train of thought and a lot of the historical references were unfamiliar to me, but I just kept reading because he writes so well.

The book has sparked my interest in the area and the history, so I count it as well worth the read.

Nice introduction to the art nouveau movement in the early 1900s as well as the art glass design pioneer Louis Tiffany. Clara was an unacknowledged key player in the design of Tiffany lamps and other art glass crafts. A side plot describes the plight of immigrants and women workers during a time when neither group had a voice or power over their working and living conditions. The highlights of the book for me were Clara Driscoll's thoughts about how nature informed her design process and how necessary the freedom of creativity was to her sense of well-being.

The extensive historical research the author completed to write such a convincing portrayal is evident, from descriptions of the various Tiffany lamps and stained-glass panels, to the setting and mood of a Lower East Side immigrant slum. If you're interested in early 1900s New York City history or the art nouveau movement, you'll find this book well worth your time.

Well-crafted mystery that relies on deep, multi-layered characters and their thoughts and actions to drive the plot, rather than a roller coaster of violent crime or chase scenes.

I felt like I was living in rural Mississippi and seeing firsthand a cycle of poverty and despair that was beyond my own experience. Depressing reminder of flawed choices and their effects, no matter what the circumstances might be.

A book meant to stay with you for long after you read it. Deeply complex characters that you meet as children and live with as they grow, a suspenseful story that at times seems so ridiculous that you can't imagine an author actually making it up, and a strong sense of reality in place and time, all combine to create a novel that makes you think about the value of friendship and if there is such a thing as destiny.

Once I got into this book, I felt swept along with the story, almost like watching a movie. While I know it's not a book for everybody, I think it's a good novel to stretch your reading comfort zone. I also found myself looking at America's involvement in the Vietnam War from a very different perspective than the one I was raised with, which makes me feel the book was well worth the time.

I happen to be one of those people who gravitate towards checklists in any shape or form, and love to create them myself. So, this book was preaching to the choir. :-)

The usefulness and applicability of checklists, even by people who think they don't need or would use checklists, is well represented through the author's experience and research. Everyone can find exceptions to the idea, but in general, I would love to see his research taken into other fields, especially education.

Read this book if you're interested in how the aviation and construction industries have capitalized on the use of checklists, the history of checklist adoption, and the idea of discipline as a professional trait.

Enjoyed this set of slightly connected stories of people living in a small Israeli village, yet didn't quite know what to make of the odd twists and dream-like narrative that popped into the stories. But, the effortless ebb and flow of the writing amazes me and I didn't really care the I didn't “get it”. He writes a character's thoughts in such a way that you feel you are inside that person's head.

I will be looking for and reading more from this author and would suggest this book to people interested in deep character-driven writing and Israeli/Jewish topics.

An all around good, satisfying read that didn't turn sappy when a bit of a love story came into the plot. I found the myself pretty interested in the details of how rice is grown and harvested, or how Australian outback stations are run, or how a town can be grown out of pretty uninspiring beginnings. I wasn't surprised to read that the author was an engineer. :-)

I wasn't aware of the WWII battles in Malaysia, and the roles Britain played there. This book's historical detail opened my eyes.

The book is definitely dated with some pretty crude attitudes toward aborigines, women and other cultures. But, I really came to like the main character and initiator of all progress in the book, a strong woman named Jean Paget.

Historical fiction that follows the imagined path of a Vermeer painting from the brush of the painter into the hands of the Nazis. The details of the settings and characters bring to life each historical era the author delves into.

At first, I was pleased to see all the examples of other people's stories for answering application and interview questions, but by the middle of the book, the emphasis on examples was just too repetitive. I was looking for more frameworks and prompts to help compose my own, and while there are some guides, there just wasn't enough for me. This book is more helpful when all you are looking for are storytelling models for sample questions, especially as a new college graduate.

I thought this book would be mainly literary analysis of Russian authors, but it is actually more of a memoir/travelogue of the author's graduate study. And it was quite entertaining! She writes with such a deadpan sense of humor about her travels and how they relate to her studies that I found myself carried along through the book and learning something about the authors and books along the way.

It's a hard book to categorize because it isn't strictly a travel memoir, nor is it a scholarly analysis of Russian literature. However, I would say that I'm more likely to read some of these Russian authors simply because I was intrigued by the little-known facts and history surrounding their writing, all developed by this author in this book.

A cozy historical novel that follows a young, just-graduated medical student to his first apprenticeship with a general practitioner in Ballybucklebo, Ireland. This is the first book in a series that follows Dr. Barry Laverty in his medical mentorship and the ways of Irish country life in the mid-1960s. I especially liked the detailed descriptions of rural doctoring and diagnosing as practiced during this era.

I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator did all the accents and pronunciations with a believable Irish voice. I think this made the book more enjoyable for me because I would have stumbled over all the unfamiliar Irish speech and spellings. I'll probably look for the rest in the series in audiobook for this reason.

Interesting portrait of six “average” people who decide to tackle the 2009 Ironman Triathalon in Arizona. Focusing on people who aren't actually athletes makes the whole idea seem do-able and I enjoyed the human interest aspect of the narrative.

Another excellent novel from this author. Enjoyed the attention to detail and foreshadowing that reeled out the plot in this trial/flashback novel. Great book to read if you are interested in childbirth and midwifery because the author's extensive research creates believable characters and story within this factual framework.

Uncommon commonsense exploration of how our interpretations of events shapes our beliefs, and ultimately our view of reality, or of THE truth of our lives. Many self-esteem problems, addictions, and mood disorders stem from these beliefs that become fears. Mr. Lefkoe describes the Decision Maker process: a systematic identification of the fears and core beliefs we have about the world, their origin, and how we mistakenly see these beliefs as THE truth about reality, not A truth with multiple explanations. He maps out how we can begin re-create our lives by becoming the creator of our reality, not just a creation of our beliefs about reality.

I read this book after listening to Morty Lefkoe's podcasts on iTunes. His Decision Maker process is a self-help program he is selling and his regular marketing spiels can get monotonous, but his information has encouraged me to take a second look at my beliefs and question the truth factor of this reality I'm living.

Try out some of his iTunes podcasts (search on Lefkoe) to see if you'd like to read a more in-depth treatment of his program.

This book was a page-turner and the extensive research on setting, real people, and time period encouraged me to seek out primary sources to check the facts. If a work of fiction does that for me, I consider it a successful book.

However, the three-star rating comes from the conclusion that fell flat and disappointed me after spending so much time with the book.

After getting hooked on the Downton Abbey series on PBS, I was motivated to search out the real story of the family, and this book is definitely a must-read for any fan of the show. Letters, diaries, newspaper stories, photos and other primary sources are all compiled to give a thorough picture of the Countess, her family and the disappearing years of Edwardian England.
My favorite aspect of the book was the description of Lady Almina's wartime efforts to create a long-term care hospital and rehabilitation center for wounded soldiers at the castle. Her methods of nursing soldiers and training nurses are instructive and relevant even today.
Even if you haven't seen the PBS series, you'll find this book an easy, enjoyable read.

Satisfying and reflective novel putting the inner thoughts of a father and husband dealing with his wife's comatose state and impending death, while trying to help his two daughters accept and battle with grief and loss. Secrets revealed about the less-than-perfect relationships bring more guilt and shame to the situation, but most of the issues are transformed into growth and acceptance.

I liked the way the author used dialogue to create authentic characters and situations. The father, Matt King, became very real to me simply through reading the thoughts he had about his wife, being a parent, dealing with his extended family, etc. I found myself smiling when Scottie, the youngest daughter, would make her awkward remarks and show herself to have so much more going on inside than what she shows to the outside world. All this done simply through Matt's thoughts and conversations with her.

I'd recommend this book to people interested in a beach read, but without lame romance plots or predictable thriller plots. I can see why the book was made into a movie because the setting and pacing of the book seems made for that format. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I want to now because I enjoyed the book.

Giving the author another chance to match or exceed her “Vampire Lestat” series, but I was left unsatisfied. I was pulled into the story pretty quick and relished the descriptive flow of action and character that Anne Rice is known for, but about 3/4 of the way through the book, I felt like I was reading a draft of something that could be much better. It felt like I was reading a draft outline of what she was planning on revealing through action and story, but she decided to tell it by having one or two characters discuss their backgrounds. Disappointing to me, but she obviously is setting the reader up for a new series with the man-wolf society.

Probably a good read for those who like paranormal stories in a more literary style, but not someone searching for one of the Lestat novels that you keep thinking about years later.

The complete title of this novel is “The Great Leader: A Faux Mystery” and I probably should have realized the FAUX really does mean false in this book's case. I kept wanting the mystery plot to take off, but the story kept unraveling as the retired detective narrator went off on tangents and rants and macho-man ruminations about his life. While I did find myself interested in some of the observations Det. Sunderson made about life, I was stunned by his absolutely crude and raunchy descriptions of his sexual thoughts and adventures. Since one of his major turn-ons was a 16 y.o. girl (reminiscent of Lisbeth Salander in the Dragon Tatoo series), the pedophilic nature of these musings were just a little too much to me.
The resolution of the mystery was pretty anti-climatic and I finished the novel wishing the author had stuck with the mystery.

Quite a engaging and witty little book, with some quotable one-liners that make you think. I also appreciated the pointers to books and authors to read that Hitchens points the reader towards. I chose to read this book in preparation for reading the much larger book of his essays[bc:Arguably: Selected Essays 10383597 Arguably Selected Essays Christopher Hitchens http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327934041s/10383597.jpg 15287191]With his recent death, I'm sure people will be revisiting his works even more.

I thought the book was going to be a crime solving type novel, but that was really just a secondary plot. Most of the story revolved around the lives of the Jewish community in Warsaw as the ghetto was being established during WWII. While that was a positive track for my interest in the book, I felt somewhat disappointed when the mystery/crime was solved almost as an afterthought near the end. The build-up to the resolution just went too smooth and didn't really “fit” the general mood of the book.

Can't believe it took me this long to get around to reading this classic novel by one of my favorite authors! It was unbelievable how Montag's thoughts about the noisy-ness of the world and life in general STILL is relevant and applies perfectly to our lives NOW. I think that is what floored me about this book. The TV wall-screens in the book that everybody is sucked into is the Internet of today!
I guess it's a downer to read this now and realize that everything the book (written in 1953) worries about for the future is happening now (or already has) or is in the process of happening.
Won't forget this book ever.

The pacing and unusual setting/time period for this story are the aspects of this story that really hooked me. Skilled use of description and dialogue created an absolutely believable world that stayed with me even when I closed the book. Hope the author continues to write more like this.

A reflective book that describes how the lives of two very different women collide and change in an upper Midwest farming community of the early 1900s. I thought it was going to a pioneering story showing brave, fearless women on the plains—but I was wrong. More of a realistic portrayal of the ways people differ in the ways they approach life and the views of the world they adopt to justify their decisions.