j wren pennington
very informative stuff, and a sense of humor to boot. it's a bit pedantic, but i perfectly understand goldacre's frustration with the general ignorance concerning science. in a buyer beware market, the buyer is required to be aware. and shamelessly stupid and dishonest people profit when they are not.
unsurprising is the info debunking kinoki foot pads, ionic foot baths, and homeopathy as a whole. was surprised though by the chapter on the placebo effect and some of the big pharma info. the writing is pretty cheeky, not award winning stuff, but entertaining and interesting with some priceless quotes sprinkled throughout.
i can think of very few people who would enjoy this book in the way that i did. it is not particularly easy to read, it is not particularly accessible; and yet the oddly esoteric subject matter is one that i am intimately familiar with. my education has a new perspective.
if you are a studier of theory (particularly anthropology, psychology, sociology, and philosophy), it may be worth your while.
this of course is a compilation of articles from individual researchers and academicians. it is good at what it does, but it is not satisfying to read. it would be awesome to use in a psych class, especially a theory class, as the articles are well written and interesting, but the disjointedness of the differing perspectives analyzing different aspects is distracting. same with the joss whedon and harry potter compilations. i will recommend them for my high school AP Psych teacher.
page turner...
this gets 4 stars not because it's so superbly written, but because it is dishy about presidents and their wives and kids. it's like a people magazine of the white house...or at least part of it is. it does have this other agenda regarding spending cuts in the secret service and how someone could easily kill the president because the system kind of sucks. the dishy part is better. stylistically, it's journalism/ethnography, so the only real gems are direct quotes from agents, and they are gems for precisely that reason.
it's a quick read that reveals that on a personal level, president's are first and foremost people and what you think of their policies and platforms may not play out exactly as you would expect on a personal level.
okay, this is actually a well written book and the story is fun and different BUT....
i can't help being a little disappointed in the author for not putting together a “first-in-a-series” that does something more than just being the first in the series. 390 pages of exposition. there is some action, but there is no resolution. this, to me, is totally cheating.
that said, it is pretty good.
this really depends on what you want from the story. if you go into it wanting a really interesting plot, told from an objective point of view with little sentimentality, you'll really like this.
it has been pointed out that the characters are somewhat bland and the love story is boring and pointless. and that is true, but i find most love stories to be boring and pointless so it doesn't seem like a problem to me. and the blandness of the characters is offset by the richness of the language and descriptions of the city.
the author is telling you a scary story, and he manages to do so without tripping over his characters or getting bogged down in anything other than the point.
i can tell you right now...she had me until they pulled out the ouija board.
i mean really.
BUT....it is quite a novel spin on the old ouija board story. i won't go into it because it would ruin the book, but i will say that it's totally worth reading. i stayed up late on halloween night to finish. perfect.
not great....had a lot of potential at the beginning, but the story kind of wonders around the protagonist and seems to have too much to say without ever really making a statement about anything.
also, i wanted the zombies to just kill her already.
like the majority of horror stories, let me in is a discussion of what makes a monster. is an alcoholic dad more terrifying than the vampire next door? the juxtaposition of good and evil is played out in almost every character interaction and none of the characters are all good or all evil. There are big evil things like rape, and then there are small evil things like not sharing your deceased parents stamp collection with your sibling. For this, this story has a certain realism.
BUT:
be warned!!....there is a great deal more violence in this book than there was in the movie. and i'm not talking about just blood and guts. there is a whole lot of emotional violence, and an equal amount of sexual violence. the inner monologues of lindqvist's significantly better developed characters stomps right over the line that divides unsettling and downright disturbing. Having said that, I will also say that little if any of said violence is gratuitous, it makes sense in the context provided.
it's a good read if you like that kind of thing.
solid YA book. the writing is good, especially for a high level 8-9th grade, mid level 10th, and just for fun 11th and up.
the story is what we are used to at this point in YA: kid with a boring life discovers something magical about himself and that monsters really exist and it's up to him to save the world. the details are fairly inventive and original. or at least i can't think of a direct corollary at the moment, but what sets this book apart from others are the photos.
apparently there are people who sort through mountains of old photographs at flea markets and the like culling the truly exceptional images. ransom riggs knows some of these people and uses these photos throughout the book. they are truly a neat addition. though pictures and images are becoming more common in non-picture book fiction (foer's extremely close and incredibly loud for instance), this seems to me to be a fairly unique use.
anywho, if you like YA it's worth a peek.
Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is a slow burner in every way. The narrative is almost that of a memoir, and a very British one in that the action is slow, calculated and utterly repressed. In some ways it is very frustrating because he creates a science fiction story that is almost secondary to the childhood dramas of the three main characters. I often found myself wanting to skip the detail rich descriptions from their childhoods to get to the more compelling tid bits (which he spells tit bits) that informs the why's and what's of the tale. Of course, this is intentional. It is the richness of the microcosm of these particular lives that answers the novel's concluding questions.
Though sometimes slow, it is nonetheless compelling. Once you have been introduced to the mystery, however simple it is to predict, there exists a real need put all of the pieces in place before walking away from it.
The emotional experience of reading this book is very similar to that of Atwood's Handmaid's Tale. While I can say that it is a masterful creation and definitely worth the read, it is utterly depressing, and I am left with a mild, but unmistakable sense of horror.
nothing really original, kind of the same schlocky stuff that's popular right now, just substitute angels for freemasons/templar knights/vampires and add a dash of antiquated religious verbiage and hey presto! it is like the da vinci code in that the story is simultaneously mysteriously compelling and kind of stupid, but the writing is way better. also, there will obviously be a sequel or eight, as is evidenced by the blunt, inelegant ending.
it's fun, just don't expect too much.
oaky this rare. i rarely choose really liked a book, especially when it's a youth novel. but this book is really cool. the writing is a step above what i have come to expect from a young adult novel; as i have said before, it's not book thief or borges, but it is all grammatically correct and there is a mastery there that allows some fun word play.
it's the story that really works so well here. everlost is the place between life and “wherever you are going.” you get there by being young and bumped off your path on the way to the white light at the end of the tunnel. shusterman does a smashing job of creating a whole afterlife without making any specific comments about religion or morality. he also does a great job of creating morally ambiguous characters, but you love them because of their faults and weaknesses.
i'm not going to go too far into it, but this book makes some pretty sophisticated statements about cognitive development, intentions, and emotional needs.
i was impressed and entertained.
ok, who wouldn't love an alternate reality where a premium is placed on good literature and there is a segment of law enforcement devoted to it; where the rocky “horror picture show” is actually a weekly staging of Richard the III where the actors are cast from the audience and participants yell responses on cue with props in hand; where dna sequencing and cloning allow everyone to have their very own pet dodo?
if your tastes is for good literature with some scifi proclivities on the side, this is totally worth your time.
it's a little embarrassing to admit this, but i liked it. decent story, enough random victorian fictional characters to make easter egg hunting fun. writing is solid...
i should have waited until october though...i don't feel as bad reading guilty pleasure goth horror in october.