Kalliope
There's no denying that this is a powerful, inspiring story. Somaly Mam is an incredible person. It seems harsh to criticize the life story of a woman with no connection to her biological family who was sold into prostitution as a child, still haunted by torment and shame. As the story of someone's tragic childhood and adolescence, there should be no judgment. However, the book is clearly written by someone who is not a native English speaker, and I tend to connect more deeply with more fluent and capable writing.
Hard to explain why I didn't love this. The writing was very good, exactly what you'd want in a fantasy tale. It was descriptive, whimsical, very “once upon a time.” However, I couldn't quite connect to any of the characters. I found them flat for the most part. To better illustrate my point, if there was a string of dialogue with no identifiers (X said, Y said), I wouldn't be able to tell who was talking. The plot also slogged a bit. I think it's worth reading for the writing style, but there is better fantasy plot and character to be found elsewhere.
Obviously I'm not a teenager. However, I like to read anything I can about the Goddess and deity mythology from around the world. Luckily for me, this was not my first book about such topics. If it had been, it might have skewed my perspective for future reading. I think this is what many readers would refer to as a “fluffy bunny” book. That is, the book oversimplifies Pagan concepts and misrepresents them for presumably young readers. I enjoyed the mythology aspects of the book, as well as the strategies for incorporating these goddesses into one's practice. But the author tended to talk down to her audience. She also offers ridiculous spells: one for getting boys to kiss you, one for increasing your beauty, and even one called “How to Make Problems Magically Disappear.” Really? That's not what magick is! For young people who presumably have little grasp of magick, this isn't the kind of information they need at the surface level. There is some good advice in here for issues young girls deal with (self-esteem, body image, friendship). Why not just make a book about how to deal with these issues, rather than making the readers think they can magick away these issues instead of facing them?
The four agreements themselves are definitely worth applying to one's everyday life. They are the real reason for reading this book. However, I feel that the author makes his examples of the four agreements applied in real life somewhat oversimplified. His writing style is also a little stilted and rigid (even a little woo-woo, and I am not new to books of that nature).
Holy cow. I SO enjoyed this! The time I spent with this book, studying and transcribing, has allowed me to grow spiritually and connect with energies both within and without. Prior to reading this book, my knowledge of Pagan faiths was minimal, and I knew only bits and pieces picked up from friends and Internet sources. This is the first strictly Paganism-centered book I've read, and I couldn't have found a better place to start. It gave me basic 101 information, such as the different sects under the Paganism umbrella. It taught me about the Wheel of the Year, and the different traits that make up Deities. It gave comparisons of Pagan ideals to those of Western religions, which were incredibly eye-opening for me. This book and its information/advice has connected with me deeply, giving me new insight about my ethics and spirituality, and has inspired me to further research the old ways. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the Pagan path!
Oof. What an irritating, uninspired book.
Three words about the writing: death by metaphor. More than once I would look up and go “...what are you trying to say with that metaphor.” Some of the metaphors flat-out made no sense to me.
The characters were nauseatingly whimsical at times and way too mature to be believable. They seem to suffer from John Green-itis, meaning they read books that teenagers don't read (the main character Lennie mentions Wuthering Heights ad nauseum), and they speak like people twice their age. It was hard to connect to any of them, except Bailey (EXCEPT SHE'S DEAD SO SHE ISN'T IN THE NOVEL VERY MUCH). I was pretty much choking on the irritating whimsy of each character. It's easier to connect to characters that use dialogue that one could expect to hear in the real world. Not so with this book.
I also found the book needlessly melodramatic. I assumed that the plot would rely mainly on the grief process experienced by the main character and her loved ones. But nope. Love triangle. IT'S A LOVE TRIANGLE BOOK. She is wooed almost immediately by her dead sister's boyfriend Toby (nice...) and is simultaneously wooed by the new French guy at school. So her grief and frenzied feelings about her sister's sudden death get put on the back burner in favor of this uninteresting cliche. We already have a plethora of books to choose from that feature love triangles, and they do it a lot better than this one. Why not let this be a book about grief and growing up?
Overall I was disappointed with The Sky Is Everywhere. I would recommend it to those who enjoy John Green's work, which generally does not work for me.
This is a sweet, colorful, and genuine introduction for children to the concept of magic, as Pagans understand it. However, this is for very young children. I found myself wishing there was more to this book, but I'm a grown-up and I tend to read much longer books. It's very, very basic, but I loved the simplicity of the language. The illustrations were pretty, too. I'd be interested in reading the other two books in this series!
Odd circumstances as to why I'm putting this book down 1/3 finished. I think this is a good book that is worth reading, but I can't make myself finish it. It's probably one of the slowest books I've ever read. Really good writing, good characters, nicely-developed environment. Really nothing bad to say about it, except that it is a very, very slow story. I may come back to this one day, but for now, there are other books I want to get to.
Uh...did I read the same book as everyone else? This has pretty stellar reviews on Goodreads, which made me really excited to open it. This was probably one of the books I was most looking forward to reading this year. It's a dystopian YA that features a world where black people (Crosses) are the ones in power, while white people (noughts) are heavily discriminated against and treated like dirt. We follow a Cross named Sephy and a nought named Callum who struggle with their relationship as the prejudice and violence mounts against noughts.
The biggest fault I had with this book was the writing. I REALLY didn't care for it. The plot really takes its twists and turns, yet reading these portions felt like more of a “recap” of the events rather than a detailed account of the events. The writing was often very bloodless and relied quite a bit on dialogue, which didn't help me connect to the world of the book much. The writing just generally felt very childish and way too simplistic for the subject matter. There was awkward humor interspersed in would-be serious moments.
I noticed that a lot of reviewers chalked the writing up to the fact that it's for teenagers, not adults. Anyone who has read even one YA book knows that it doesn't have to be dumbed down for children to understand. Noughts and Crosses dealt with some very important issues, like racism and what it's like to be a minority, but the writing was so awkward, rushed, and immature that it overshadowed any serious discussion or character development. I will not be continuing the series.
3.5
Having just finished the book, I can say that I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It initially reminded me a lot of Ella Enchanted, yet the further into the story I got, I found that it truly stands on its own as an original tale. My favorite components are the characters, who are all vivid and lifelike, and the plot twists, most of which I did not see coming and found quite gripping. At times the story did drag a bit and I found myself losing interest, but on the whole I enjoyed The Goose Girl as a charming young adult fantasy.
I'm pretty shocked at how much this book bothered me, considering how much I was entertained by the first one. Obviously I have to pull out a Hunger Games comparison. The second volume in that series is by far the best: incredibly action-packed from page one. Insurgent was action-packed in only a couple places, and then it completely plateaued again. Most of the book, in fact, was at a plateau. While Divergent was go-go-go all the time, Insurgent was pretty much dead on arrival. It relied a lot on dialogue and it also (misguidedly) trusted that the reader would recall countless four-letter-name characters from the first book, who pop in and out of the story randomly and add largely nothing. More than once I had to look up who characters were, because in the first book they honestly weren't interesting or important enough to bring back.
There were some fun scenes, but it seemed they were over immediately and suddenly the reader is back with the group of people we don't really know and pages of boring dialogue. Tris didn't grow any more interesting this time around, and while there was opportunity for Tobias' character to develop, it often took a backseat to Tris' mostly illogical inner diatribes. For someone who is part Erudite, she's a bit of a dunderhead. She really is Divergent in that she is erratic and violent one minute, and contemplative and mouse-like the next. Tobias was the same way. It was hard for me to follow these characters because it was like a switch was flipped in between the first and second book. Tris' switch had the label “BE TOTALLY USELESS AND CLUELESS” and Tobias' was “BE VIOLENT AND SHOUTY FOR NO REASON.”
Probably won't pick up Allegiant.
Pretty much what I expected, given the first two. I liked this one more than the first two, however (I think it's mainly because Aspen was hardly in it). Was entertained by a couple plot twists, but that's basically it. Still the same maddening protagonist that we love to hate.
No, I will not be reading the fourth one. There shouldn't be a fourth one at all, in my opinion.
Didn't finish. I didn't make it very far, simply because I have other books I want to read with more promise than this one. The only exciting thing about the book was the setting, which is very mysterious and enticing. The characters were all one-dimensional and the story didn't focus on one thing long enough to develop it interestingly. A story about dueling magicians in a mysterious circus has no excuse to be so boring. It's taken me a long time to pick up this book, which I've owned for over two years, and now I know why.
A Good Man Is Hard To Find: 5 stars
The River: 3.5 stars
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: 5 stars
A Stroke Of Good Fortune: 3 stars
A Temple Of The Holy Ghost: 2 stars
The Artificial Nigger: 3 stars
A Circle In The Fire: 4 stars
A Late Encounter With The Enemy: 3.5 stars
Good Country People: 4.5 stars
The Displaced Person: 4 stars
