Poppy L
I'm still reading this one, but I had a hard time putting it down. It's downright depressing in places, the way advertisers push to sell an image of cheerful housewify-ness when that's simply not reality, and the number of people who buy into it and start telling themselves it's the way things should be. A good read, but expect to gnash your teeth some!
We read this book for the October book club meeting. It was a cute book, with a lovely love story about the main characters preparing for their wedding. It's a shame about the murder.
This book should have been shelved in the romance section, and stands as an example of why some authors should not attempt to cross genres. This entire series about the Judge and the Deputy is characterized by some very cute love stories as two childhood friends fall in love, marry, and solve mysteries together. It's low on the mystery rating, though, as the love story takes precedence.
All in all, a very cute, very fluffy read.
This book was recommended to me in my Woman's Studies/Psychology class in college as a great depiction of how young girls betray each other on a constant basis. It does that. However, another of Atwood's books, [book: The Robber Bride] does better at describing the ways back-stabbing girls turn into back-stabbing women.
Our August theme for my regular book club is “Tess Garritson” - Read any book of hers and discuss at the next meeting.
This was a decent mystery. A tad bit predictable - I guessed both of the villians of the piece before they were uncovered. Garritson knows her stuff - sometimes too well. I found it difficult to get started on the book as just three pages in she gives a fairly explicit description of an autopsy. Since I never intend to attend an autopsy and be able to remember it (the only one I hope to ever be at is my own!), and medical descriptions make me a bit nervous, I took the first few chapters slowly, and finally braced myself for the rest of the book.
Recommended to anyone who likes mysteries, conspiracies, and accurate medical depictions.
This book ended the series well. Very little trace of whiny and emotional Harry from Half Blood Prince remains - evidently, Dumbledore's death at the end of that book was enough to vault Harry out of the teenage angst he struggled with through most of that book.
I have to be fair - out of the whole series, in this book, the Campbellian themes are stronger than they've been since the beginning of the books. Harry is quite a little “Gary Stu”, and I'm still disappointed that a woman, writing a story that started out as a tale for her daughter, would make so few female characters to identify with, and to keep those as “the girl sidekick”, “the mother”, and “the girlfriend” is disappointing.
Still, anyone who's picked this series up expecting high-brow literature should expect to be disappointed. It's not. JKR is a good storyteller, and the end of the story managed to prove nearly all of the theories about how the story would end right.
I'm actually hoping - as good of a storyteller as she is - that her next series is about completely different people doing different things in a different world. I've heard some suggestions that she should write about the next generation of wizards, but I think that's overkill. Let Harry's story end here and let the fanfic writers go nuts with the next generation.
What's amazing about KoD is that this is the book that convinced me that Jordan actually did have the series plotted out and that he did actually know which characters were where and doing what. Finally getting some questions answered in this book convinced me that he wasn't insane, just very devious. Sometimes, the distinction gets lost.
This is the first in a post-apocalyptic series taking place in my home, the Pacific Northwest. An excellent read, although this first book gets a little gritty in the details. Stirling's characterization is phenomenal - he's very good at writing anti-heroes, flawed heroes, and generally people who seem real - there's always some facet of their personality that you just know you'd hate about them if they were real.
Characterization aside, this is a great series. There's generally very little set in the Pacific Northwest, and knowing the places adds a fun element to reading this series. I'm hooked - I can't wait for book 4 to move to paperback!
