Jean

A deeply nostalgic story about immigrant life in the Western prairies. Cather's warm, lovely prose reminds me of Steinbeck a little, with its rolling, lilting quality. Rich, but easy to read. I read this book over a weekend and fell in love with it. I didn't even want to pick up my next book–I just wanted this story to stay with me for a few days. I can't wait to loan it to my daughter.

This is an amazing, ambitiously detailed portrait of Gilmore life, crimes, and death, as well as his impact on those around him. Never salacious, this thoughtful treatment of Gilmore was quite affecting. Mailer uses a prose style apparently quite different from his own, capturing instead the voice of those involved in the story. At nearly 1100 pages, I still never felt bogged down in the book.

This was very different from the the other China Miéville I've read. Kraken had a rich prose style with a lot of fantastical elements, and I really loved it.

However, The City and the City is, at its heart, a police procedural, so the sparer language makes a lot of sense. And of course, it's not that the fantastic is absent – it's China Miéville, after all – it's simply restricted to exactly what it is (a geopolitical boundary), rather than leaking out all over the place.

I'm not generally a big reader of police procedurals, but on the other hand, police procedurals are not typically this well-written. (OK, I admit to reading the Dresden Files books, but I consider them “potato chip reading.”) Miéville is an extraordinarily talented writer. Of course, the fantastic element of the story is compelling as well.

I look forward to reading more of his work.

There's a reason this is considered one of the best books in the English language. A thoughtful book dealing with internal life and development. Unusual prose style (even for its time, I believe), and a bit of a slow, heavy read, but worth the effort. I feel that I would really need to re-read it to get the most of it.

Going through this short book very, very slowly. We just spent eight weeks at my local Zen center going over just the Outline of Practice chapter, line by line. What does it mean to enter the path by reason (alternate translations include “principle” or “insight”)? What does it mean to “suffer injustice”?

This is not a long book, and you can get through it quickly, but I found it much more gratifying to go through slowly and deliberately with a spirit of inquiry. This is likely to stay on my “currently reading” shelf for some time.

Kraken was my first China Mieville book. I found it a beautifully written, dark, creepy, fantastical read. Honestly, I didn't care as much about the main character, Billy, as I could have, but I became quite attached to other supporting characters: Dane, Wati, even Collingswood and her “pig.” The villains of the book – The Tattoo, Goss and Subby – were appropriately horrifying. (Goss and Subby particularly had a bad habit of showing up if I was reading in bed.) I loved the imagining of the magical underworld subcultures of London and the cults with their competing eschatologies. I loved Mieville's use of language, and I find concepts, jokes, and words from the novel popping up in my mind on a regular basis even six months after finishing the book.

It is long and rather dense, and took me some time to finish, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Fun read, tough to put down near the end. m:-)

More trashy junk food reading.

Quick read, better written than the first book, I think.

Pretty much just what you'd think: Pride and Prejudice, but with zombies thrown in. Fun.

This was really great! Better than expected. You really see how cockroach values work in human culture. Very well written, well worth reading.

Oh, jeez, they're like potato chips. I can't stop, but actually, I'll run out pretty soon, since I zip through them pretty quickly.

Very quick reads. Not my usual cup of tea, but the writing seems to improve as the series goes on, and the author does know how to make you want to know what happens next.

A really lovely little book.

A truly amazing story, well told. What these people went through... I had no idea.

Picked this up because of the HBO series True Blood. Not my usual sort of read, but I'm so hooked on the show I was looking for more.

Not great literature, and not my usual sort of thing... but I might read the next one.

Great read, engaging and fun. I liked it as I was reading it, but by the end, I really loved it.

Certainly worth reading. It's hard to say I “liked” it, given the subject matter and the general tone of the book, but I'm certainly glad I read it. Beautifully written, disturbing, big pathos. I was ready for something lighter after this.

I'd like to read this again sometime to see how it changes.

This book was somewhat different than I thought it would be, although I'm not sure what exactly I thought it would be. Like life, I guess. I'd like to tell you what I thought about it, but as Siddhartha says, wisdom spoken always sounds foolish.

Good read. Mystery in general is not much my cup of tea, but this was a well-written and enjoyable book. I particularly enjoyed the historical elements about the worker's movement in the '30s.

A lovely read, but I didn't care for the ending.

Jimi fascinates me, and even more so after reading this.

Took me a week to get through the first part of this, because the opening short story was so gruesome. I was strangely compelled to finish this odd book, but can't say I liked it exactly. It may have cured me of wanting to read any more Palahniuk, though.

Not usually the sort of thing I read, but it kept me interested. Quick read.

Cute, light read.

Great practice book in the Reclaiming Tradition. Not theory, but practice, working through the lens of a fairy tale. A bit like Witchcamp in book form.