donutgirl's reviews from LibraryThing

Eighth Grade Bites (Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, Book 1) by Heather Brewer

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:55:55 -0400

donutgirl's review: "Pretty terrible. I would think even a semi-literate 10 year old boy would be put off by pages of boring backstory awkwardly inserted in the form of interminable journal entries, to say nothing of the meandering plot, paper-thin characterizations, and a hero who cries on every other page. I'd tell my kid to watch cartoons before reading this."
Speak (2008), Paperback, 192 pages

Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel by Kurt Vonnegut

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:22:43 -0400

donutgirl's review: "Not a bad book about the war, but I feel like Catch 22 covered this territory a lot more successfully. Still, it's a pretty striking example of post-modern lit -- the experimental narrative still feels surprisingly fresh."
Dial Press Trade Paperback (1999), Paperback, 288 pages

How to Be Good by Nick Hornby

Sun, 31 May 2009 10:59:58 -0400

donutgirl's review: "The story of a woman's attempts to save her marriage after her husband becomes infatuated with new-age guru. There are so many wonderful things about this book -- instantly engaging prose, credible characterizations, too many laugh-out-loud moments to count... And it was thought-provoking without ever becoming preachy. Ugh, but the ending! Grim and cold and felt like a complete cop-out. Throughout the story, the characters seemed to learn a lot about themselves and their situation and what it would take to move forward in their world... and then in the last few pages, they just turn their back on all that and go back to being more or less exactly as miserable as they all were at the beginning. I understand this must have been a difficult book to end, and I was curious as to how the author was going to pull it off... but in truth, he did not, and it was ultimately disappointing."
Riverhead Trade (2002), Edition: 1st Thus., Paperback, 320 pages

Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:13:21 -0400

donutgirl's review: "Disturbing and discomfiting at times, but I have to give props to any book that actually makes me laugh out loud. The ending is a little weak, but even after all this time, it's amazing how fresh and surprising Portnoy's voice is, how brutally honest his analysis of family life. I'm still trying to make sense of the fact that this was once a nationwide bestseller... does that mean that every jew in America read it? Or has it been read by non-jews? And if so, what on earth did they make of it?"
Vintage (1994), Edition: international, Paperback, 304 pages

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924

Thu, 21 May 2009 09:23:56 -0400

donutgirl's review: "Despite being a mere 100 pages long, parts of this book were as frustrating to slog through as the African jungle. Nevertheless, I'm glad I made it to through the wilderness to the palpable "horror" at the end. A book so deliciously overwrought with symbolism, I almost wish I had to write a paper on it."
Public Domain Books (2006), Kindle Edition

Warriors Super Edition: Firestar's Quest by Erin Hunter

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:35:00 -0400

donutgirl's review: "By far my favorite of the kitty books! Most of them bother me because of the cliff-hangers -- I understand that you want me to buy the next book, but I really appreciate some sense of resolution to a story in which I've gotten invested. And I also find most of the series too dark and upsetting -- not for kids, but for me. There's so much emphasis on fighting and death and starvation and destruction of the environment... it can be demoralizing. But Firestar's Quest had a much more cohesive plotline than the others, which (mercifully) focused on a pretty upbeat story which came to a satisfying conclusion! Yay kitties."
HarperCollins (2008), Paperback, 544 pages

The Believers: A Novel by Zoe Heller

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 01:22:39 -0400

donutgirl's review: "The whole point of this book was to examine the lives of the women who surround a Great Man -- his wife, his daughters, his lover. Too bad the Man was the most compelling character in the book, despite disappearing in the second chapter. Heller does a good job with prickly characters, making them believable and even sympathetic. The other characters unfortunately seem bland by comparison, and the plot suffers from a few too many contrivances. Oh, but I did enjoy seeing the characters' bourgeois existence filtered through their Marxist ideology. We don't see enough serious engagement with Marxism in fiction these days -- it was fun."
Harper (2009), Hardcover, 352 pages

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:24:46 -0400

donutgirl's review: "Long-winded and meandering, this book made its points a few too many times for my tastes. The Master and Margarita themselves I found vapid and dull, for the most part, but the lively characterizations of Woland and his crew will stick with me for quite a while. The outrageous set-pieces (Woland's performance, Bohemoth at the market) were equally memorable, as well as all the satirical depictions of writers and bureaucrats. But beyond that, I'm just as glad to be done with this book."
Vintage (1996), Paperback, 384 pages

Seekers #1: The Quest Begins by Erin Hunter

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:57:36 -0400

donutgirl's review: "I started this because I love bears, but I had to quit because it is too sad. No spoilers, but there are many sad things in the first six chapters, so I skipped to the end and there were even more sad things! So I quit. I don't need so many sad bears in my life."
HarperCollins (2009), Edition: Reprint, Paperback, 320 pages

Candy Everybody Wants (P.S.) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:38:29 -0500

donutgirl's review: "Josh Kilmer-Purcell tries to build a tongue-in-cheek novel around the narrative conventions of early-80s television, but his slight story is too frequently drowned in excess of sit-com schmaltz. The high-spirited conflation of high and low culture feels forced, and reeks of bathos -- when characters use a cheesy television catch-phrase to confront real-life pain and heartbreak, the effect is more stomach-turning than amusing. Still, Purcell has managed to create a winning and strangely believable cast of characters, despite their "quirkiness". And it's hard not to root for his endlessly plucky hero, fighting his way toward greatness on pure, indomitable will."
Harper Perennial (2008), Edition: 1, Paperback, 288 pages

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 02:05:46 -0500

donutgirl's review: "Fascinating and sobering account of living in true poverty... I thought this would be a book of bohemian hijinks, but I was completely wrong. The Paris section was more fun for me, since I knew intimately many of the places he was wandering about, but London was interesting because he was truly homeless there, not merely poor. Paris also seemed more lively because even the very poor managed to drink plenty of wine every day. The British version is endless cups of tea, which I found very depressing. I really don't understand the British fascination with tea -- even the most completely destitute would apparently rather spend a few pennies on tea than an extra slice of bread (to say nothing of fruit or meat). I guess tea kills hunger to a degree, but I'd still rather have wine."
Mariner Books (1972), Paperback, 228 pages

Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:42:52 -0400

donutgirl's review: "Redekop has moments of real wit and he isn’t afraid to push his plot to entertainingly ludicrous extremes. If, ultimately, he winds up glossing over some finer philosophical points about censorship, elitism, taste, and judgement, he at least reminds us of the pleasure, joy, and even lunacy a true love of books can inspire. See more <a href="http://lapetiteamericaine.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/shelf-monkey/" rel="nofollow" target="_new">here</a>."
ECW Press (2007), Paperback, 264 pages

The Castle of Otranto (Dover Thrift Editions) by Horace Walpole

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 16:56:47 -0500

donutgirl's review: "This story is often cited as the first/one of the first gothic novels, but it's hard to believe since even at this early date it already reads like pastiche. Far from being predictable archetypes, the main characters are constantly upsetting our expectations: the pure, steadfast maiden turns out to be gossip-y and backstabbing, the gallant hero tries to save the maiden and winds up accidentally stabbing her father, the pious friar turns out to be weak and self-serving... Certainly not what I was expecting from a "classic" gothic novel. Other than that, I don't know that I'd call Otranto a masterpiece, but it's definitely an interesting historical document."
Dover Publications (2004), Paperback, 128 pages

Who By Fire, Who By Blood by Jon Papernick

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:29:25 -0400

donutgirl's review: "A gripping, fast-paced read, complemented with beautiful, perfectly-observed descriptions. Brooklyn comes alive in these pages, and reading the scene in the bingo parlor, I felt like I was there... The hero's growing assimilation into a terrorist cell was both believable and incredibly creepy."
Exile Editions (2007), Hardcover, 352 pages

The Embrace: A True Vampire Story by Aphrodite Jones

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 14:03:07 -0400

donutgirl's review: "This story is really, mindblowingly amazing. The completely true story of real life teenagers who believe they're ageless vampires! They're all so incredibly bizarre, yet so completely believable. The writing itself is, at best, serviceable, and at worst, distractingly garbled, but at the high points, the intense melodrama of proceedings is set into fine relief by the plodding, hard-boiled prose. The main problem here was the length and the dizzying amount of detail. It's a long book, but so lurid that I expected to fly through it in no time. Instead, I found myself continually bogged down by chapter after chapter of "girl x thought boy y was crazy, but she loved him anyway. But maybe he really was a vampire! But maybe he was just crazy. But she loved him anyway!" Still, the tale is so wacky, it really demands to be read."
Pocket (2000), Mass Market Paperback, 448 pages

Brideshead Revisited (Penguin Modern Classics) by Evelyn Waugh

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:35:09 -0400

donutgirl's review: "The first half of this book was divine! Sebastian, Aloysius, the whole Oxford set -- it was witty and charming and had me stopping every page or so to commit a beautiful passage to memory. Then... what happened? War, religion, morality, I suppose. I can't blame Waugh for wanting to give his story a serious edge, given the context in which he was writing -- I just wish he'd put it off a bit longer! Also, his moral worldview is depressingly regressive, even for the day, but I don't suppose that's why we read literature, so."
Penguin Classics (2000), Paperback, 336 pages

Obedience: A Novel by Will Lavender

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:16:05 -0400

donutgirl's review: "The premise of this book drew me in -- I was excited about a novel that applied rigorous philosophical methodology to a murder investigation. Too bad there is nothing remotely philosophical (let alone rigorous) in the author's approach to this mystery. The characters occasionally mention applying the rules of logic to the case, but nine times out of ten they wind up relying on pure intuition, or worse yet, the very obvious hand of the author guiding them where they need to go. I wanted this book to be a perfectly orchestrated intellectual puzzle -- instead it was a mess of unlikeable characters behaving in unconvincing, sometimes downright preposterous ways. Also, it went on way too long... two thirds of the book are devoted to the heroes wandering around rural Indiana, asking people questions, and coming away with absolutely no new information. What a waste!"
Shaye Areheart Books (2008), Hardcover, 304 pages

20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:15:49 -0400

donutgirl's review: "I read a couple of the stories in this before giving up. Mr. Hill has a canny grasp of the postmodern, writerly style, but there is nothing remotely scary in these stories. I hope the author lives long enough to realize he was never meant to write horror."
William Morrow (2007), Hardcover, 336 pages

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:09:20 -0400

donutgirl's review: "The whole time I was reading this book, people kept asking me what I thought of it, and each time I said, "Well, I'm not sure, really. But I'm still reading it, so I guess it must be pretty good so far." There were a lot of things about this book that made me nervous: Would the first person plural narration eventually become tiresome? Would the office-drone characters begin to grate as much as their real-life counterparts generally do? Would the book ever develop into anything more than a mildly amusing collection of water-cooler anecdotes? It took me until the very last pages to form a solid opinion on this book. Then I came to the end, and suddenly I realized that nearly every aspect of the book, even the things that had worried me, was pitch-perfect. p.s. there's cancer in this book, and it's sad."
Penguin Books Ltd (2008), Paperback, 400 pages

Paradise Lost (Penguin Classics) by John Milton

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:58:15 -0500

donutgirl's review: "Milton gets extra points for scope and ambition, but I have to admit that he tends toward the preachy (rather than allowing his characters to illustrate their own morals), plus some of his theology struck me as a bit simple-minded. That said, the descriptions of Hell remain both beautiful and terrible -- unparalleled in the English language."
Penguin Classics (2003), Paperback, 512 pages