The last chapter ruined the book for me. It should’ve either been omitted or expanded upon.

Interesting idea, but very insubstantial. Should've been a novella.

Lots of atmosphere, but nothing really happens, Got bored and abandoned the book about 1/3 of the way through.

Amusing, well-plotted, but pretty lightweight. A romantic comedy in book form. (Actually, this would make a great movie.)

Excellent. Ironically, my first ebook. :-)

One of the best of the series.

Good, but not as good as the other Stephenson books I've read. For this non-technical reader who still enjoys a technical novel, this was just too much. There were several times when I skimmed (or skipped) entire pages to get back to the story.

Could not finish the last book. I must be one of the only people in the universe to not love this series.

Barely any plot, cardboard characters, a disdain for Midwesterners and fat people. Why did I finish it? To see where this exercise in imagining new technology and a new economy lead. In the end, a muddled and not very coherent idea of the new economy, but the technology was cool. (Although I can see that Doctorow's vision of technology will probably seem quaint in about 10 years - so much of what he writes about here is currently being developed, and the odds are strong that the products won't follow Doctorow's trajectory.)

Kringle: best character ever.

Definitely the middle book of a trilogy. It felt like it was mostly setting up book 3; doesn't really hang together on its own.

Long, convoluted, digressive, rambling, worth it.

Under-developed characters, a bit pedantic, but an interesting take on a post-apocalyptic America.

Interesting structure, but I felt it got in the way of the story - I just wasn't immersed.

My first Stephen King. Exciting, but not as well-written as I was expecting. It seemed slap-dash. Plus, the town went downhill awfully fast, and the blind devotion to Jim Rennie made the townspeople seem like a bunch of simpletons. Not a lot of nuance or subtlety here.

The resolution of the mystery begun in the previous book in the series - Mercy Falls - was anticlimactic, to say the least. The primary mystery was good, but I missed Cork's family. Two very strong teenage characters, Ren and Charlie, were introduced, and it would be nice to "see" them again in the series.

It's a cliffhanger, so have Copper River (the next book in the series) ready to go.

The first time Krueger has tipped his hand - I figured out the murderer too early. Still good, but it all unfolded pretty much the way I thought it would. And one extremely little, extremely nitpicky thing - *very* few place names in Minnesota include the word "hollow" - given how well Krueger depicts Minnesota life, this one little thing was jarring to me. (I know, so very persnickety.)

In the end, I couldn't get over being extremely uncomfortable with the author's portrayal of Stella Hardesty, the main character. After killing her abusive husband, Stella has a "side business" serving out vigilante justice to other wife abusers. She has burned them, cut off limbs, and otherwise tortured them, but seems to have absolutely no qualms about it. At the same time she's helping out the neighborhood kid, has a soft spot for down-at-the-heels clients, and calls everyone "darlin." This could have been an interesting character study, but the author has chosen not to pursue it - at all. It's as if Stella's side business is supposed to be part of the humorous, down-home atmosphere of the novel rather than a glaring psychological conflict (and a pretty accurate mirroring of the abusive husbands' crimes).

Plus, what's with Stella never going to the cops? Eventually, she just comes off as stupid, like one of those people in a horror movie who just has to open the door even though we all know the killer is behind it.

Is it Mankell's style I don't like, or the translation? Impossible to know, of course, but I must say the writing didn't "flow." I wasn't too happy about the resolution of the crime, either - most of the book goes down one road, but at the end Mankell makes a u-turn and solution seems almost random.

The premise sounded promising: What if Henry and William James were actually the brothers of Frank and Jesse James? Leibmann-Smith has written the book in a literary/historical biography style, which I thought I would find entertaining but unfortunately found tiresome after 70 pages. Abandoned and returned to the library.

All Clear, by Connie Willis, could have been so much better with some judicious editing. I grew sick of Polly covering things up to spare her friends' feelings, and all that worrying - argh. I thought Blackout was better than All Clear - the ending didn't live up to the beginning. As one book, I'd give it 3.5 stars.

"Words, words, just words." So says Thomas More, one of Thomas Cromwell's most vociferous detractors in Hilary Mantel's novel, Wolf Hall. But they are not "just words", not to More, not to Cromwell, not to Mantel. In the end, words are everything. Characters in Wolf Hall don't just talk, they whisper, cajole, discuss, threaten, shout, negotiate, and mutter.

Thomas Cromwell, the son of a common (and brutal) man, works his way up the political ladder in 16th century England, becoming an advisor to Cardinal Wolesey, and then King Henry VIII. Along the way he amasses wealth, knowledge, followers and enemies. Not much is known about the actual Thomas Cromwell, so Hilary Mantel imagines one for us - an urbane yet somewhat threatening man, someone who speaks several languages, takes in orphans and widows, but who also looks like a murderer and has no qualms in wielding his significant power. Through the course of the book, Cromwell is concerned with three things (besides money, which is the oil that keeps the machinery of society going): serving the King, helping single-minded Anne Boleyn to be Queen, and disentangling England from the Catholic Church. And this is all done through Cromwell's ability with words. He spends most of his time listening to rumors, gathering information, writing letters, gently turning the King's opinion one way or another.

I had a few quibbles with Wolf Hall. One is that Cromwell was too . . . too. He knows everything. He can taste a soup and know what show more it needs, he can look at fabric and jewels and instantly tot up their total worth, he is smooth in elegant society while also nurturing servants and stablemen as informants. He is smart, he is compassionate, he is multi-lingual, he is tolerant. He never makes a mistake. In the end, I found him at once fascinating and unbelievable. My other quibble was the sheer number of words in Wolf Hall. It dragged in the middle, lost momentum. After the wonderful first third, in which Cromwell is first serving Cardinal Wolsey (such a perfectly well-drawn character!) and then getting established in Henry's court, the middle part fell flat for me. While the reader definitely gets the sense of just how long Henry waits to marry Anne, it got a bit tedious for this particular reader.

However, all in all Wolf Hall is a good, solid book, a book about the impact of words. HIlary Mantel breathes life into Henry VIII's court, the Church, and 16th century English society. Her characters comes to life: Cardinal Wolsey, Anne Boleyn, the Duke of Norfolk, Thomas More - these historical figures became almost three dimensional under Mantel's watch. The reader learns about the subtlety of religion, the importance of relationships and the judicious use of words. show less

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting is a memoir focused on one year in author Michael Perry's life in rural Wisconsin. He, his wife Anneliese, 6-year old daughter Amy and soon-to-be-born - then newborn - daughter Jane, live on a patch of land in farming country. When they move in, Perry's goal is to have a flock of chicken, a couple of pigs, and a garden. As the year progresses, Perry regales his reader with stories of rural family life, along with memories of his own childhood growing up on a dairy farm 40 miles away.

Perry is an engaging writer - I enjoy his style and his highly descriptive style. However, I couldn't really get into Coop. I must admit, I'm a sucker for stories of farming and rural life (even though I live in the suburb of a big city), but I like these kind of memoirs to tell me a lot about day-to-day life. Perry does this, but there about half the book is dedicated to reminiscence and philosophizing about the past. This just isn't my thing. Additionally, I felt as if Perry couldn't find his focus. He goes from farming memories, religion, parenting, friends and more - then ends the book basically saying that the story has been that he's over-committed in his life and needs to "be there" more for his family. Unfortunately, if this was the major theme, it did not shine clearly enough in the book.

Overall, a book with some humorous and poignant stories about living in rural Wisconsin, but one that needed a stronger thematic focus.

I really wanted to love MFK Fisher's The Gastronomical Me. Fisher is touted as the doyenne of modern food writing, I love food writing, and have never read anything by Fisher. The Gastronomical Me is an autobiographical look at her early life and her discovery of French food. She is in and out of France in the years leading up to WWII, which lends an additional layer of interest to her stories.

But. But. As I read, I found I really didn't like her - I didn't like her at all. She comes off as smug, somewhat arrogant, laughing at herself but especially others about their food gaffes and personal foibles. There was little of the delight in learning about food that one finds in Julia Child or even Anthony Bourdain. I made it about two-thirds through the book and just couldn't continue. When the next book in Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series came in at the library, I gladly abandoned The Gastronomical Me in favor of a rollicking sea adventure.

In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, author Barbara Kingsolver invites us into her life for a year to learn about eating locally and sustainably. Kingsolver and her family agree that for one full year, they will eat as locally, with as much as possible from their own large garden and poultry flock. Kingsolver brings the reader along for the ride as her family plants the garden, starts the young chicks and turklets (what are baby turkeys called?), then nurtures the crops, and finally through harvest and preservation. Along the way, co-authors Steven Hopp (Kingsolver's husband) and Camille Kingsolver (her oldest daughter), contribute additional information about conservation organizations, political movements, the 19-year-old take on things (from Camille) and some delightful recipes.

The book is organized around the food year, starting in March while waiting for the asparagus to come up, and ending in the following March, again waiting for the asparagus (and the turkeys). As an avid gardener myself, I appreciate this organization, following the garden through planting, harvesting, preservation and - of course - eating. Kingsolver is a noted novelist, and as one would expect, the writing is excellent. At the same time, though, she is also quite down to earth and tells it like it is, especially when it comes time to harvest her family's poultry.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn more about where their food comes from. I think show more it would be very accessible to the layperson, perhaps paired with Michael Pollan's equally great book about modern food methods, The Omnivore's Dilemma. And the recipes sound delicious! show less

In The Wednesday Sisters, by Meg Waite Clayton, we meet five young housewives in the Palo Alto, California of 1967: Frankie (our narrator), Linda, Kath, Allie and Brett. When our story begins, only Linda and Kath know one another, but soon all five are frequenting the park near their homes, watching their children and chatting. Eventually it becomes apparent that all of them like to read, and a few of them have deeply buried literary aspirations. Linda dares them into becoming a writing group, and the Wednesday Sisters are born. Over the course of the next five years, we follow the five women as they struggle with everything from sexism, racism, cancer, marital troubles, and their writing.

The Wednesday Sisters is not a type of book I'm normally drawn to, but the author - Meg Waite Clayton - is a regular here on LibraryThing, so I was intrigued about her book. I requested it from the library over six months ago, and I just received it this weekend, so there's no doubt it's popular. And, although I did find it a quick, fairly enjoyable read, this is still not the type of book for me. I wouldn't quite call it chick lit, but it's definitely a book aimed straight at women. I enjoyed the exploration of the late 60's, early 70's from a housewife's point of view, and I appreciated that Clayton didn't try to make all of her characters fit into an expectation that all women of that time must have been feminists - like any intelligent women, their feelings about feminism were more show more complicated than that. However, I did feel that Clayton tried to fit too much into the book. Each character - except the narrator - had a major problem, making it seem as if Clayton wanted to ensure she illustrated all the issues of the day. And unfortunately, because there were so many "issues", they all seemed to be somewhat glossed over, as if we needed to hurry to get to the next one. show less

In the Woods, by Tana French, is a taut psychological thriller. Outside of Dublin, in a little town called Knocknaree, the body of 12-year-old Katy Devlin is discovered at an archeological dig that is being fast-tracked because a highway is planned for the site. She was murdered and sexually assaulted, then placed on an ancient sacrificial stone. Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox are called to the scene, but unbeknownst to everyone, Ryan's childhood is inextricably bound with the woods of Knocknaree. As a child, he had been playing in the woods with his two friends. Jamie and Peter disappeared, but Rob (then known as Adam) was found - terrified, fingernails digging into a tree, blood filling his shoes, and no memory of what had happened. Twenty years later, Ryan still doesn't remember what happened, but he feels compelled to take Katy's case even though he knows he would be thrown off the squad if they found out his potential connection to site. As Ryan and Maddox work the case, it brings up more and more issues for Ryan, eventually straining his extremely close relationship with Cassie and bringing back fragments of memory that never quite fall into place. Meanwhile, the investigation never quite clicks. The suspects include everyone from the archeologists working at the site to the developers who stand to profit from the highway to the victim's family itself.

In the Woods is the type of book that gets under your skin. The book is written in the first person, and our show more narrator is Rob Ryan, whose viewpoint (from the reader's perspective) is fundamentally flawed. He is too close to the case, he has no memory of what happened to him when he was 12, and he even tells us in the first chapter, "What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this - two things: I crave truth. And I lie." I normally am not a huge fan of the first person narrator in mysteries. No real theoretical reason, really, just that I've found in the past that the author often can't (or doesn't) handle the paradoxes inherent in a first person narrator very well. However, French is up to the task. Because Ryan is our narrator, we are never quite sure what is "true" and what we are seeing through his eyes. This leaves the author just as off-kilter as Ryan and the other characters in the book (especially Cassie Maddox). We only know Ryan's reasons and rationalizations, which make a big difference as the story progresses.

Although I think, perhaps, French tried to bring in one or two too many threads into the story, and I think the eventual whodunnit was perhaps not as effective as it could have been, I really enjoyed In the Woods. French does a wonderful job of drawing unique characters and really getting into their heads, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future. show less

In Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis, it's 2054 and historians use time travel to document and learn about other time periods in history. At Oxford University, the head of the history department is out of town, and the acting head - who is also the head of Medieval History - has decided to push through a time-travel "drop" to 1320, even though a drip to medieval times has never been attempted. Kivrin is the history student who plans to go, and her mentor, Mr. Dunsworthy, does not feel enough testing and trials have been done to allow the trip. Over Dunsworthy's protests, Kivrin is sent back through the time-travel net, and immediately upon her leaving all hell breaks loose. The tech, Badri, who ran the operation, falls ill with a mysterious virus. He becomes delirious and in his ramblings tells Dunsworthy that something has gone wrong. However, because of Badri's delirium, Dunsworthy can't tell what it is. In the meantime, Kivrin lands where she had planned - in a woods near a small village outside of Oxford - but when she gets there, she is sick with the virus, too. She is rescued and brought to a manor house in the village, and begins her medieval life in a sickbed surrounded by the family of the manor. As the story progresses, Kivrin recovers from the virus and becomes part of her medieval household, but back in 2054, the virus cannot be cured and Oxford is quarantined as more people become sick.

I really enjoyed Doomsday Book. Every few chapters, Willis moves between the show more present and the past, and the events in each time frame have significant connections to one another. I especially enjoyed Kivrin's story, but Dunsworthy's story was also good. The middle of the book dragged somewhat, though. I thought that there could have been a bit more judicious editing in both timeframes, leaving out some rather boring sickbed scenes with Kivrin and some of the more repetitious bits in Dunworthy's story.

In reading other reviews on LT, it seems that dedicated science fiction readers tend not to like Doomsday Book as much as others, primarily because the technology is not fully fleshed out (so to speak) and because Willis did not anticipate greater use of portable phones and computers. I personally rarely read science fiction, so I had no great expectations of how things should be or what the genre's conventions are. Given that, I read Doomsday Book a bit more as an alternate reality to 1992 (when the book was published) rather than as commentary on the future, so the technical aspects did not bother me at all - I was really focused on the two stories.

Overall, I thought Doomsday Book was a good read, especially over a long winter weekend. show less

I received this uncorrected proof from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

Snow Angels is James Thompson's debut novel - a mystery set in northern Finland. Kari Vaara is a police inspector in a small Finnish tourist town. It's days before Christmas, and a B movie star - a beautiful Somali woman - is found dead, her body mutilated, in the snow on a reindeer farm. As Vaara begins investigating the crime, he quickly discovers that his ex-wife's common-law husband is a prime suspect, but not the only one. He digs deeper into the crime, exposing the small town's racist biases, while at the same time the gruesome crime and its investigation begin to take a toll on Vaara's marriage to his American wife, Kate.

Snow Angels is a pretty good first novel, and a pretty solid mystery. Thompson's writing style is clear and concise, and he offers up enough diversions to make the mystery interesting. I'm not always a big fan of mysteries that use a first person narrative voice, as this one does, but it works pretty well in this case. I think, perhaps, that Thompson made a bit too much of Kate's difficulty handling her first Finnish winter, but since Thompson is himself an American who's lived in Finland for the past ten years (married to a Finnish woman), he probably knows exactly whereof he speaks. I liked Snow Angels well enough to give the second in the series a go.