Recommended by: imani, more or less. Or rather, she mentioned The Victorian Chaise-Longue, also by Marghanita Laski, and I picked up Little Boy Lost at the library at the same time. So “recommended” is actually a pretty big stretch on this, but whatever. For a while I was convinced that this book had to be in translation. It just had these weird bits that you get when you are reading books in translation, and the author’s name is unusual and might quite easily have been foreign; and anyway I was all set to write this review and say I hate…
1 CommentReading the End Posts
Or, I didn’t know the third Libba Bray book was out already! Actually, ultimately, I am not that huge a fan of these books. They entertain me but I can’t remember a single character’s name except Gemma. I can’t even remember the sexy gypsy boy’s name, just that Gemma was having Totally Shocking Dreams about him the likes of which no nice Victorian girl would repeat to a biographer. So basically I am not going to live or die by what happens in The Sweet Far Thing (not sure about this title), but I will be chagrined if the sexy…
Leave a CommentRecommended by: http://melissasbookreviews.blogspot.com/ I say definitely yes to this. If I had read it when I was small, it would have become one of my favorite books and I would have read it over and over again. As it is, I liked it but I probably wouldn’t buy it. Basically it’s a retelling of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”, which is not my favorite fairy tale at all because the girl is such a silly brat. I always think of Fire and Hemlock (ah, Fire and Hemlock), because Polly had a rather scathing view of the…
4 CommentsHeard about this because it was one of those books that is always on front shelves at Bongs & Noodles. I know it is contradictory to say that I enjoyed this and then file it as an unfavorite, but it’s true. I enjoyed it in that I carried on reading it all the way to the end, so I guess something about it must have been interesting and absorbingish. Basically, the story is narrated by an old man who is slipping in and out of the present into his past, when he worked as a circus vet in the Depression.…
3 CommentsRecommended by: http://poodlerat.bellonae.com I totally love this woman’s name. Her book was sad. All about a controlling abusive Catholic Nigerian (what a string of adjectives) father and his wife and two children; the young girl narrates the story. That’s it, really. I wish I had more to say about this book. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was very very sad. And also melancholy. Ms. Adichie is good at evoking a mood. However, this book was very very sad and never will I ever read it again although I enjoyed it. It’s a fast read – I read it…
Leave a CommentHeard about in: Die for Love, by Elizabeth Peters Apparently this book got edited down to one-fifth of its original length, for which I can only say praise God (though it must be thrilling for Forever Amber scholars to get their hands on the original manuscript, if it still exists). I cannot imagine how she could have gotten four times that much again into the silly book. Amber gets married FOUR TIMES over the course of the book and has lots of silly affairs and moans a lot about how her true love Bruce Carlton thinks she’s too trashy for…
6 Commentsby Janice Galloway I guess I wasn’t the target audience, but damn, this book just never went anywhere, for God’s sake. It’s about a Scottish woman, if I recall correctly, who sinks into a deep depression after her lover drowns. And that’s basically all I have to say about it. So-so. Nothing ever happens.
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