Um, so…I didn’t really like The Westing Game. Sorry. I know a lot of y’all LOVE it and it seems like on of those childhood books that everyone remembers fondly, but reading it for the first time as a 29-year-old, it was pretty…meh. Not great. Not awful, but still…. “Friday was back to normal, if the actions of suspicious would-be heirs competing for a two-hundred-million-dollar prize could be considered normal.” So if you’re not familiar with the plot, basically these sixteen residents of an apartment building […]
Oh Susannah Mio
Ah, Song of Susannah — probably the weakest link in the Dark Tower series, but still vital to the overall story line, since basically sets up the entire ending. But still. It’s not the greatest. “You doom yourselves, Susannah. You seem positively bent on it, and the root is always the same: your faith fails you, and you replace it with rational thought. But there is no love in thought, nothing that lasts in deduction, only death in rationalism.” At the end of Wolves of the Calla, Susannah […]
Pretty sure this book was at least 50% bullshit
A friend of mine lent me this book, insisting that it was a fantastic true story about this World War II hero who routinely snuck out of a POW camp over a period of almost five years. She was about half right — it’s a fantastic story, but I (and quite a few people who’ve actually done the research) have trouble believing it’s all that true… Young British soldier Joseph Horace Greasley (called “Jim” throughout the novel by his friends) spent about five years of World […]
The Most Desperate Girl Alive
Oh, I did not like the main character of this book, and while I don’t believe the author intended me to, I disliked her and all her friends and her whole freaking family so much that by the point when the big tragic event of Ani’s high school years was finally revealed, I felt almost guilty at my total lack of sympathy. “It’s okay to be insufferable as long as you’re aware that you’re being insufferable. At least that’s how I justified it to myself.” Ugh. So […]
A lot of cursing, with some food thrown in
Anthony Bourdain published Kitchen Confidential back in 2000, before he became the mega-hit that he is now. I think at the time, he had published a couple of novels and made a bit of a name for himself as a chef in New York City. Now, of course, he’s on every 5 minutes on the Food Channel — so it’s neat to catch a glimpse of his beginnings. “I’ve long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we’re talking about unpasteurized Stilton, […]
Worth it for the pictures alone
I read Steve Martin’s Shopgirl last year and didn’t really like it — the writing was good but I hated the plot and the characters. But I thought I would give his non-fiction a chance, and I’m glad I did. Born Standing Up tells of Martin’s (slow, painful) rise to fame as a stand up comedian, from his start doing magic shows as a teen and working at Disneyland, to sold out arenas every day of the week. “I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead […]
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