I don’t know why you title your book The Hangman’s Daughter and then make the main character the hangman, but that’s what happened here. It didn’t ruin the book for me, but every time the daughter appeared, I got my Nancy Drew on and combed the pages for clues, because, surely, as the titular character, something about her must be the key to this murder mystery. That was not the case. A bit about hangmen in the 1600s: Jakob Kuisl, the hangman in our story, […]
I…I have so many mixed feelings about this one
I really wanted to enjoy this book more. There was a lot of hype around it last year with the premier of the show, but when it came down to it, it just wasn’t for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad book. Gabaldon is a good writer. I enjoyed the comparison of the two timelines, and contemplating what aspects of humanity would or wouldn’t have changed in two hundred years. But there were several things I had trouble moving past. Continue […]
Religious nutballs, an awkward teenager, and a creepy ice cream truck driver make terrible decisions
This was the weirdest fucking book. I… kind of liked it? I was originally drawn to it because it takes place in Arco, Idaho and I have family who live there, so I thought it’d be interesting to read a story set in their little town of 910 people. Except The Girl Who Slept With God takes place in some alternate universe Arco where there are enough people to have two high schools and a University. I don’t even know. I realize this is not […]
The Truth Will Set You Free
The only thing at once more precious and more fragile than a true story is a free life. A Pulitzer finalist and long-listed for the Man Booker Prizer, The Moor’s Account is a work of fiction based on real historical events and people. Through the eyes of our narrator Mustafa, aka Estebanico, a Muslim from Morocco, the reader experiences the life of a successful merchant in Portuguese controlled North Africa, enslavement, and an ill-fated Spanish quest for gold in La Florida. Lalami’s inspiration came from […]
Just Read This Book Already
I literally read this book 6 months ago, but kept putting off writing the review because there’s no way anything I can say will do any justice to Kindred. Seriously, Octavia Butler is working on a completely different level than most authors. If I were a teacher, I’d be pushing this on my students like crazy. Dana, a black woman, and Kevin, a white man, are a married couple living in the 1970s. They’re both very modern, educated people. On Dana’s 26th birthday, she is […]
A really good read, but I don’t get all the fuss.
This was a really good book on a lot of levels: 1. Good as historical fiction. Excellent particularly because we get POV characters on both sides of the conflict. 2. Good as literary fiction (at least, according to my standards). I prefer my lit-fic to be on the accessible side, and not to focus exclusively on middle-aged white man problems. But it’s also got extra levels if you want to go digging. 3. Good as writing, in the sense that the sentences strung one after […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 137
- 138
- 139
- 140
- 141
- …
- 159
- Next Page »