Llew's Reviews

“I do adore that Westerfeld, but he always kills me with his epilogues. Did you read Midnighters? I LOVED that series–it just built and built until book three was so amazing! Till you hit the epilogue. Why, Scott, why?? He creates such amazing and original worlds. Someday he’s going to accidentally write a happy ending.”

When I read the above in a letter from a friend, it made me think - of all things - Buddha. From Buddha’s teachings, the first of the “The Four Noble Truths” is that life IS suffering. However, once we see this truth we can transcend it. Thus, by truly knowing that life is difficult it ceases to be difficult. Because once you accept this truth, then the fact that life is suffering no longer matters.

I was trying to decide if the same thinking could be applied to reading Westerfeld’s works. That by knowing and accepting that the endings to his novels are going to suck it up big time - that they then cease to do so. I have no idea if applying Zen Buddhist teachings to young adult fiction will work, but I’m willing to give it a shot!

As for this stand alone novel, meh - it wasn’t even really worth a shot. I’ve already ordered Midnighters though and am willing to move on to bigger and better things than some overly wrought underwritten story about technology and the levels of innovation and trendsetting.

After reading so many reviews which proclaimed this book as “unputdownable”, I had to try out this book which caused someone over the age of ten to make up such a useless word. I don’t really get it. It wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t create any words which make it seem as if I have an IQ under 40 for it.

I’m always a sucker for books with main characters I really relate to. Who would I relate to more than a woman who grew up and still works in a bookstore her father owns? Evidently, a lot more. This book was pretty - meh.

I read this new bestseller written by the author of a former Oprah Bookclub pick, because a lady at the gym told me it was good.

Why don’t I just shoot myself now?

This shoving books in by the fist fulls so that I will have things to recommend and discuss with customers during the rush of Christmas season (when I will have no time to read anything) is getting me down. To be honest, it always does. But then the season comes around and I will pine for the days when I was able to read so much, no matter what it was.

All the cool kids were doing it.

This was oddly like “The Historian”, only without the vampires and dusty letters. It was told by way of the same strange dips into the past which were supposed to be tension building, but instead the reminscing factor drained most of the suspense away. This is good for people like me though. My heart can barely handle recent pictures of Britney Spears in a tank top, much less the stress of old leather-face stalking the streets in the shadows. And by leather-face I’m referring to Julian Carax in the novel, not of Tara Reid.

Although, I do have to say that I’m a sucker for novels where the main character reminds me of myself and Daniel Sempere does that with lines like, “I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day.”

Oh, the marks that being raised in your father’s bookstore will leave on you.

Don’t bother. Seriously, don’t.

I wondered why my dad had thrown away an advanced reader’s copy of this civil war novel. That was until I read it. Talk about being The Meh.

I’ve tried to read Didion’s non-fiction before, and gave up before I smothered myself with the dust jacket. Man, it’s boring. However, since her latest chronicle about dealing with her husband’s sudden death while her only child was in a coma in a hopsital was receiving such accolades I decided to try it again.

I hate to kick an author when she’s down, but I still don’t see what everyone is raving about. It was basically a recounting of things that would only interest me if it had been my own mother or someone else I was close to. Otherwise, it just seemed like I was reading someone’s diary when I shouldn’t. I felt like I was invading her privacy, and listening to thoughts and feelings that weren’t universally relateable. Or maybe they’re just not to me since I’ve never lost a husband of twenty years. Either way - Meh.

The next book I was going to read was Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Memories of My Melancholy Whores.” Wouldn’t that be a menage a trois of depression? Fortunately, my order for that hasn’t come in yet so I will have to venture into, hopefully, happier territory.

Seeing as Ms. Hinton wrote one of my favorite books from when I was a teenager, I was very excited to start Hawkes Harbor. That excitement lasted… all the way up until I actually began the actual reading of it. Hinton definitely didn’t Stay golden as it were.

This is the third book involving vampires that I read this year, and by far the worst. Her telling from a man’s perspective no longer works for me. Even the situations that didn’t involve the undead, seemed very unrealistic to me. She had characters of both genders acting in ways that just didn’t seem believable. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, because about three fourths of the way through I started caring enough about the characters to see it through the end. However, it was still completely disappointing.

But then again, I also loved Theodore Dreiser’s ‘American Tragedy’ when I was younger so perhaps it’s only my past taste that is to blame.

“One difference between genre crime fiction and literary fiction is that the first kind of book is usually concerned with what happens to the people who commit crimes while the second cares more about the people they hurt. Although Kate Atkinson’s addictive “Case Histories” has three murders and a detective in it, it’s really an exploration of the loss, grief and misplaced guilt that torment three clients who hire Jackson Brodie, an irresistibly grumpy divorced father working as a private investigator in Cambridge, England.” -Salon

That’s it! I am not reading another STINKING book on Salon’s Top Ten list no matter how much they try to draw me in by comparing it to something Lorrie Moore might write. Honestly, I thought such untruthful comparisons were outlawed by the Supreme Court in the 1980s. Every time I read the back of a book to see some reviewer touting the author as some aborted love child of James Thurber, Dorothy Parker and the crumbs from lunch on Alexander Woolcott’s face I want to wretch. I’m being disenfranchised here!

Salon was right on one thing: Case Histories is addictive. The first three chapters is about a different heartbreaking story which dramatically changes everyone who is in involved. Then, in the fourth chapter a private investigator, who is eventually given these three cases (although some have taken place decades before the current time), is introduced. By the middle of the novel, I was HOOKED. So hooked that I didn’t notice that it was slowly going downhill until it just hit me with an incident that reminded me of the bad detective Advance Reader’s Copy which my father would give me to read when I was in high school to keep me from my back seat
torturing of my sister during long family roadtrips. (Ahh, hot vinyl and the dirty hippie - it makes my fingers convulsively pinch just thinking about it.)

There are these three mysteries which were all extensively investigated by the police and heavily touted in the media. Yet, here comes a private investigator- the kind who has slept with most of his women clients by the time the book is finished - who is able to solve all of them without much work or intuitive insight. All the pieces just easily slide in together. The way that the elements of some cases tie into others proved to be way too convenient to be believable.

In the end, it wasn’t just a matter of it being a book I disliked. The first half enraptured me and had such promise. I felt cheated and disappointed by the end. I want my money and my time back! Heaven knows I missed some ebay auction of a darling cloche which would complete my life so much more than a miserable book would.