You can't turn back time...
But you can indulge yourself with this book! An interesting story following the lives of four former Harvard roomates leading up to and including their 20th anniversary. The characters have so much depth. I saw a part of myself in each character. It's a story to make you realize that you can't go back to life as it was in college but you can learn from life's mistakes for a better future. Highly enjoyable and addictive read!
Rated of 5
by Marsha S. (Nags Head, NC)
The Red Book
When I first started reading this book, I was sure I would not enjoy it. Oh boy, I thought, another reunion story about a bunch of privilege, self-centered yuppies who wasted all the gifts they were given. But for some reason, I couldn't stop reading it and soon found some sympathetic characters with whom I could identify on some level. It is a well-written book and the author did a great job of making the characters come to life in a way that kept me engaged and eventually even caring about what became of them! I would recommend it to anyone as an entertaining and fairly quick read.
Rated of 5
by Sarah N. (Corte Madera, CA)
Enjoyed the book
The Red Book by Deborah Copaken Kogan kept me reading straight to the end. I really connected with the characters and wanted to know more about them.
Rated of 5
by Rebecca J. (Knoxville, TN)
The red book
Every section starts out with some Harvard alumni's bios of what they had been doing the past five years since the last "Red Book" had come out. Then there is a reunion with some of the aforementioned students. Good concept but I wish the author had not included bios of characters who weren't in the book. I got a bit overwhelmed with all the names. Good story but a bit soapy. I did enjoy the epilogue which included entries in the Red Book that appeared 5 years after the novel ended.
Rated of 5
by Elisabeth W. (Durham, NC)
The Red Book
I enjoyed The Red Book, but felt the author worked too hard to make it PC and created too many convenient situations. The group of four women featured in the story were a little hard to believe as a friend group - a privileged WASP, a short Jewish girl, a black girl who grew up in a CA commune and a Vietnamese girl adopted by an American soldier. I had not heard of Harvard's Red Book and enjoyed the author's use of mock Red Book entries to frame each character's past and future. I think this book is targeted to women 35 - 60 who enjoy books in upper middle class or academic settings.
Rated of 5
by Laura P. (Atlanta, GA)
The Red Book
This 20th college reunion story (Harvard '89) uses the practice of publishing a reunion book ("THe Red Book") as a foil for the story of 4 college roommates whose lives are very different from the images they choose to project. The characters cover the spectrum of racial, sexual, and national categories, and touch on pretty much every controversial social issue out there - same sex marraige, abortion, pre- and extra-marital sex, sex change surgery, May-December relationships are all there. WIth a boatload of characters, Kogan is able to do very little actual character development, and few of the characters she focuses most on are sympathetic. (It's hard to feel too sorry for the producer's wife who might have to sell her second home in Antibes.) On the plus side, though, the writing is more than competent and it's really hard to put the book down. I would take it to the beach in a heartbeat, but I will not be recommending it to my rather serious book group.
Rated of 5
by Debra L. (Deerfield, IL)
The Red Book
This was an average chicklit book. The characters were interesting, but their stories not so much. I liked the idea of Harvard college friends going to their reunion, but the story never went anywhere.This would be a vacation read!
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Two Lives is a memoir written by international best-selling author, Vikram Seth. In this interesting and engaging book, Seth writes about his great...
read more
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Judge rules unused Borders gift cards to be worthless(May 23 2013) Borders owes nothing to holders of roughly $210.5 million of gift cards that had not been used by the time the bookstore chain shut down, a Manhattan federal...
Full Story
of 5
by Sarah H. (Belford, NJ)
of 5
by Laura P. (Atlanta, GA)
