Rated of 5
by avid what? when? who?
While there were some intriguing ideas expressed in this book, it just didn't have enough clarity for me to "get" the author's message(s). The commingling of actual and fictional history and geography really threw me for a loop. I never could get my bearings in either realm. Too much metaphor/parable also left me guessing about what direction the author was trying to get me to follow her in. And the ambiguous "girlfriend"? I suppose it doesn't really matter if it was a lesbian relationship or not, but why the ambiguity? I think this author has something to say, but I don't think she has really said it in this book.
Rated of 5
by Cynthia Great read - and a lot to think about afterward
This is a book you will be thinking about for weeks after you read it. The interwoven stories are fascinating, but the author leaves it to the reader to do a lot of the work of putting them together. The stories are metaphors for a larger theme, and I re-read many parts of the book at the end to figure out the overall meaning. I think that the author should probably have made her metaphors more apparent, but then again I have really enjoyed puzzling out my interpretation. The author is an incredible storyteller who can hold your interest even when you aren't sure where she is taking you.
Rated of 5
by inmyownopinion Boring.
I felt like this is a young writer aspiring to be like Hemingway: overly descriptive to the point of boredom, but unlike Hemingway in the sense that the dialogue is too short and she never seems to get to the point. It was like reading a story from a person with ADD, she jumped around a lot, and not in any way that made sense or seemed to pertain to the previous passage. And then she, without warning, goes back to the story she was telling five stories before. While her writing, when focused on one story, was descriptive and somewhat interesting, after getting 48 into the book, I still was not interested in continuing. To me, this book did not live up to the hype.
Rated of 5
by Diane S The Tigers Wife by Tea Obreht
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this book. It was exceptionally well written by one so young, a story about a young doctor, Natalia, who while on her way to an orphanage with inoculations finds out her beloved but terminally ill grandfather is dead. He was, however, in a place he should not have been and she sets out to find out why. She uses stories he had told her while growing up to help make sense of his death and the mystery of his location. In some places it got tiring reading about the old stories while trying to make sense of the new. Anyway I have mixed feelings about this book.
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism, and deep contradictions, at the heart of the Enlightenment.
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...
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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...
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Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
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U.S. ebook sales up in 2012, but rate of growth is slowing(May 16 2013) In 2012, trade book sales (i.e. non academic book sales) rose 6.9%, to $15.049 billion, and e-book sales continued to grow, although the rate of growth...
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by avid 
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by Cynthia 
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by Diane S 
