Rated of 5
by Judith G. (Ewa Beach, HI) Sent to to the kitchen to bake...
This is a wonderful, poignant, illuminating tale of life on the African continent. I loved Angel...and she was indeed an angel to her friends and neighbors. The story is touching and alarming at the same time. How little we know of that 'dark continent' and the people who live 'normal' lives there. In addition to the Africa component I got hungry just reading the descriptions of her colorfully iced cakes. It only took parts of one day to read this. I didn't want to put it down once I started.
Rated of 5
by KR (Gilbert, AZ) Baking Cakes in Kigali
An episodic, breezy read in spite of its setting in a post-genocidal Rwanda - serious subjects are mentioned through euphemism (e.g. "the virus" instead of AIDS), and past traumas (like mass graves) appear in ways that seem, at times, heavy-handed.
There's a strong tendency to have the characters explain any necessary background / facts through the dialogue, which could strike some readers as being unnatural. The repetitive commentary about the Wazungus (white foreigners) was also a little simplistic - it's meant to be insightful, occasionally humorous, and sometimes critical, but doesn't begin to approximate the complexities a subject like race relations would have in a continent with a long colonial history - it's missing a genuine sense of reflection, bite, and pathos.
Recommended with reservations for readers seeking an entertaining story, but not for those expecting a deeper consideration of contemporary Rwanda.
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.
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
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...
read more
Can an wiser, older narrator view the past with more wisdom than he might have possessed forty years earlier in the summer he was thirteen? Ordinary...
read more
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...
Full Story
of 5
by Judith G. (Ewa Beach, HI) 
of 5
by KR (Gilbert, AZ) 
