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The Careful Use of Compliments
by Alexander McCall Smith
The fourth installment of the enchanting, already beloved, bestselling Isabel Dalhousie series.
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The Best Recent Reader Reviews |
To write your own review, simply click on the "Reader Review" link from any book review or book excerpt page at BookBrowse. |
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Tree of Smoke
by
Denis Johnson
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9/5/2008: First, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and it rests now in the Vietnam section of my library (the insanity of the whole Vietnam thing fascinates me). My comments are that it would have been a much better book had the excesses of imagination had the benefit of a kind but firm editor. Within this were at least two other, good, separate books.
Some of the wildness of American behaviour there comes through, and makes one very worried about those present day forces now spread over 750+ bases... |
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Midwives
by
Chris Bohjalian
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9/5/2008: At first I thought this was a Young Adult book, being narrated by a teen, but the language didn't ring true for YA. Nor does it fit into Mystery or Adult Fiction because of the teenage narrator. While I agree it's suspenseful, there's a withheld piece of information that made me swear I'll never read another book by this author. I felt cheated and disappointed at the end of the... |
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Second Glance
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Jodi Picoult
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8/30/2008: I am an avid reader across all genres but this one I had to really force myself to finish. The reason why I picked this book up was because of My Sisters Keeper (somber, yet extraordinarily compelling) by same author.
I am a huge fan of the supernatural, ghosts etc. and yet this had so much (supernatural stuff) in it, it got to be really really hokey.
It had a lot of characters with strange names to keep straight and jumped around a lot...you don't want to do a lot of putting down... |
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All Over But The Shoutin'
by
Rick Bragg
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8/20/2008: Simply put, this book is delicious... almost as wonderful as the homemade lemonaid squeezed into the white enamel pitcher, and drank off the blue-grey painted porch at my grandmother's home place. Yes, the cotton was there also - piled high and wide, just begging to be jumped into. No mint juleps there either, although they have come since.. Wonderfully written story. A true... |
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The Cellist of Sarajevo
by
Steven Galloway
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8/16/2008: This book is marred by the absence of editing and many language howlers (his movement is slow and stiff -- digestive system still not working?). The female sniper is lifted from the world of action comic books, where she's meant to appeal to the imagination and sexual fantasies of teenage boys (of any age). Even her nickname, Arrow, comes straight from DC. The novel exploits tragedy to hop on the bandwagon of political fiction, but there is no real sense that the author has any understanding... |
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Memoirs of a Geisha
by
Arthur Golden
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8/16/2008: I am a fussy reader. Really, really fussy. If a book doesn't have me entertained within the first three sentences then that's it and I am gone. However there came to be a difference with 'Memoirs of a Geisha', it has a quality of elegance in it's style of writing and it's grasp of Japanese culture. This book was beyond amazing, and truly the best fiction novel I have ever read in my life. Worth every word to read and leaves you smiling when it's finished. The memoirs of Sayuri and her journey... |
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Rain Fall
by
Barry Eisler
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8/14/2008: John Rain is a complex character; I am still not sure if he is a good guy (how can a cold blooded, for money, killer be good?) or a really bad guy? He saves people he likes, but, he kills others without second thought (one though who truly deserves it). Will he continue killing for money, or will he kill for other reasons? Does it matter? Will he stop killing? Will he find true love? Does that matter?
I do know one thing…I AM looking forward to the next adventure and learning more about... |
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A Great and Terrible Beauty
by
Libba Bray
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8/13/2008: A Great and Terrible Beauty has everything I've looked for in a book: fantasy, a bit of mystery, historical fiction, and true to life characters. The girls were around my age, which made it more interesting. It's extremely well written! It opened my eyes to what a girl's life was like in Victorian times. (I think you have to be at least 12 or 13 to understand some of the more complicated sequences in the book, though). I have never read anything like this before, it's intriguing, compelling,... |
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All The Pretty Horses
by
Cormac McCarthy
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8/11/2008: This book, and the other two in the Border Trilogy, captured my heart from the beginning. McCarthy does a fabulous job with character development, so you feel like you really know the main character and understand how he thinks as he comes of age. To top this off, what impressed me most is McCarthy's ability to describe the land, the people in it, the animals, the sky, etc. There are very few books where I really feel as if I'm place, but All the Pretty Horses took me from the U.S. to Mexico... |
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The Glass Castle
by
Jeannette Walls
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8/5/2008: I must say that I truly enjoyed the telling of this story even though it was as one reviewer described it, a 'train wreck that you can't get off'. It was touching and it was very telling about the state that a lot of young children in this country are in.
There are comments about the book saying it doesn't sound plausible, that it is impossible for her to remember the conversations she had at such young ages. My answer to that is that this woman apparently had a very trying childhood, one... |
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Absolute Friends
by
John Le Carre
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8/4/2008: A book that can be enjoyed on several levels, as ever with Le Carre, from the quality of the prose, & the depth of the characters, to the complexity of the plot; and yet, unusually for Le Carre, a thinly veiled personal political statement on contemporary international affairs using the world he knows and writes about so authoritatively, espionage, to tell a tale and also to clearly send his message. Whether one does or doesn't agree with the author's blast at what he sees as the American and... |
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A Patchwork Planet
by
Anne Tyler
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8/3/2008: Anne Tyler is a great writer, no doubt. Her book, A Patchwork Planet is a great read but I found the ending somewhat unsatisfactory. At the beginning he admired Sophia's "definiteness" and routines and were an influence on his own journey. I got a sense that he used her. And, I cannot see anyone who claims he is honest and trusting, going into someone's house and taking what is not his, for any reason. He was definitely taking a chance by breaking the law (again). A little bit... |
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My Sister's Keeper
by
Jodi Picoult
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7/31/2008: This is the only book I have ever read that actually made me cry uncontrollably. It was one of those silent cries that you just can't stop and the tears pour like rain from your eyes. I'm not a cryer and this book changed that. This book is absolutely fabulous and extremely well written, making the book impossible to put down. The ending was out of left field, I never saw it coming; there is no way anyonee could predict what happens. I highly recommend this to Jodi Picoult fans and... |
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The True and Outstanding Adventures of The Hunt Sisters
by
Elisabeth Robinson
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7/28/2008: The first thing that attracted me to this book was the cover. I know you should never judge a book by the cover, but in this case it was a good choice. I loved that there was a young girl dancing around. Throughout the whole book I was in awe and I couldn't put the book down. I made this book my bus book which toward the end, made for a lovely display of tears. I must say that every second and page of the book was spilling with unique and witty writing. Each character was compelling and I felt... |
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The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
by
Brady Udall
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7/26/2008: I love the idea of Edgar living his life in reverse, going from severe almost unendurable hardship to come "home" and be a child, something he deserved in the first fifteen years of his life. A refreshing and poignant ending. I was rooting for Edgar all along the way, praying perhaps that Art would be his dad, but the finding of Rosa was even better. Hope I didn't spoil the ending, readers. Once I started this book, I could not put it down. The characters are fully developed . The incidents... |
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