Thursday, May 8, 2008

April 18 Library Visit Review

Here are the library books I checked out a few weeks ago with my report on them:

Emil and Karl by Yankev Glatshteyn - Couldn't get into, didn't finish

Sacred Cows by Karen E. Olson - Couldn't get into, didn't finish

The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook - I loved the storyline of this book, but sometimes got bogged down in the reading of it. One of the characters, now an old man, is looking back at the time when he was in high school and a crime was committed. Through these flashbacks you kept getting bits and pieces of what happened back then. This is obviously done on purpose to add to the suspense and mystery of it all. But by page 100 or so, I just felt like GIVE ME THE DETAILS ALREADY!!! I would sometimes get so impatient to get to the bottom of it all that I would skim parts of the book. There was one last twist at the very end that surprised/shocked me. 4/5

March by Geraldine Brooks - Really loved parts of it, bored with others, not nearly as good at Year of Wonders. 3.5/5

A Vineyard in Tuscany by Ferenc Mate - Couldn't get into, didn't finish

The Book of Jane by Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt - Loved this book! I'm looking forward to reading the other 2 books by these authors (although one of them got some bad reviews on Amazon.com) 4.5/5

Gluten-free Girl by Shauna James Ahern - This book was pretty good. I'm not allergic to gluten or anything, the book just appealed to me. However I HATE to cook! This book would probably inspire most people to want to cook, but not me. :-) She certainly has a way of describing food. 3.5/5

After I checked these out, I also got Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Noble and Have You Found Her? by Janice Erlbaum. They were both holds that came in. Eat, Pray, Love was for a book club I am in with my 3 sisters, my cousin Lynn, and one other lady. If the book wasn't for the club, I would NOT have continued reading this book past the first few chapters. I didn't like the author at all and disagreed with just about all her beliefs and philosophies. I read the first 1/3, the part about when she in Italy. I skimmed the rest of the book.

Have You Found Her? is the sequel to Girlbomb that I read in early April. Despite the frequent use of the "F word" (I'm sorry but I just hate that word! It's so vulgar) and the disfunctional lifestyle of the author, I enjoyed Girlbomb. I liked Have You Found Her?just a bit better. The back cover promised a "bombshell" near the end and there definitely was one. I didn't expect it. 4/5

1 comment:

Joy said...

I plan on reading The Chatham School Affair, so I'm glad to read that you liked it. Sacred Cows was a difficult one to swallow.