Poetry of Reading

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Synopsis:

“Here’s a secret few men will admit out loud. On the inside, most of us feel small, stupid, and weak no matter what our size or how old we are. You become a man when you realize none of that matters. Only what we do matters. A man of Rome will do his duty even when he feels broken inside.”

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My Review:

“If the river has a soul, it's a peaceful one. If it has a lesson to impart, that lesson is patience. There will be drought, it says; there will be floods; the ice will form, the ice will melt; the water will flow and blend into the river's brackish mouth, then join the ocean between Lewes and Cape May, endlessly, forever, amen.” 

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Synopsis:

My Review:

“There was a time when I thought I could change everything. I have learned the hard way that we only have so much strength: better to use it for fights where we stand a chance of winning.” 

2013

✬✬✬✬ This book offers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of Dominican immigrants in the US, and the lives of their parents and grandparents in the Dominican Republic under the tyrannical rule of Trujillo. It’s a somewhat modern coming of age story mixed with historical fiction, and the author does a nice job of joining the two plots together in the end. The writing is superb, but I found the persistent sci-fi and fantasy references distracting from the progress of the narration.

2014

✬✬✬✬ Despite period language, morals, and customs which may seem unusual or odd to modern readers, this is one of the most powerful depictions of both dysfunctional families and the damage poor parenting causes to children and the power of obsessive love ever written. None of the main characters are particularly “likable,” yet Heathcliff and Cathy are memorably portrayed. The descriptive passages are often too long, but every time I thought of stopping reading I couldn’t let go of the storyline.

2015

✬✬✬✬✬ This is historical fiction at its best. The author does a superb job of recreating a time and place and creating a story around two historical figures that ring true with every word. The relationship between Gustav and Emilie is captivating, but where the author shines is in describing the creative processes of the artists in this mesmerizing story.

✬✬✬✬ “The Red Queen” by Philippa Gregory is a story, part history, part fiction, part speculation of the life of Margaret Beaufort during the English War of the Roses in the 15th Century. Margaret’s ambition for her son to become the King of England (Henry VII) is full of plots, intrigues, and murders. In a time when women had little power or control in their lives, Margaret maneuvers through family situations and courtly infighting.

✬✬✬✬ This is a tale of love and lust. Ms. Kimm does an excellent job of spinning the strings together to create a compelling story of love gone wrong and lust unsatisfied. At least within the confines of the marriage of Lucrezia and Alfonse. That does not mean it isn’t found elsewhere. Based on the poem by Robert Browning called, His Last Duchess, Ms. Kimm recreates the sixteenth century in its glory.

✬✬✬✬✬ The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood is a magnificent book of small stories. One will discover this book gives an ocean of emotions and entertainment. Some of the adventures you will laugh at because of the hilarious mischievous side to Robin Hood and his band of merry men. If you want amusement and laughter this is an excellent book. Adventurous trips are also plentiful in this book. Some may want blood and guts adventure but this book provides more of innocent adventures that include wit, charm, strategy, and deception.

✬✬✬ Medieval Venice and its Jewish Ghetto and the rest of Venice is fascinating, the story reads quickly, like a good soap, which is what I thought it was. Each chapter ends with our heroine about to confront another crisis, that we never doubt she will overcome, even when it’s gynecological or obstetrics.

✬✬✬ A historical novel of religion, war, and politics set in 13th century Spain and the Holy Land, The Crusader takes on complex themes like killing in the name of the Lord, and ambition and greed within the Church. My big complaint with the book was that the ending sizzled out. It almost felt as if the author got tired of writing it and decided just to report on important happenings instead of fleshing them out. If you are a fan of the Crusades, however, you will find this an entertaining.

✬✬✬✬ 'Missing You' is a well-written, beautiful, heart-warming story that really had me captivated from start to finish; not a light chick-lit read, but definitely one worth picking up.

2016

✬✬✬✬✬ I cherish this book. You have to love this story. I think we all fell in love with Tom Hanks and the movie, but the book blows it away! If you liked the movie, you have to check out this book, it will have you laughing and in tears.

✬✬✬✬✬ Karin Slaughter is an extremely gifted writer. Undone is one of those stories that will draw you in and won’t let go even after the last page is turned. Karin Slaughter does so much research so her stories are super accurate in detail. I have to say that at least once or twice, Undone is so intense and graphics that I had to set it down and go for a walk. The mental images created by Undone are so crystal clear and just flow along with the story. The writing is just that good.

                              

2017

✬✬✬ The story itself is good, but it wasn’t developed well enough. I didn’t think the characters were developed as well as they could have been. Yes, there is a murder mystery, yes there is a great love story, but it didn’t touch me the way I was hoping it would.

✬✬✬✬✬ The author paints a wonderful image of early Renaissance Florence, from the struggles over religion to the artistic improvements. But the scenery never overpowers the story of two couples moving through that world, Cosimo and Contessina and Cosimo’s younger brother and his wife, Ginevra.

✬✬✬ This book was a big disappointment. The Boston Girl could have been a wonderful book - the general storyline was pleasing. However, the book was written so simplistically, like it was targeting readers with a minimal attention span. Chapters were short and character development was minimal. If you’re looking for a book to flip through quickly, and you don’t want to concentrate - this may be the book for you.

✬✬✬ Night in Shanghai has a fascinating premise. Thomas Greene, an African-American jazz musician lives in Shanghai in the 1930s, experiencing freedom he could never find in the US. He becomes involved with a Chinese woman who is linked up with Chinese gangsters, but it takes a long time for that relationship to develop and the gangster subplot is not developed and seems misplaced. The character development in this novel is not strong enough for the reader to develop any connection with the story.

✬✬✬✬ This book is brutally honest, and it was almost unbearably dark at times. It follows the stories of two half-sisters born in Africa, who never met and were unaware of each other’s existence, who became separated first by circumstance, then by culture and eventually by the Atlantic ocean. One sister lives in comparative luxury while the other is sold into slavery. The story follows not just the sisters’ paths but those of their respective descendants, exploring how each generation is shaped by the one that came before.

✬✬ The concept of the book sounded fascinating, and I liked the fact it was woven around an adventure story. After reading the first chapter I was hooked and optimistic about a good, enlightening read . However, as the book progressed, I became frustrated with the rather overblown writing style and before long the book became a burden rather than a pleasure to read. Although I thought it had a number of interesting ideas, I feel the subject would have been better explored in more of a common textbook style rather than using a story format which I felt was a little false and impeded the learning points, rather than increasing them. Also, for a self-help book to work as a story it helps if the characters are ones you can care about, which I didn’t feel was the case with this book.

✬✬✬✬✬ I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Duffy’s enthralling story and congratulate her on bringing Theodora to life for all of her readers. This is a book about a historical figure, but also about strength. The strength of women, the strength of the poor, the strength of history. I have learned much in this novel and newly appreciate what it must have been like to be a woman in ancient times.

✬✬✬ I thought the story was powerful and one can’t help but empathize with the characters and what they had to go through as Jews during World War II. It was well written and an interesting story of life for some who came to Israel, still in its infancy, after the war. But somewhere along the line, the narrative got to be repetitive, and I longed for a plot that would have followed the characters after they continued their lives in Israel.

✬✬✬✬✬ The sequel to the early years of Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore, continues the biographical, fictional account as the married royals have sat on the throne for a couple of years before this tale begins. Storyline brings to life the Byzantine Empire during the early reign of Justinian and Theodora as they learn governance while dealing with threats to their kingdom and their rule. The Purple Shroud is a fabulous ancient historical tale.

✬✬✬✬✬ A wonderfully observed and written book, about the love of science, writing, nature, and the human side of a historical figure that remains fascinating to this day. This fictionalization gives a good introduction to some of the Descartes ideas and is great for learning about another woman whose place in history has only been a footnote until now. A great read recommended to those who love historical fiction and are intrigued by Descartes and XVII century Holland.

       

2018

  

✬✬ I’ve been a big fan of Eloisa James for some time now but her recent book, The Duke is Mine, was just not up to her usual standards! There wasn’t much character development and the plot itself was carelessly constructed and difficult to believe.

     

✬✬✬  The quality of the writing is lovely, it disappointed me in several ways: I found the plot both trite and predictable, and the characters almost cardboard in their lack of development.

 

✬✬✬ We’ll Meet Again was a book that when I started reading it grabbed my attention, but then it became like a never-ending story. I think some chapters weren’t even needed in the book. However, the whole book was very suspenseful, the ending shocked me.

      

 

✬✬✬✬✬ A great history of the Romanov dynasty. Well researched and written. Sweeping in scope, entertaining and captivating story-telling. Extremely insightful about the politics and personalities of 300 years of Russian history.

                          

✬✬✬ It is a love story with enough mystery, exotic landscape, and variable climate to keep it interesting, even intriguing. There are numerous twists and turns in the story-line that verge on predictable, which is not distracting. One or two aspects of the story-line left me bewildered because such circumstances and outcomes, as intriguing as they are, just do not fit into the real world of statistical probability.

✬✬✬✬ I found this book slow to start, but once the stage was set, it picked up the pace and became a page-turner. Descriptions of horrible discrimination in earlier police forces were forefront. While reading, it's difficult to imagine how bad it was for anyone who was not a straight white male, tolerated the circumstances to join and remain on a force like this.

✬✬✬ It’s not that I didn’t like this book, I didn’t love it. This book lacked depth. The characters were well developed but the development of the plot was carried out in a simplistic form of writing. There were plenty of challenges faced by all the characters in the book. It presented each conflict in an organized manner, one at a time. Conflict presented, conflict resolved, all neatly and easily.

✬✬✬✬ This was a good entertaining read. Likable characters and suspenseful plot. Some graphic descriptions. If you have issues with graphic killings then this is not for you.

2019

✬✬✬ This book was fun to read - I read it quickly and enjoyed it, but I feel like Niffenegger did not follow through with the story’s potential. Her concept is fabulous, but there was so much more than she could have done with it.

✬✬✬  I enjoyed parts of this book, which was a quick read, I felt it did not do more than skim the surface of this critical event in world history. The author repeated himself as he tried to build to the suspense of the family’s last days, especially when referencing the hidden jewels and foreshadowing of the final hours, and how the general population may have felt towards the Tsar and Tsarina. Again, too little depth. There is a little bit of a surprise ending, but I was not engaged enough with the characters to feel strongly about it.

✬✬ The plot is about the paint staking process researches go through to find a lost painting and the pace of this book is just as painfully slow. I finished it but had to force myself to just keep reading.

✬✬ This is hard to read, the pace is very slow with nothing happening for large parts of the book; it was a real struggle to get through the first half, the second half is better but still not good.

✬✬✬✬ I very much enjoyed this book. Magical abilities are unique and interesting, but they aren’t overwhelmingly powerful, which I prefer. The book itself is a well-written, and our protagonist, Fitz, is unlike most characters I’ve read and yet still realistic and likable. The end was very satisfying. It wasn’t a happy ending, but it wasn’t a sad or terrible one either.

✬✬✬✬ This novel was provided free by the author for an honest review. A delightful book to read. The first few chapters were a little slow, but after the speed bump, the pace picks up till the end. It’s well written, with a brilliant, interesting, entertaining, futuristic story. Full of adventure and intrigue and is worth including to your reading. I’d recommend this book to anyone who enjoys classic Sci-Fi novels.

✬✬✬ Excellent research behind this novel that reads more like a history book. The story behind the women emigrating drew me into the book to want to discover the next episode and then the next. What I found disturbing about the progress of each chapter was that I sometimes lost track of who I was following within the chapter because of the devise the author was using to illustrate her story. She used some very interesting writing devises within the book to carry the story forward, some of which were very successful, some I thought were less so.

✬✬  I wanted to like this. The period, the location, even the strangeness of the central character all tweaked my interest and desire to finish the book; which I did. But the constant, precipitous context changes became annoying and distracting.

✬✬✬ I found the two main characters fascinating; I found it irritating to read pages and pages about a myriad of minor characters who had none role whatsoever in the story’s development. Carey makes hyper-realistic descriptions of everybody and one page later they are lost forever. However, there are characters I want to know more about, about their circumstances and fate, including Lucinda herself, and they are just left behind as if there were not important either. I have a feeling of frustration rather than amazement at the final development of the story.

✬✬ The beginning of the book was interesting. By the time you get to the middle of the book, you have a rather clear suspicion of what has happened. The following pages only support the suspicion. The suspect’s and facts could have been better evaluated to offer a little of additional “confusion” and take the reader of a single tracked.

✬✬ Portraits of a Marriage is well written and gives you glimpse into life in Hungary during the times of WWII. I couldn’t stand reading it, though, because the characters were hopelessly shallow and depressing.

✬✬✬✬  I enjoyed this book. It gives a fascinating view of Chinese life before the revolution and a good insight into their way of thinking, customs and attitudes. The book provided great material for discussion on topics like the role of sex in marriage relationships between men and women, parental control of children and the roles of women traditionally and today.

✬✬✬✬ A great novel which provides insight into Japanese culture & the bombing of Nagasaki and telling a heart-wrenching story about a mother coming to terms with her relationship with and subsequent loss of her daughter and grandson.

✬✬✬✬ A superb read which includes adventure, love, and a wonderful glimpse into the world of colonial India at the time of the opium wars with China. Ghosh’s portrayal of shipboard life on a schooner is fascinating, although often grim.

✬✬✬✬ This is a real page-turner of a book. Kingsolver takes you into the jungle with all its sight and smells. You feel empathy with all the characters because she offers you all point of view. As historical fiction melded with real historical figures, you come to understand why present-day Africa is such a basket case and it’s not because of the ordinary people of Africa but rather the colonizers, who had their own agendas, sometimes well-meaning but mostly rapacious.

✬✬✬✬✬ What can I say about the Harry Potter books that haven’t already been said? This is a great fantasy, with a lot of unexpected twists and turns, excellent character development, an engaging story, and ‘bad guys’ that aren’t just one-dimensional Any fantasy fan - or reader of any kind - absolutely needs to read this series.

✬✬✬ The main theme of this book is selfishness. The main characters are all hopelessly self-involved. There can be no romance because there doesn’t seem to be any actual love - strong feelings, maybe, but when someone is so selfish as to not care about the pain of the one they “love,” proving this over and over. Not a “love story” worth becoming invested in. There are some parts I was interested in, and I read through it pretty quickly, but there was SO much to be desired.

✬✬  It’s ok but not my cup of tea, the games played by polite society, husbands and wives pretending they don’t care for each other, etc made this difficult reading - I ended up skim reading quite a few chapters; seemed like a lot of unnecessary waffling.

✬✬✬✬ The author made Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth come alive in these pages. it was wonderful to see how people and places were during the early 1600s; I was very sorry to see this story end.

✬✬✬✬ I enjoyed this book. It was fascinating to read about all three Grey sisters. It was an interesting view of the Elizabethan court and the religious politics of the time; I also liked the way it portrayed Jane Grey as a snobbish little girl who had a lot of growing up to do as opposed to the Protestant saint she’s portrayed as.

✬✬✬✬ The story is about a woman’s pursuit to find happiness, love, and security. It is wonderfully written, and the characters are very flawed. I liked how the author portrays Victorian society and how society impacted the characters. Ophelia’s Muse is a haunting, lyrical, and tragic tale reminiscent of Shakespeare.

✬✬✬✬✬ Great book — There were lots of characters in this tale and it was a challenge keeping the French royal family straight at first. But the story ripped along with action, plotting, betrayals, and cruelties. Not a dull moment!

✬✬✬✬✬ The progression of Harry’s story from an 11-year-old just off to Hogwarts to a 17-year-old off to take down Voldemort is remarkable. Harry has matured, and yet he’s still a teenager, with his mercurial teenaged emotions and concerns. All of Harry’s friends have likewise matured. Excellent character development is one of J. K. Rowling’s gifts.

✬✬✬✬ The story starts a little slow, and the main character is a little flat at first, but I grew to love him as he grew to love life again. As he traces down the story to each of the charms on his deceased wife’s charm bracelet, he not only learns something about her and himself but touches the lives of the people he comes in contact with and leaves a lasting impression on their lives as well. A wonderfully crafted story told with heart. Many times it made me stop as assess different aspects of my own life, which is always an interesting addition to a fictional story.

✬✬ I was not a big fan of this book. I was confused a lot as to the identity of the characters and I kept waiting for the narrator to shock me. The story builds and then just fizzles out. Plus, I did not care about a single character in this book, a must when I am reading a novel.

✬✬✬✬ The Vow On The Heron is another of Jean Plaidy’s novels that excited me and brought me to a world I adore learning about. I was more engaged in this book than her others because of my great fascination for the fourteenth century, the good Queen Phillipa, the ambitious John of Gaunt, who is just mentioned in this book, and the beginning of the Hundred Years War.

✬✬✬✬ This book was an enjoyable read as it continues the plot started so excellently in the first book. The plot lines are a little more simplified and the book a little more predictable and with less intrigue, but still somewhat satisfying.

✬✬✬ This was okay read. I liked it well enough I finished it without difficulty but it wasn’t so gripping as to make me stay up past my bedtime. I had sort of like/dislike relationship with both the main characters because I didn’t care enough to either love or hate them.

✬✬ I thought it was a bit too predictable. The idea was good, but the execution wasn't to my taste.

✬✬✬✬ I enjoy stories based on “real people” and the lives they lead. This author has done a good job of presenting Pearl Buck’s life. At times the point of view she utilized—that of a childhood friend trapped the author. When the two friends are separated as adults your knowledge of Pearl becomes secondary to the friend’s day-to-day life. But it was an interesting, thoughtful story.

✬✬✬✬✬ ‘A Knight to Remember’ was a fast-paced, entertaining read with just the right amount of romance. As always, Christina Dodd doesn’t fail. I’ve always enjoyed her historical romances and mean to read many more. If you love stubborn knights, headstrong heroines and lots of action, then this is just the book for you.

✬✬✬ It was okay… The plot was predictable, and I didn’t believe a few situations, but it’s a good read for someone who just loves clean romance novels.

✬✬✬✬ One of the best first-person novels of a long-hidden heroine, beloved one of a misinterpreted and misunderstood hero. Great humor, and imagination, well written.

✬✬✬✬✬ This was a great addition to the series. I loved the character development, the humor, the touching, poignant way the two lead characters came together.

✬✬✬ This was a good account of the life of Margaret Queen of Scots that was written in fiction based on fact. She had a huge impact on Scotland and was a devoted Christian, Queen and mother. Many of her children ruled after her. Interesting story.

✬✬✬✬✬ A fast read. An overview of history for several centuries BC to 2013. Focuses on “world history” from the crossroads of the historic Silk Road. Written to be a fast read for the non-historian yet has lots of documentation for those wishing to go deeper.

✬✬ This was a slow read, and quite boring at times. I forced myself to finish it in the hopes that the storyline would unravel something interesting. Sadly, it didn't.

✬✬ The story line itself has some interesting bits but overall, the writing is very tedious. I continued to push on and read to the end in hopes it would improve - it didn’t.