Tag Archives: book review

Bleak House Day 1 – Overview

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(Note – I read the book “blind”, that is with no idea what it contained.  I wrote the essays immediately after reading, so they are first impressions.)

This first real post of the challenge is just a quick review of the book, looking at it from a few angles.

The main story of Bleak House follows a civil lawsuit, Jarndyce and Jarndyce.  From the beginning we find out that this has been going on for decades and most of the principal players are long dead.  Although this is, in ways, the primary story and goes from beginning to end, in other ways it is just the glue that holds the rest of the book together.

There are many smaller stories and subplots, but the main story, after the lawsuit, is that of Lord and Lady Dedlock, and particularly Lady Dedlock and some mysteries surrounding this lady.  Oh, and Esther’s story, of course, but her story is in many ways just incidental to the main story lines of the law suit and Lady Dedlocks mysteries (I introduced Lady Dedlock and her mysteries here.)

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Final Thoughts on Little Dorrit

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Charles Dickens at his Desk in 1858 – This was from Wikimedia and I make no claim to ownership

OK, confession time – I did not finish Little Dorrit until last night.  I have a lot of excuses (other reading, a huge amount of writing, etc.) but for the most part they are just that, excuses. 

Anyway, when I was about three-quarters of the way through, I drew up a list of talking points.  Well, after finishing, I have some other things to say…. I will mention these talking points, I just won’t spend as much time with them as planned.  Still, maybe I will spend too much time on them ;) (long post warning…)

One thing that I noticed when I was deep into the book was that Dickens had spent the first 100 pages or so (my copy had 787 pages) just introducing characters and planting a few seeds of plot and subplot.  When I started reading, I only did a few pages at a time, usually before going to bed.  The problem was that there was no plot or substance to get my teeth into at first and so it was a real chore getting through the first 200 pages – I spent almost 4 months on those pages and less than 4 days on the other 587 pages!

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Goodreads Review of Seasons of Imagination

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A couple of weeks ago I received a great review for Seasons of Imagination on Goodreads and I totally forgot to put up a post to brag about it to let you know about it.  the review came from Carol Masciola, whose book The Yearbook (in my words, a YA time travel romance with a physiological edge) I reviewed last November. Continue reading →

Book Review: Possibilities – Herbie Hancock with Lisa Dickey

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If you were to ask people to list the five greatest living jazz musicians, Herbie Hancock would make it onto most people’s list.  If you asked for the top ten jazz musicians, those with the greatest influence, of all time, he would make more than a few lists.  If you are of a certain age you might remember his pop/jazz/hip-hop crossover hit, Rockit, its great video and the MTV Award presentation.  If you are a keyboardist of a certain age you may consider his solo on the song Chameleon as one of the greatest analog synthesizer solos ever recorded.  And many know him from his days as the pianist from Miles Davis’ Second Great Quintet.  I would say that in many ways Herbie Hancock was the great inheritor of the Miles Davis legacy.  Miles never stood still, and claimed to have “reinvented jazz five or six times”.  Herbie followed in his footsteps by never following in anybody’s footsteps, including his own.  His music constantly shifted and changed.  Sure, he did occasionally do a little nostalgia, like the whole VSOP thing, but for the most part he tried to do something different ever few years.  Remember, this is a man who has won fourteen Grammys and an Oscar, and has received many other honors.

Being a music lover who is into jazz I had to read his autobiography, Possibilities. Continue reading →

Book(s) Review – Imperial Radch Series (Ancillary Justice, Sword and Mercy)

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There are a few things that I need to talk about before I begin this review.  First, the review is for three books, Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, the three books in Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch Trilogy.  Or is it the first three books of her Imperial Radch Series?  I believe it’s a trilogy, but time will tell.

I try to make sure there are no spoilers in my reviews.  In this one I take it to an extreme.  There is something you will figure out in the first chapter or two of the first book, Ancillary Justice.  It is perhaps the core idea of the series.  But to me it was a “wow, very cool!” moment when I discovered it.  I’d feel evil if I took that moment away from you.  I am going to talk about things you’ll find out along the way, but they aren’t the “Wow, very cool!” type things as this fundamental concept of the author’s universe.

One thing you’ll figure out later in the book is what the names of the books are about.  In this universe an “ancillary” is a human body that is controlled by another intelligence as part of a larger, cohesive unit.  The “bigger” intelligence is usually an artificial intelligence of a ship.  That isn’t a great definition, but will do to get you started.  And what are the ships that have these “ancillaries” tied into their network? There are generally three types that are important in the books (again, with a grain of salt), all three being armed military ships with the ancillaries being used, in one role, as soldiers.  The three ships are the huge troop carriers, the Justices (i.e., like the first book), the much smaller, faster Swords (second book) and the Mercies (third book).  I’m not sure exactly what a Mercy is except that it isn’t as well armed as a Sword, at least not for ship to ship combat.  So, we have three ship types and three books with the ships in the title, which, at least in part, is where my guess that the series will stop at a trilogy comes from. Continue reading →

Book Review – Neil Gaiman American Gods

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A month or so back my sister posted a trailer for a new Starz series called “American Gods”.  I asked about it and her response was, “Are you kidding me!?! You haven’t read the book!?!”  Sorry, no.  Well, she told me it was a must read, particularly since my main genre, at least for my books, is urban fantasy.  So I read it….

First, a little administrative task: I need to tell you that the book I read was the “Author’s preferred text”, 10th anniversary edition.  It has been edited from the original release and some material that was removed (like 15,000 words) was added back in.

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The book American Gods begins with the main character, Shadow, waiting to be released from prison after serving for three years.  With an introduction to some of his fellow prisoners you get the idea that it was memories of his wife that made his time in jail bearable.  As he waits for his release, the tension in the air increases, like a storm brewing on the horizon.  With just a couple of days to go he is called down to see the warden.  He is told that he is being realized early.  Why?  Because his wife had died in an auto accident.  The woman who made the wait worth it would not be there for him.  On his way home to the funeral he bumps into a mysterious man.  This is a meeting that will totally change his life, change his life and more, much, much more…

OK, that’s how it begins.  I don’t want to get too deep into it because I don’t’ want to let the cat out of the bag about the premise of the book.  “Premise” might be the wrong word.  There is a truth behind the people Shadow meets both in his real life and in his strange dreams.  As a piece of “speculative fiction”, there is one thing you have to believe to make it real.  It isn’t the biggest secret of the book and most reviewers will tell you up front what it is.  I mean, just look at the title.  I don’t want to let it out because it is fun to discover it at the same pace Shadow does.  No, it really wouldn’t be a spoiler if I told you, particularly since the whole book is about it and you’ll find out sooner than later, I just don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun. Continue reading →

Book Review – The Yearbook

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“The Yearbook” by Carol Masciola

Lola Lundy was more than a misfit. After her mentally ill mother’s suicide she was hustled off from foster home to foster home, usually leaving by running away. She was a poor student who had a criminal record. Not edgy enough to be cool she just did what she needed to do to survive. Shortly after arriving in the Ohio rust-belt city where her mother had ended her life, Lola slipped into the school library in an attempt to escape attention and be left alone. This was the start of an adventure that thrust her back to the town’s heyday of 1923 where she was different enough to gain attention. One of the people who noticed her was the handsome, studious Peter. Lola thought she had found her soulmate, but before she could go on she was whisked back to the present.

Was it a dream? Perhaps she was going insane, like her mother. Maybe she just needed a place of refuge where she could fit in and perhaps the still growing, clean city of the 1920s, where everything seemed possible, was just the place her mind needed to go. To Lola, however, it was perfectly clear. She believed she really did go back in time and was desperate to return, desperate to find her true love who she had left almost ninety years behind.

The Yearbook is a YA novel by Carol Masciola. It might be described as a time travel romance with a psychological edge. Continue reading →

Book Review – Silk for the Feed Dogs

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“Silk for the Feed Dogs”, a novel by Jackie Mallon, follows Irish farmer’s daughter Kat Connelly as she works her way through the fashion world from the “fashion” house of a bottom feeder in London to the top of high fashion in Milan, all the while showing glimpses of this world from an insider’s point of view.

I’m sure a lot of people are currently asking why I read a book about the fashion world. A sense of style that I like drew me into this book that had at least a bit to do with the main character’s sense of style. In my case, I fell in love with Ms. Mallon’s illustrations for the book. Continue reading →

Deception – A Book Review

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“Deception” is a novel written by fellow blogger Eloise De Sousa.

A very bad day is made much worse when the tardy Amanda is called into her boss’ office.   With the first not-what-you-think twist of the novel, Amanda is given news of her parents’ death back in Africa. For the first time in her five years of hiding in England Amanda is forced to confront her secret past. She must return to Africa to take care of family obligations, but is persuaded to make it a working trip. To make matters worse, she finds a very strong attraction to the handsome stranger she’s paired up with on her trip to Harare, Zimbabwe.

So begins Eloise De Sousa’s “Deception”, a novel that combines the genres of Romance with Suspense. Continue reading →