Tag: book review

Book Review: Meternity

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

I grabbed Meternity by Meghann Foye off the readers choice shelf on a whim. Emily Giffin gave it a positive review on the front cover and I like Emily Giffin. Meternity kept me occupied in the airport and on the plane on our way home from SoCal.

I have super mixed feelings about this book. The premise is hysterical. A woman working at a mommy magazine is irritated that she constantly has to pick up the slack for working moms. That her opinions are always discounted because she doesn’t have any kids. Then at a meeting with her bosses she vomits and they think she’s pregnant so she goes with it. The idea is she will use the “maternity” time to launch her freelance career.

The vast majority of the book is about all the complications she runs into while lying for months on end to her employer (and the federal government). As well as all the opportunities that come her way, now that she is pregnant, from her employer.

I don’t want to give away the ending. But there’s all this build up and pop. In like two pages, the denouement. It was unsatisfying. Lie and commit fraud and magically you’ll get all you want? WTF?

And I think what bothers me most, is through out the whole book the main character blames everyone else, not taking responsibility for her own actions. And in the end, she is handed everything she wants. She doesn’t work for it. She doesn’t earn it. She’s still just a passive object in her own life.

This was super hard to rate, because I read it in one day and quite enjoyed it for like 250 pages and then disappointment began to set in as I didn’t see any growth or consequences.

Book Review: Maphead

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

I adore Ken Jennings. He has the same geeky sense of humor I do. I always find myself laughing in his books. Sometimes laughing so hard I can’t even explain to the hubs what I am laughing about. Maphead is pure Jennings amusement.

I picked this up thinking I might get a few nuggets of interesting information for the kiddos in my Geography class. I did that and a bit more. I was reading this in bed one night and I come across a paragraph where Jennings is interviewing someone. The interviewee says his wife is Afrikaner. And Jennings parenthetically comments, “I wonder if I would be able to resist the temptation to tell people my wife is a Boer instead.” I was rolling laughing. Laughing so hard my hubs had to take the book to read the joke himself because every time I tried to tell it I started with the laughing again.

It’s a geeky book. There’s no way around it but if you’ve ever been interested in maps, they fascinate me, then you’ll love the book. It has a total plethora of minutia and new things I didn’t know were even things. St Valentine’s Day Road Rally Massacre. Done completely in an atlas… The National Geographic Bee, did you know Washington State has won a full quarter of the time. It rains here, what else you gonna do…LOL

℘℘℘℘ – I’m torn between four pages and five. I did love this book and often completed more than 50 pages a day but at the same time it was thick and required processing, so I read other things in between my 50 pages a whack. But I adore Jennings and read everything he writes. 4.5 it is.

Book Review: Murder, Handcrafted

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Sometimes I wonder if this is my new addiction, cozy mysteries. The board elected to cancel coop today because the storm of the century was coming…yeah, the weather service had been selling that for days and I still haven’t seen anything above a standard winter storm for us but I was out voted. So I spent the morning running errands with my kiddo and we came home sopping wet despite rain coats. All I wanted to do was put on warm pajamas and curl up on the couch with a good book. So I put on warm pajamas, answered 57 emails, home schooled the kiddo and then curled up with Murder, Handcrafted by Isabella Alan.

This appears to be the fifth book in the Amish Quilt Shop series. LOL. Who thinks of these things? I picked it up because I hoped it would have some Amish flair and I do like to learn about other people’s way of life. It had a sprinkling of of the language, strictly the simple words, yes, no, god. shrug. I wanted more.

The mystery was decent. The reader gets the clues as the detective does. I like that. I like all the information up front so if I can’t figure it out it’s not because the author cheated. smiles. I figured this one out. But it wasn’t one of my fave kinds of murder. Someone decent or at least redeeming himself gets killed. sigh. And by a perfectly nice person. I don’t warm to those kinds of tales. I like the bad guy to get it in the neck.

Found the style repetitive. How many times in one page does the reader need to be reminded your dog is a black and white French Bulldog named Oliver? I got it, I swear. And she repeats some of her backfill, mainly in the first few chapters. By 60 pages in or so it was fairly smooth sailing.

℘℘℘ — Three pages. I liked it. It was nice on an icky day. I won’t be reading any of the other ones or her new series coming out in December. It’s just not my flavor.

Book Review: A Little Night Murder

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I just breezed through the latest Blackbird Sisters murder mystery, A Little Night Murder by Nancy Martin. I’ve read the whole series. I heartily enjoy the main character, Nora Blackbird. She has style, class, and a willingness to do what must be done.

In this one, Nora is finally pregnant. She is adopting her nephew’s child, because said nephew is 18 and wants to go to college and the mom is in jail for murder. Along the way she takes custody of her sister’s child from the father. So count, they are about to have 3 babies under one. Nora is thrilled. I hope she enjoys that bubble bath, it will be the last one she gets for a very, very long time. LOL

The murder is tacky as usual. LOL. Nancy Martin seems to specialize in slightly off color or inappropriate murders. It’s fun but predictable now. Sister number one is having a mid life crisis because she isn’t ready to be a grandmother. Sister two is trying to get her life together but still indulging in all the wrong things. Some things never change.

There is some hearty amusement regarding Paraguay and proxy weddings. I did a little research on this and they aren’t recognized in Pennsylvania where Nora lives, so Nancy goofed there, but it was still very amusing. I won’t give away the punch line. Read it yourself.

℘℘℘℘ – Four pages. Enjoyed it very much. Easy to read in short bursts if you have a busy life. I will definitely pick up the next one in series.

Book Review: Because I Said So!

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This is not my first Ken Jennings rodeo. I suppose you could say I have a writerly crush on him. Not him, per se, his books. He always writes these humorous geeky little non fiction works that are vastly entertaining. Every time I see he’s come out with some new works I have to read them.  Because I Said So! is a review of all the things parents tell their children and whether it has any basis in science what so ever.

Like “Run between the raindrops, you won’t get so wet.” Well obvious one can’t run between raindrops but running is more effective than walking if you don’t have an umbrella because your overall time in the rain is less. Cool huh?

“You only use 10% of your brain.” Totally false, which is why you can just hammer and nail into your head and have everything be all good. Turns out you need all that gray matter.

Anyway, the book is funny and geeky, and totally validated my bathroom germ horror. LOL

℘℘℘℘ – Solid 4 pages. Finished it in just a few days with a smile on face every time I read it.

Book Review: Grilled for Murder

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Still on that cozy mystery trend. Grilled for Murder by Maddie Day. Second book in the Country Store Mystery series, I was quite ok having not read the first one, although I might go back and read it now that I liked the second one. LOL.

The main character, Robbie Jordan, had just opened her life long dream, country store and restaurant, in the small town her aunt lives in. She reluctantly agrees to cater an event at her store and the next morning finds a dead body.

Some things I liked about the style.

-Robbie has no desire to be an investigator. She isn’t begged into it by anyone. She tries to stay out of things.

-You know what Robbie knows, when she knows it. Nothing is kept from you. You can make all the deductions Robbie does.

-Someone very unpleasant is killed. Someone very unpleasant did the murder. I never like it the story line has the wonderful person die, killed by someone backed into a corner. Give me nasty gets what’s coming to them, every time.

Things I didn’t like about the style:

-It’s a little repetitive.

-Author Day isn’t quite careful enough with tracking her facts. There are a few “but, wait” moments.

℘℘℘℘ – Solid four pages. Read it Sunday in between household chores. Enjoyable. Amusing. Has curl up with a good bottle of wine on a rainy night written all over it.

 

 

Book Review: Guns, Germs, and Steel

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I recently powered through Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond in preparing for the Geography/History class I am teaching at the coop this year. I know the book is 20 years old but I was getting my degree when it came out. LOL. I didn’t have time to read it then and it fell of my radar with a toddler under foot.

It is well written. His arguements are painstakingly laid out. I found him a bit repetitive at times. And his additional chapters were superfluous responses to criticism.

In short Diamond’s arguement is this: societies are shaped by what they were lucky enough to find in their physical geography. He makes a compelling arguement. Does he cover every possible permeation? I don’t know. I don’t know everything. But I will say this, his arguement agrees with my preconceived notions. LOL. Which is what everyone likes right?

He argues that any theory that attempts to explain societal differences based on race is erroneous. That populations are the same. They have the same capabilities. Why one population is more developed than other had nothing to do with their innate abilities. It is all dependent on what materials were there to work with. The larger a population you can support as a society, the more outliers you might have. Mathematically speaking if 1 in a hundred is an outlier and you have 50 people in your area…odds aren’t so good. But if you can support 5000, you’re going to have a number of outliers. And it’s the outliers that make the big jumps in invention for a society.

He talks about other factors as well. But I’ll let you read his book and get the full run down.

℘℘℘℘ – Four Pages. Good book. Lot’s of good info for my class.

Third Quarter One Star Reviews

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Sigh, it’s always so sad when a book disappoints. I mean it has to really fall flat for me to not even finish it. But over the last three months…

The 39 Clues, Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan

I was so excited to read this. When I volunteered at my son’s elementary school library (for the three months he went public school), the kids were constantly checking this series out and telling me how cool it was. And I looked longingly at the books every time I was re-shelving them but I didn’t want to check them out from the school because they only had a few. So I started trying to get them from the local public library and it took me a while. I guess they’re super popular.

sigh. I just couldn’t get into the book. Boring. The kids just didn’t make me feel anything for them. Orphans. Raised by nannies. Should make me all maternal but no emotions surfaced. And the fact that everyone they come in contact with are evil was just over done. I gave up 80 pages in.

Karma’s A Killer by Tracy Weber

I feel super guilty about this one star review because I am sure it has nothing to do with the quality of the book. A murder mystery about yoga and dogs was just begging to be read. And I have to say I felt myself just about to get into it when it happened. The mother -daughter reunited after the mother was heinously bad moment. And I closed the book. I can’t, I just can’t.

A Dark and Stormy Murder by Julia Buckley

This proudly proclaims itself the first in a new series by the author who has another popular series. shrug. I found the plot contrived and totally unrealistic. The dialogue was flat and desperate to be witty but failing. And 82 pages in I found I was making excuses not to read it even though I needed to finish a book to review it for my blog by Monday. It goes back to the library unfinished and I don’t even care who done it.

Book Review: Hearse and Gardens

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I’ve been super busy lately, which I hate to  say. It just sounds like some self aggrandizing defense bs. But I say it now to explain why when I was at the library with the kiddo and had exactly 12 minutes, he got 11 minutes to get books and movies and I got 45 seconds to grab every cozy mystery on the popular reads shelf. LOL.

Hearse and Gardens by Kathleen Bridge is the second book in the Hamptons Home and Garden Mystery series. I haven’t read the first. I did not find that a problem.

It was amusing in a calm sort of way. I found myself neither excited nor bored. Just contently reading a long. The main character is interesting, partly because her life is very removed from mine and I love a window into a world I don’t know.

Meg and her best friend Elle stumble across a dead body while clearing out an old bungalow of the pieces they can rehab for their businesses. Hence the mystery begins. But the murder is old and that sapped some of the adrenalin from the mystery in my opinion.  It’s also a mystery in the style of Christie, in that, you get small glimpses and bits of clues but Bridge holds back critical facts so Meg can do a big reveal at the end to all the players.

℘℘℘ 1/2 – I give it 3.5 pages. It was good. I enjoyed it. I would probably read another one in the series if it came across my path but I wouldn’t go looking for it.

Book Review: Come, Tell Me How You Live

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

I’ve talked before about my early and lifelong love of Agatha Christie. She is just the cat’s meow in my opinion. I think half the reason I bagged my murder mystery was because it wasn’t up to snuff with hers. LOL.

Come, Tell Me How You Live is not a mystery. Anyone who dies, does so from natural causes. In fact, it isn’t even a fiction work. Come is the memoir of her time digging in Syria with her second husband Max  Mallowan. He was an archaeologist. Agatha accompanied him on several of his digs. She began making notes in the years just before World War II as a way to answer the questions people frequently asked her. But after the four years of war, she ended up penning the book as a love letter to a simpler time and an amazingly happy period in her life.

I’ve read this book a dozen times by now and each time it makes me laugh and then makes me cry. Agatha is completely unvarnished when she describes everything. She pokes more fun at herself than anyone else. She’s raw and unedited in her emotions. It’s a delightful window into a different way of life. The people she encounters and the work that is done – it’s all an amusing social commentary by someone who knows people and made her living on that knowledge.

℘℘℘℘ – Four Pages. I’m always happy to read this book. To escape for just a bit.