Recent books...
wahoo... 2 days in a row.
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War by Sebastian Faulks
My rating: 2 of 5 stars After a whole slew of WWII books for book club, we decided we really needed a different topic. So ... how about WWI? Well, it was still a pretty gruesome war even though overall it was not quite as horrific as WWII. One point that I found interesting was that in Britain, although many of her men went to war, the country was not badly affected -- there was still food, life was relatively normal. I can't say this was a horrible book, but I didn't enjoy it. I was the only one in book group who didn't really like it. I had two issues: one was that the author went on and on in flowery language. Nice imagery, but it didn't contribute to the story in a lot of cases. Second, even with all of these words, the author withheld information. I understand that this was in an attempt to bring some suspense to the modern leg of the story, but that seemed like an artificial limb, and the story would have been better off with out it. View all my reviews >>
Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories by Elizabeth Strout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars For our book club, we all choose a word and a number. I would give Olive Kitteridge a 7 (pretty good) and the word would be "ordinary". Its tough to write pretty good about the ordinary. The book was very fragmented, which didn't always work, but it did bring together all those little things that make the ordinary interesting: unexpected insights and unexpected oversights. View all my reviews >>
So, one of the things that I enjoy is giving some thought to the books that I read, and writing down a few notes. I have actually been doing it in two places, both on GoodReads as well as here. I like some of the features of Good Reads, especially to have a list of the books I have read. Normally, I just do a cut and paste from what I write in the blog. But lately ... well, I have not blogged about my last two book club books. Why I ask? My excuse is that I spend too much time at the computer. A good excuse, I do spend lots of time staring at my screen for work. But also, I am spending too much time on blogging... reading other blogs, reading Facebook updates, reading Twitters.. then there is posting Twitters, posting on Facebook. And occasionally (lately - rarely) updating this blog.
Some of this just calls for better efficiency. I'll continue to review books on Good Reads. It seems it might be easier to paste from Good Reads to here. But this also begs the question on what is the best social media to use for what purposes. To be continued....
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War by Sebastian FaulksMy rating: 2 of 5 stars After a whole slew of WWII books for book club, we decided we really needed a different topic. So ... how about WWI? Well, it was still a pretty gruesome war even though overall it was not quite as horrific as WWII. One point that I found interesting was that in Britain, although many of her men went to war, the country was not badly affected -- there was still food, life was relatively normal. I can't say this was a horrible book, but I didn't enjoy it. I was the only one in book group who didn't really like it. I had two issues: one was that the author went on and on in flowery language. Nice imagery, but it didn't contribute to the story in a lot of cases. Second, even with all of these words, the author withheld information. I understand that this was in an attempt to bring some suspense to the modern leg of the story, but that seemed like an artificial limb, and the story would have been better off with out it. View all my reviews >>
Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories by Elizabeth StroutMy rating: 4 of 5 stars For our book club, we all choose a word and a number. I would give Olive Kitteridge a 7 (pretty good) and the word would be "ordinary". Its tough to write pretty good about the ordinary. The book was very fragmented, which didn't always work, but it did bring together all those little things that make the ordinary interesting: unexpected insights and unexpected oversights. View all my reviews >>
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