Unbroken

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was one of my favorite books of all time. It was incredible what he went through--His story is extraordinary, unbelievable, inspirational on so many levels. And Hillenbrand is a perfect biographer: she disappears behind her subject, letting the story tell itself. When she does peep in from time to time, her comments help the reader appreciate the dire situation he was in and his incredible resilience and optimism. Truly an inspirational story!

View all my reviews

Cleopatra: A Life

Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn't know anything really about Cleopatra, or that time period, before I read Cleopatra. She really did lead a fascinating life and I can see why books, plays, and movies have used her as their subject--Everything is almost jaw-dropping over the top--from the knee-high carpet of rose petals to the month long celebrations of their self-appointed claims of deity to Marc Anthony, dying, scaling a wall to die in his lover's arms. Schiff tries hard to defend Cleopatra from her detractors--sometimes a little too much so for it to be truly unbiased. And Schiff's wordy and esoteric narrative often gets in the way of what is by itself a fascinating subject.

View all my reviews

anna karenina

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. Maybe I just needed some meat after all the post-apocolyptic YA fiction I seem to be to be reading lately. I thought it would be laborious to get through, and although some of the Russian issues, especially with Levin, took a little patience, the whole of the book was spectacular! Loved it, loved it, loved it.

View all my reviews

Ella Minnow Pea

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a clever book. A book about letters told in the form of letters. A book full of lipograms and and pangrams, it is clever, clever, clever. It is so clever that it can get a bit tiresome. The letters included are from so many people that it is hard to keep track of who is talking and while the plot lines are understood easily enough, I didn't make any character connections. So while you can't help but be impressed by the vocabulary and linguistic arcobatics used to write the novel, it is awfully hard to care about the plight of the Nollopians. There are some good talking points about blindly obeying authority; setting up "false gods"; and the power of language, and how the loss of words leads to a loss of self. I think Avi's Nothing But the Truth uses the episolary format better, and Stephen Hall's The Raw Shark Texts is an amazing novel about the power of words.

View all my reviews

One Shot

Jack Reacher: One Shot (Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel by Lee Child
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Everyone I know who has read this book (or rather series) before seeing the movie says the same thing,"I can't believe they put Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher...I mean, the guy is supposed to be huge!" But having never heard of Jack before watching the movie, I say Tom is a better Jack than Jack is. A guy that big and tall would have a much harder time melting into the crowd and being a drifter than plain old ordinary Tom. Plus, it seems more likely that 5 locals would think they could out-fight Tom, than some jolly giant--so it makes a better plot point. Plus, I liked that at the climax, Tom had to really fight his way in...Jack made it look too easy...(almost no resistance from Vladimir, come on, where's the fun in a showdown?).
Another better thing about the movie--they got rid of his posse. Way too many people in the climax of the book. It makes it seem more like a circus of misfits with people dialoging to themselves and running around without their shoes than a calculated attempt at rescue. They also cut out a lot of superfluous things Jack did to evade the cops.
The good things they did keep--giving him a knife at the showdown, the dare at the shooting range, the quarter. I can't say I would recommend the book or the movie, but in this case the movie is better than the book.

View all my reviews

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked the period of time and events that took place in this book. I don't think we as Americans like to think of rounding up Japanese-Americans and sending them to camps during WWII. It was a great springboard for discussing issues of immigration, culture, perception, in our book club. I felt like the book itself was a little overly sentimental and predictable. But it was fine story--I just wish we could have peeked a little bit more into the Japanese themselves, what life was like in the camps, their thoughts and feelings.

View all my reviews

Columbus: The Four Voyages

Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 by Laurence Bergreen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a solid biography about Columbus and I learned a lot. I didn't know he went on four voyages, nor did I understand how skilled he was in navigation and survival skills, but not particularly a leader. Bergreen hammers home the idea that Columbus never fully understood where he was but always thought China was just around the corner. It is sad to read about the violence that the Spanish inflicted on the native Americans and the greed that drove them. But it was interesting to read about this flawed but gifted man and his struggles with the Indians, with his men, and with himself.

View all my reviews