Carrie’s Comments (group member since Jul 09, 2010)

Carrie’s comments from the Challenge: 50 Books group.

(37)

(36)

4/5 stars

Bill Bryson is awesome. He kinda reminds me a little of my dad, actually. I'd love to be able to be a travel journalist, and if I ever got the chance to be one, I hope I'd write interesting travel memoirs like this: well written and well researched with just the right amount of absurdity. (because let's face it, humans are strange!) Now I want to go to Austrailia. Someday!

(35)

4/5 stars

Terrifying in a "this could really happen" kind of way. I've always been fascinated by the zombie genre, and this was one of the most intelligent and thought-out approaches I've seen. The book definitely brought up some issues I'd never thought of before, like where does the flesh and brains the zombies eat go? (ha!) I definitely liked all the different stories, however, sometimes it felt a tad impersonal. I guess my only complaint is that I would have liked to revisit some of the more interesting characters a few times, and maybe a bit more connectivity. I understand that it was meant to be read like an oral history of the war, and I mostly liked it, I just also felt myself losing interest every now and then because of it. Overall, great read!

(34)

4/5 stars

This book actually reminded me a lot of the movie Garden State - a man returning to his hometown after a while away and reflecting on the oddities that used to be "life" and also dealing with some family problems all while having interesting relationships with women, lol. I should say that I LOVE Garden State though, so the comparison is definitely not a bad thing. I really enjoyed that the novel was set in Buffalo, and I kept getting excited every time a place a recognized was mentioned. For someone who lives in the Buffalo area, descriptions of these places aren't really needed, but I felt that the descriptions the author gave were great. Buffalo really is an interesting place when you think about it...it's constantly labelled as one of the worst places to live in the country, and yet people who live here feel a really strange sense of pride. I could definitely feel that resonating throughout this novel. I also really liked the main character, he reminded me a lot of many men I've met throughout my life...he was a good person with good intentions, but seemed afraid or unaware of how to show it. The scenes that involved his mother were truly heartbreaking - I can't imagine "losing" someone and yet they are still there. It got me thinking about how I would feel if my parents or my husband had dementia, and how much I would miss them, even though they were right there in front of me.

Overall, great book. Will be looking out for more by this author for sure!

(33)

Finished, review to come!

(32)

4/5 stars
I seriously liked this story, and I loved the way the author wrote it. I love multi-dimensional characters like her parents, where you simultaneously love and hate them. I know Walls wrote another memoir, I'll definitely be on the lookout for it now, this was a great story - both heartbreaking and uplifting!

(31)

4/5 stars
all is my favorite season, and one of my favorite things about fall is going to a local farm to pick apples. (and then making apple pie and all other sorts of apple creations afterwards) The imagery of the orchard evoked all sorts of comforting feelings in me and made me excited for the upcoming fall season. Overall, I liked almost everything about this book (though I didn't think it was as good as Stepakoff's previous novel, Fireworks Over Toccoa) and it was a nice, light read

(30)

1/5 stars

I went through the reviews on goodreads today to see what other people had to say about this book - since there were so many reviews that gave it 4 or 5 stars, I wanted to see if I was missing something. Turns out, I'm not missing the point, I just seem to be firmly in the category of people that was too uncomfortable with the subject matter to get over it. The interesting wordplay and rare funny moments were not enough to save this book for me. Sure, it's fabulous that Nabokov could write such a lyrical novel in his second or third language, but really...I was just appalled by this. (And annoyed with the fact that I needed a French-English dictionary to read about 1/8 of the book, which I didn't have, so I'm sure I missed a whole lot of the plot) The only good thing I can say about it is that it's impressive how disgusted this book made me.

(29)

I cheated a little and read this book, haha.

3/5 stars
Cute, quick, entertaining read. My one leftover question...what team did Krum play for?? I kept looking for the Bulgarians, and maybe I just missed something, but I didn't see them mentioned in any of the World Teams. But yeah, it was cute. I enjoyed it!

(28)

2/5 stars
I kept hearing about what a great chick-lit book this was, and I was very underwhelmed. The author could have seriously cut out about 100 pages of straight whining in this book. Some people are just WAYY too insecure and over-emotional. I totally understand how things get hard sometimes, but I feel like most people I know are stronger than the female lead in this story. I think I was actually supposed to be impressed with her strength?? But I thought she was very, very weak. Mostly, I was just reading this to finish it, I wasn't at all absorbed in the story, and I could have put it down at any time and never picked it back up and I probably would have been fine with it. I like my chick-lit to be funny and this was so rarely funny. (the only part of the book I really enjoyed was when Cannie was in California with Maxi - and by the way, could they have picked a WORSE name for someone? Maxi? I just kept thinking of Maxi pads, lol) I guess you could say I'm just highly disappointed in this book, after seeing so many recommendations for it especially.

yes, they are!! I would definitely recommend them! I had never read any other graphic novel series, and I love them, so I'd say they're pretty universal as well (meaning I don't think you need to be in love with graphic novels or the zombie genre to enjoy them)

(27)

2/5 stars
Finished this book last night. It was a bit tough to get through, honestly. I was never really sure whether the main character was speaking in the present or if he was remembering things from his past. It jumped around a lot and sometimes I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, and then some random line would be thrown in that would make me laugh out loud, like "The carrots were fucking the earth." Character development was poor as well, and there were too many Indian words scattered throughout the text with no explaination as to what they meant. Sometimes there would be a whole sentence, and I'd be like, "well, I don't have a dictionary to be able to understand this, so I guess I'll never know what he just said." Towards the end, I started to realize what the story was, and from then on I actually enjoyed it, but the whole first half of the book was really confusing and disjointed for me. I feel like more detail and a re-write (for consistency) could save this book though. It wasn't all bad!

(26)

3/5 stars
I definitely enjoyed the swashbuckling and adventure in the story, but I felt like the author watched Pirates of the Caribbean and then decided he wanted to write a novel about Anne Bonney...I wanted more historical fact and less bodice-ripping. It was entertaining though...I just like my historical fiction with a little more history.

(25)

Guess I forgot to add this one!

5/5 stars



I absolutely loved this book. It was fantasticially researched and I really loved that Capote left himself out of the story almost entirely. (until in the final ten pages maybe, and he still only alludes to himself, really) Because of that, it read like a gripping suspense novel, rather than an account of a true story. The story itself was at times heartbreaking, thought provoking, seriously disturbing and funny. Great, great read!

(24)

4/5 stars

I couldn't put this book down! What a beautiful story...also very thought provoking. My heart broke for Charlie at the end. More later!

(23)

4/5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - all the characters were interesting and dynamic, and the story had me pulled in from the very beginning. I look forward to everything that Stockett writes in the future, she's a fantastic author!

I LOVED Life of Pi - let me know what you think of it!

(22)

2/5 stars

The reason I gave this so few stars is because I'm still trying to figure out exactly WHY she wrote this book. It just seemed really disjointed and pointless to me. If she had wanted to record her time spent fixing up their house in Tuscany, she should have focused on that. If she wanted to share cooking tips, she should have written a cookbook. If she wanted to focus on the beauty of Tuscany (and it truly does seem beautiful) she could have done that too, but the entire book never really seemed connected. I never felt invested in any story. I didn't feel like I knew either her or her husband? boyfriend?, Ed, the other main character, at all. All I knew is that they enjoyed living in Tuscany during the summers and working on their house and eating. Big deal. The only reason I gave this two stars was because the descriptions of meal often made me hungry (yum!) and while I had little idea of what she was talking about most of the time, I like reading about home restoration (mostly because my home needs so much work that it inspires me, haha). Plus, the description of light in Tuscany was really beautiful. Hopefully, if I read another of her books, there is an actual story there though, or she splits in into little essays

(21)

4/5 stars

Subtle and beautiful.

(20)

3/5 stars

A bit depressing, because the main issue of this book is our own mortality and the fact that we all will one day get old and die. That being said, I found the content of the book itself really interesting. I actually really enjoyed the chapter done entirely in Power Point. Overall, I found this book really enjoyable, it just didn't absolutely blow me away either.