Paging All Bookworms! discussion

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Read any good books lately? We want to know about them.
How about real stinkers? We want to know about those too!


Enter your reading list and/or reviews here. Did you like it? Hate it? Feel lukewarm?

Share your thoughts with us.

Happy reading!

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The Line Becomes a River – Francisco Cantú – 4****
Cantú studied international relations in college and joined the border patrol because, “I spent four years in college … learning about the border through policy and history. I want to see the realities of the border day in and day out.” In this memoir he writes with brutal honesty about what he experienced, looks at the policies and procedures, and explores the toll on humans – both migrants and native-born Americans.
LINK to my review

Michael Pennington, Hamlet: A User's Guide [1996] 216 pages

Hamlet from an actor's viewpoint. Five chapters summarizing the play, a section on the characters, and a conclusion. Not nearly as good as the book he wrote on Twelfth Night, a kind of routine interpretation but some interesting ideas.

Harold Bloom, Hamlet: Poem Unlimited [2003] 154 pages

I don't really understand why Harold Bloom has such a reputation as a great literary critic, unless it is the sheer quantity of books he has published. This book hardly seems worthwhile; it is divided into twenty-five very short chapters, each of which seems like a separate, random meditation on some character or aspect of the play. About half of each chapter is one or two long quotations from the play; the rest is bons mots or arbitrary opinions, usually obscure and "profound", and when they actually say something it seems wildly off.

Eleven Minutes – Paulo Coelho – 3.5***
Well this went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. Yes, of course, Maria winds up a prostitute and not a famous movie actress, but she comes to understand much about herself and the world. She ultimately takes charge of her life. Still, there were times when I thought that Coelho really doesn’t know women at all. And still, I was captivated by Maria and her journey.
LINK to my review

Isn’t It Romantic? – Ron Hansen – 3***
The subtitle of this little novel is “An Entertainment.” And that’s exactly what it is. Natalie and Pierre, a young Parisien couple, are stranded in Seldom, Nebraska, population 395. What follows is a farcical comedy, with messages gone astray, intentions misunderstood, love declared, and more than one mishap. It’s a fun romance, if totally ridiculous. Great beach read.
LINK to my review

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Little Town On the Prairie – Laura Ingalls Wilder – 3***
Book seven in the popular classic Little House series, has Laura growing into a young lady. I love this series for the way the pioneer spirit is portrayed and the strong family relationships. THIS book, however, has a scene that is very uncomfortable for modern readers. I know this is historically accurate to the period, but I just cringed reading about it. If you are going to read it with your children, be ready for a serious conversation about what is and is not appropriate.
LINK to my review

Articles on Hamlet film adaptations [58 pages]

I took time from my reading of Hamlet criticisms to watch five film versions -- One was from 1913, which was just quotations in the intertitle followed by scenes which looked as if the cameraman just filmed a stage version played in front of a static camera; the tableau is held while the unheard actors declaim the dialogue. The second was Sven Gades' from 1920 with Asta Nielsen as a female Hamlet in love with Horatio, who was in love with Ophelia. (These were on youtube; the Gade was unfortunately a horrible print.) Then the three the library had: the Zeffirelli version with Mel Gibson, the Branagh version (the only complete film of the play), and the RSC version with Captain Picard and the Doctor -- I mean Patrick Stewart and David Tennant. (Stewart was believable but Tennant used so many of the same expressions and gestures he used on Doctor Who I wasn't sure if I was watching Shakespeare or science fiction, especially whenever he mentioned "time". Then I read seven more articles from Academic Search Premier, all originally from Literature Film Quarterly, about the film versions. Again, see my thread for reviews of the specific articles.

Divining Women – Kaye Gibbons – 3.5***
I like the way Gibbons writes her characters. There are some very unpleasant goings on, and much of it makes me in turns uncomfortable, despairing, and angry. Set in 1918, this is at a time when women had few rights on their own, and yet Mary refused to be cowed by her uncle. And her strength empowered Maureen to fight for the freedom and respect she was due. Brava, ladies!
LINK to my review

Bittersweet – Colleen McCullough – 3***
A mini-series soap opera of a novel, following four sisters (two sets of twins) in early 20th century Australia. McCullough does a great job of crafting this sweeping novel. I was engaged and interested in the story and in exploring life in Australia at this time frame. However, I did get frustrated by the way that Grace and Kitty behaved, and felt that a few of the many story threads were abandoned and then quickly resolved just to wrap up.
LINK to my review

Riders Of the Purple Sage – Zane Grey – 3***
I hardly know what to write about this classic of the Western genre. It’s full of adventure, violence, strong men and women, tenderness, brutality and an abiding sense of justice. And, of course, there is the landscape, which Grey paints so vividly it is practically a character. The storyline and dialogue are a bit melodramatic. but Grey’s story still captured this reader’s imagination. I was reminded of the many western movies I watched with my Dad in the ‘50s and ‘60s. They were exciting and the good guys always won. Glad I finally read it.
LINK to my review

Honeymoon – James Patterson & Howard Roughan – 3***
Patterson and his team can sure churn out the fast-paced suspense/thrillers! The action is quick and the target ever moving. The writing may be simple, but the plot holds the reader’s attention. Good beach / vacation read.
LINK to my review

Articles on Hamlet [2000-2009] 388 pages

Another "made-up" book, a group of eighteen articles from Academic Search Premier, from the first decade of this century (one more group to go); about a dozen worthwhile to some degree and the rest were just academic jargon and "theory". Lord, save us from Lacan and Derrida. Again, see my thread for the individual articles.

The Passover Murder – Lee Harris – 3***
Book number 7 in the Christine Bennett mystery series. I really like this main character. Christine is intelligent, calm, deliberate, tenacious and compassionate. She gains the trust of those she interviews and manages to ferret out information that even the police failed to uncover. I also like that the setting is in a time period before cell phones, computers and googling. The person doing the detecting has to rely on lots of tedious footwork and research, as well as keen observation and a well-hone intuition when interviewing suspects / witnesses.
LINK to my review

Turning Angel – Greg Isles – 2**
Book two in the Penn Cage series. Iles can write a compelling story with lots of suspects, many twists and turns in the plot, complicated motives and subplots, and a fast pace that keeps the reader turning pages. Penn’s background as a prosecuting attorney in Houston serves him well. Murder is always a violent crime, of course, and the sexual component herein is particularly disturbing. But I have a major problem with THIS book due to the basic underlying relationships. So the basic “thriller genre” gets 3 stars (even with the violence against women), but loses a star for the particularly distasteful – and disgraceful – underlying theme here.
LINK to my review

Hero Of the Empire – Candice Millard – 4****
Subtitle: The Boer War, a Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill. Millard writes an interesting and detailed biography of the young Winston Churchill. Serving as a war correspondent during the Boer War in South Africa, he was a young, somewhat rash man eager to make his mark in the world. It’s a fascinating story and gives a somewhat different picture of the man most of us know only from his prominence during WW2. Yet, the reader gets a sense of the man he will become.
LINK to my review

William Shakespeare, Macbeth [1605?; 2nd rev. Signet ed., 1998] 214 pages

The last of the plays I'm re-reading this year; I saw this on the 13th at the Utah Shakespeare Festival (a good production). I won't try to review the play itself; everyone knows what it's about and most English speakers with a high school education have read it or seen it performed. The edition I read has excerpts from the classic commentaries of Johnson, Bradley and Stoll, Mary McCarthy's "General Macbeth", and newer articles by Klein and Sinfield, as well as a survey of the most famous stage and film versions.

Articles on Hamlet [2010-present] 589 pages

The last group of articles on Hamlet from Academic Search Premier, thirty one articles from the past ten years. A few are worthwhile. Specific articles reviewed in my Challenge thread.

The Great Train Robbery – Michael Crichton – 4****
What a rollicking good story! I was entertained from beginning to end. Crichton starts out with a recitation of the facts and sprinkles the text with details of Victorian life. The way he imagines the lead characters, especially Edward Pierce (the gang leader), is what really breathes life into the story. I first bought/read it in 1975; it’s one of my F2F book club selections, so I’m re-reading it for the 3rd or 4th time. And I still love it!
LINK to my review

The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway – 3***
One of Hemingway’s earliest novels, this was first published in 1926, and has never been out of print since that time. It is loosely based on the author’s own experiences with a circle of friends frequently known as “The Lost Generation.” In general, I am a fan of Hemingway, but this novel missed the mark for me. The ennui with which these people live their lives just doesn’t interest me very much.
LINK to my review

Arthur and Sherlock – Michael Sims – 3***
This is an interesting biography / history of Conan Doyle’s life as a young man. The reader learns of the people and events that influenced and inspired him when he created his most famous character: Sherlock Holmes.
LINK to my review

Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices #3) by Cassandra Clare
5 ★

Tessa Gray has been abducted by Mortmain and most use her own knowledge and strength to escape. Jem is extremely sick and unable to go after Tessa, so Will goes. Mortmain's plan to destroy the Shadowhunters with his automatons is a go and Charlotte Branwell must rally her troops, without the help of the Clave, to stop him.

I enjoyed this whole trilogy and Clockwork Princess closed it out well. Tessa uses her ability in a unique way and the end resulting is shocking. Jem's story breaks my heart and his future is slightly better. I'm was a bit disappointed with the whole Will/Jem/Tessa love "triangle". I felt things changed too quickly and easily. The ending of the book follows Tessa throughout many years and gives the reader an excellent history of all the Shadowhunters. She really gave the readers closure and I think we may see more of Tessa.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
5 ★

Libby Day needs money and will do what she needs to do for it. Even if it means revisiting the murder of her family 25 years ago. A murder that she helped put her brother behind bars for. As she finds out more information about that awful night she starts to wonder if her brother may be innocent.

I did not really like Libby Day in the beginning of the book. She acted like a spoiled brat who deserved to have everything handed to her because of the tragic death of her family. She does come around though. The story is told from Libby's point of view now and her mother's and brother's point of view the day of the murders. It made the story flow well and helped the reader understand each character better. Getting to know the Day family makes the story even more tragic. The conclusion and the truth are heartbreaking.

The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende – 4****
Allende covers three generations of the Trueba family in her native Chile. The novel weaves together personal and political triumphs and tragedies into an epic story of love and history. I love Allende’s luminous writing, and the way that she seamlessly introduces elements of magical realism into her stories. Her gift for vivid description had me feeling cold drafts, luxuriating in sumptuous fabrics, hearing the cacophony of a busy marketplace or a student riot, cringing at the stench of human waste in a prison cell. She makes me believe that a woman can have bright green hair, or be clairvoyant and commune with ghosts.
LINK to my review

Fear No Evil (No Evil Trilogy #3) by Allison Brennan
5 ★

Lucy Kincaid has been kidnapped and the kidnapper plans on showing her murder live on the internet. FBI Agent Kate Donovan has taken on this killer before, but the Kincaid family must find her first if they want her help.

The final book in this trilogy focuses on Dillon Kincaid, the psychiatrist. What happens to Lucy is extremely violent and very disturbing. I truly felt for her while reading it. I look forward to reading the Lucy Kincaid next to see how this event changed her and how she dealt with it.
I have enjoyed getting to know the whole Kincaid family in this trilogy and I hope to see them again in the next series. I like how the reader got to see each of them fall in love. Dillon and Kate are probably the most interesting pair. Kate still has so much to work through and I know Dillon will be there to help her.
The ending of the story was very satisfying. I wanted to high five Lucy. The killer is extremely intelligent and he plays a lot of mind games. A truly disturbed individual that the author did an excellent job with.

Dead Ever After (Sookie Stackhouse #13) by Charlaine Harris
4 ★

Arlene is back and Eric is keeping is distance from Sookie. Then Sookie is arrested for murder. The evidence isn't there to prove she did it, but there are so many people that want Sookie gone that anything is possible.

Another quick eventful read in the Sookie Stackhouse world. Nothing surprises me anymore with this series, but that's okay. They are fun and easy reads. There is an unexpected death, but not disappointing. There is also a surprise appearance toward the end that I wasn't expecting. The end wrapped up nicely. Almost too nicely.

Dorothy Must Die – Danielle Paige – 3***
This is an imaginative retelling … or perhaps sequel … to Frank L Baum’s The Wizard of Oz books. The characters are all here, but they aren’t as they were portrayed in Baum’s classic books, or the much beloved movie. Amy Gumm was a decent heroine – self-reliant, principled, tenacious, willing to sacrifice for the greater good. However, the “mean girl” theme was a little heavy-handed for my tastes (and my stage of life). So my final verdict is average.
LINK to my review

Min Jin Lee, Pachinko [2017] 490 pages

Unlike the other books I have been reading for the World Literature group on Goodreads, this novel was written in English by a Korean-American, and so is perhaps somewhat more accessible than the works which I have read in translation. In addition to being a read for the group, it was also recommended by one of my coworkers at the Library. The setting is primarily in Japan, although it begins in Korea. The book is a historical novel about the Korean community in Japan, told through the story of four generations of a single family. The chapter headings are all places and dates, beginning (after a first chapter of background) with November, 1932 and ending with Yokohama, 1989. The main character in the novel is Sunja, the daughter of the partially disabled Hoonie and his wife Yangjin, who run a boardinghouse on Yeongdo, an island on the coast of Korea, near Busan; Hoonie has died at the beginning (in the first chapter); Yangjin lives almost to the end of the novel. Sunja gets pregnant by a rich "businessman" (actually a yakuza, or gangster), Koh Hansu, thinking he will marry her, but he reveals he is married with three daughters in Osaka, Japan. She refuses to become his mistress, and decides to have nothing to do with him, but he loves her and wants to help her and the child, especially when he finds out it is a son. This causes many of the developments later on. Sunja marries a Christian minister named Isaak Baek and moves with him to Osaka, where they live with his brother Yacob and his wife Kyungjee, and raise the boy Noa (and eventually his half-brother Mozasu). This is the basic set-up for the novel, in the first five or six chapters; to reveal any more in detail would involve spoilers, but it is necessary to say that Mozasu ends up running pachinko (pinball) parlors, and that the novel continues through his son, Solomon.

The main theme of the novel is the community of Koreans who for one reason or another live in Japan and cannot or will not return to Korea for various reasons -- World War II, the postwar dictatorships in both the North and South, the Korean War, and at the end the fact that many of them are second and third generations away from Korea. The Koreans are treated about like Hispanics are in the United States, or perhaps worse, since Japan unlike the United States is essentially a country of one homogeneous ethnic group. Koreans are still considered "foreigners" even if they were born in Japan, and they cannot travel without getting passports from one of the two Koreas, even if neither they nor their parents have ever lived in Korea. They are not allowed to rent apartments outside the "ghetto" and are discriminated against in employment and all the ways that we are familiar with here. The novel shows the complex feelings they have about Japan and the Japanese, and also has both positive and negative Japanese characters, with all shades of attitudes about the Koreans. The novel in passing shows the depression, World War II, and the rise of the "new" Japan.

The personal side of the novel reveals the conservative views about women and "honor"; much of the development of the novel is concerned with Sunja's shame at her "mistake" and her pride and resistance to accepting help from Hansu. Although Isaak seems to be very non-judgmental, his brother and the son Noa are very rigid in their ideas. This theme is also worked out in the story of Mozasu's second wife Etsuko and her daughter Hana. One thing that bothered me about the book was the variations on "male rescue fantasies" in so many of the relationships in the novel. All in all, this was a very rich novel and one I would recommend.

Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead [1967] 126 pages

I watched the film on DVD a couple weeks ago and decided to re-read the play, which I read fifty years ago in high school when it first came out. It is an absurd comedy, based on the characters from Hamlet, and very funny; it also makes a certain point about the way people are thrust into a situation in life without knowing the script. Of course it's very "sixties" and influenced by Beckett, etc. Although Stoppard denies it was "existentialist", I couldn't help but think of the catchphrase "Geworfenheit ins Dasein". I'm going to read a few of Stoppard's other plays from the library and from my garage this month.

Tom Stoppard, Jumpers [1972] 89 pages

Jumpers is ostensibly a murder mystery, but ignoring the conventions of the genre, we never find out "whodunnit", nor do we really care. That's not the point. More importantly, this is a comic play which presents, and parodies, the British academic philosophy of the time, and as such reminded me very much of Beckett's novel Watt. When the play was written, I was a philosophy major in a department (Columbia) which emphasized this tradition. Where Beckett never actually mentions Wittgenstein (the object of the novel's parody) by name, however, Stoppard's play refers directly to many of the philosophers I studied at the time, such as Russell, Wittgenstein, and Moore. The humor of the play would be best appreciated by those who are familiar with, but have no great investment in, this type of philosophy. After fifty years, these are no longer the names to conjure with, and I suspect even most philosophy majors today, to say nothing about the playgoing and playreading public, would find it a bit esoteric, which may be why, unlike many of Stoppard's other plays, there were no college or amateur productions of the play that I could find on Youtube. (This might also be due to the fact that according to the stage-directions, the main female character is nude through much of the play (remember when it was written), but it wouldn't really affect anything if she were wearing a nightgown and I doubt whether it was generally performed that way.)

The two central characters are a Professor of Moral Philosophy, George Moore ("many of the students are under the impression that [he is] the author of Principia Ethica", whom he is of course intended to parody), and his wife Dorothy, a retired actress of musical comedy with a tendency to speak in quotations from Shakespeare (primarily Macbeth). The play opens with a post-election victory party for the "Radical-Liberal Party" at the home of the Moores, which features among other entertainments a troop of mediocre amateur acrobats, the "jumpers" of the title, composed of philosophers and other academics. During the course of the entertainment, one of the acrobats (who turns out to be Moore's main academic rival, McFee) is shot be an unknown person for unknown reasons. As in Stoppard's earlier play, "The Real Inspector Hound", the body is in plain sight but somehow the characters never seem to be looking in the right direction to notice it. Meanwhile, George is preparing a lecture on God and morality, which we hear in installments throughout the play.

The Two Faces of January – Patricia Highsmith – 3***
Highsmith manages to give us unlikeable characters that behave in ways that just keep this reader enthralled and interested, turning pages to find out what twists, turns and surprises the plot has in store. It’s set in Athens, in 1962, and you have two con men trying to out-con one another. Add a femme fatale (who is married to one of the men, but attracted to the other), and you have a recipe for disaster.
LINK to my review

Winter Loon by Susan Bernhard
3 ★

Wes Ballot's mom is dead and his dad has abandoned him. Living with his grandparents is difficult and exhausting. The one bright spot is his girlfriend, who herself had lost her mother. When Wes heads out to look for his father her learns things about his father that he never knew and things about his mother that he wishes he never found out.

Winter Loon is a well written book with great characters. The reader is able to feel the emotions that Wes feels and the pain that his mother endured. For me the story was slow, but informative. I never got the feeling that I was missing something. The book wraps up well with no loose ends, but it felt like the author rushed the ending to get it all in. Overall Winter Loon is a great coming of age story.

Tom Stoppard, Travesties [1975] 71 pages

This is a comedy. As with all Stoppard's plays I have read, the minimal plot is an excuse for the dialogue about ideas; the play is set during World War I in Zurich, and the main characters are Tristan Tzara, a founder of Dada, James Joyce, in the process of writing Ulysses, and Lenin, in the process of writing Imperialism, as well as Henry Carr, a real person whose unreliable memories the play is based on, Lenin's wife Krupskaya, and two imaginary characters, Carr's sister Gwendolyn (Lenin's secretary, a disciple of Joyce, and Tzara's love interest), and the "librarianess" Cecily (Joyce's secretary, a disciple of Lenin, and Carr's love interest). Joyce and Carr are preparing a production of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (which they in fact did at the time) and according to a secondary article the structure of Stoppard's play is based on Wilde's (I saw it performed fifty years ago, so I can't judge.)

The dialogue is about the nature of World War I, and the nature and purposes of modern art, and apart from some witty repartee is mainly taken from the characters' own writings (very out of context, of course). According to the same secondary article, Stoppard has said that he intended the audience/readers to sympathize with Joyce, but to me Tzara had all the best lines. Many of the lines are actually taken from Stoppard's previous (radio) play, "Artist Descending a Staircase", which also deals with modern art.

Han Kang, The Vegetarian [2007; tr. 2018] 185 pages

A very different novel from the author's later Human Acts, which I read last month, but also quite good. This novel is about dysfunctional families and mental illness; the protagonist suddenly clears out all the meat in her refrigerator and announces that she will no longer eat meat, and her family reacts violently. For the rest of the novel, she is in and out of mental hospitals; her sister is the caretaker, and struggles with her own mental health at times. In the middle, there ia another element in the sister's husband. It's really a difficult book to review, and I'm looking forward to the discussion in the group I read it for.