Notes from a bibliophile

No, this is not Harry Potter, although you can almost see glimmers of the characters in this novel. It's a novel of the Dursley's world, with Dursley-ish characters. Pagford is any small town, filled with the same small-minded, petty individuals you would find in any small town in America or, evidently England. One man's sudden death sends ripples through this town that no one would have imagined. It is funny, reading these people's lives and seeing the silly things that they find so important. However, Rowling is proving herself to be a master of menacing characters. Several scenes in this novel are so atmospheric and tense, I felt uncomfortable for the characters involved. The effect is kind of jolting as the reader is catapulted from a rather benign or even amusing scene to one of despair or one with an undercurrent of threatening to boil over. Then at one point, Rowling quietly flips a switch and suddenly you see the reality of what she's writing...

At the end of every year, everyone and their dog posts best-of-the-year lists, so why should I run against tradition? This is a list of every book I have read this year. Only the first and last places will be what I actually believe to be the best and worst books I've read this year. everything in between will be ranked in no particular order, except all the 5 stars will be together, etc. 5 Stars 1. The Weight of Water by Laura McHugh:   I got this as an advanced reader's copy from either a Random House giveaway or Bookreporter.com, I'm not sure which. I can't remember the last time I read a book so quickly or the last time I had to force myself to go to bed at 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning because I had to be at work in a few hours. I didn't want to put this book down. There are so many truly twisted twists and turn in the story and the author doles out nuggets of information expertly throughout so you don't feel like she's hoarding all the gol...

I am not the biggest fan of James Patterson, so when I picked this book off my pile, it was mostly because I thought it would be the quickest read in my TBR pile. I'd only read one Patterson book previously; that was Against Medical Advice with Hal Friedman, a nonfiction about Friedman's son's struggle with sever Tourette's and OCD. Patterson has a strange structure to his books that annoys me. His chapters are so short - some starting half-way down one page and ending half-way down the next. It creates a really staccato feel and is very nonsensical, especially when the next chapter is merely an extension of the one before it. Maybe it's the old ad-man in him. So it was with trepidation that I cracked open the book, knowing that annoyance was lying in wait for me. And I was annoyed...for maybe the first 10 or so chapter-ettes. Then I just stopped caring about the chapters and got lost in the story. This is the 11th Alex Cross novel. If you've never read any ...

Meet Marc Bowman. He is an analyst at a company called AmeriTel, or at least he was, but he gets fired as the book begins. This sets off a dizzying spiral of events that have Marc running around at a break-neck speed. The plot is very intricately woven an so twisty-turny you have no idea who the good guys are. But that is obviously what Marc is feeling too, and being able to identify with the main characters is what makes a good novel. I did have some reservations, though. The beginning, where Marc is talking about his job, gets so jargony I felt kind of dazed. There's a bit about Lichtenstein, which I suppose is meant to make you understand the depth of his love for his original painting Marc bought and displayed in his office. It was a bit over-much, though. It's a mystery, not an art treatise, so it felt strangely misplaced. Then there is the art gallery owner, Troye. I honestly saw very little point in this character at all. I suppose he was an example of how people aren...

This was a Borders Classic bargain book set. I love young adult and kids books. I remember when I was a kid, every Christmas The Wizard of Oz was on TV. I honestly can't remember if I've seen the thing all the way through or not. I know the story, though, and so I thought I'd read the books. This is definitely NOT the way to read them, though. The stories get more and more tedious as you keep reading. Baum inexplicably gives Dorothy some sort of speech impediment that keeps her from pronouncing all the syllables of words. The puns get worse and worse. You get the sense that even Baum wants desperately to stop writing, but I guess as part of his deal with Satan, he doesn't. Every book starts with how he wasn't going to write any more, but "the children" begged him. Even when he told them it was impossible for Dorothy to tell him any more of her stories, "the children" found a way around the problem. I began to suspect "the children" to b...

It soothes my soul to read a favorite author writing a beloved character. For a few moths now I have been slogging through a couple of tedious books, promising myself that as soon as I finished one I could start the new Lady Emily mystery. As I finally read the first line, I could feel something in me relax. It was as if I was suddenly curled up in a soft blanket in a comfy chair by a crackling fireside with a mug of hot chocolate in one hand and a purring kitten in my lap. I felt like I was home again. This is the ninth Lady Emily novel and it's still as fresh as the first. In this one she and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, investigate the murder of a young woman who was impersonating an eccentric Frenchwoman who was known for traveling the world. All the novels have a delightful wit about them. The barbs Emily reserves for her mother, a very traditional Victorian woman, are excellent. The novels take place in lovely locales, which seem painstakingly researched by the author. Th...

Have you ever wondered if the people who write the blurbs on the back of the book read the same book you are reading? This one said I would be laughing out loud. Here are several reasons why this novel didn't even elicit so much as a mild chuckle. First, I am a grammar nerd; I want my books to be grammatically correct. However, there are two exceptions to this rule: 1) When it's used to illustrate character. I'll admit it, I'm a sloppy speaker. There's just so many subjects, verbs, objects, contractions, consonants, vowels, diphthongs - and when you're from East Texas like I am, there are about 500 more acceptable diphthongs than in the rest of the English-speaking world. It's just a matter of expediency. Let's say you and I are kicking back, drinking a couple of margaritas, having a bit of a chat. I hardly expect either of us to be fastidious in the grammar department, especially when the margaritas have been flowing for a while. So the way a chara...