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Review Date: 2/27/2022
The greatest playwright of the Elizabeth/Jacobean period, after Shakespeare. I love his intelligent, mischievous, satirical comedies. There's plenty of dialogue and plot to make you snicker, laugh out loud, or wince with recognition. Jonson is the consummate stage entertainer. He may not deliver the depth of Shakespeare, but the humor amply compensates.
Review Date: 7/17/2007
Those familiar with Pinkwater's NPR commentaries will love this audio book. It's impossible to keep a smile off your face as you listen to true stories of Pinkwater's youth, told in his own voice. Listen in the car, but don't forget to keep your eye on the road.
Review Date: 7/17/2007
Helpful Score: 1
This collection of short stories includes "Brokeback Mountain" from which the movie was made. This writing is about as sparse as it gets, resembling, no doubt, the vast plains about which Proulx writes so movingly.
Review Date: 2/27/2022
I may get flamed, but Marlowe was nothing but a hack. Offensive racist content and poorly written morality plays. That anyone could ever have thought that Marlowe was the actual writer of Shakespeare's plays is astonishing to me.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
One of the funniest writers ever. Imagine what he could have done had he not died so young and so tragically.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
I read this before visiting Santa Fe. It gives a vivid picture of life in the southlands before civilization took over. A moving protrait of a man who changed life in those parts for so many people.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
The 3 book series is one of the best graphic novels I've read, and I've read a lot. This is painfully realistic stuff, and the future looks bleak. Prepare yourself to be taken to a world that will make you question reality.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
Helpful Score: 2
I had heard that Dick is considered by many to be the greatest Science Fiction author ever. This book might just confirm it. The movie Blade Runner was based on this book, although the resemblance is not all that great. I would say that both the movie and the book are masterpieces.
Review Date: 9/12/2009
This came highly recommended, and I wish I could say I really liked it. I didn't. I couldn't get past about 75 pages. The story is quite interesting, but the jumping time frame is disorienting, and the florid prose really turned me off: way, way too many adjectives for my taste. If you are fascinated by recent African history, and can overlook my objections, you may enjoy this book.
Review Date: 8/3/2012
Orwell is best known for 1984 and Animal Farm. Everyone should read these 2 books. But my absolute favorite Orwell is his essays, and this book, Down and Out in Paris and London. I rarely read a book twice, but I made an exception in this case (afterall, the last time I read it was over 30 years ago). This is Orwell's first book, and you can see the mature Orwell peaking out. What I love is the exotic and quirky characters that populate the book. This is a travelogue of the underbelly of 2 great cities. Yes, you'll see 4 star hotels, but you'll see them from 4 floors below in the stink, filth, and heat of the kitchen, and the characters that work there. A great piece of reportage in the form of a fictional account.
Review Date: 7/17/2007
Helpful Score: 3
This is amazing stuff. I know many people don't like Rosie, but this reading will convince you that (1) she is crazy (she freely admits it, over and over), (2) she is generous to a fault, (3) she is brutally honest. You will be drawn in by her impassioned style and the plot, a true story, that is, as they say, stranger than fiction.
Review Date: 7/17/2007
Helpful Score: 7
I've decided that one of my life's goals is to see every Vermeer painting in person. So far I've only seen The Concert, at the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, many years ago, before it was stolen in the largest, and still unsolved, art heist in history.
Girl with a Pearl Earring is a fictionalized account of the how this painting, called the Mona Liza of the North, came to be made. This is an erotic novel with NO overt eroticism. You can feel the unrequited passion between Vermeer and his beautiful servant girl, who reluctantly becomes the subject of the painting. The movie is good, the book is WAY better.
Girl with a Pearl Earring is a fictionalized account of the how this painting, called the Mona Liza of the North, came to be made. This is an erotic novel with NO overt eroticism. You can feel the unrequited passion between Vermeer and his beautiful servant girl, who reluctantly becomes the subject of the painting. The movie is good, the book is WAY better.
Review Date: 4/18/2012
Best of the trilogy. Full of humor, yes, but also more directly thought provoking than the previous 2 volumes.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
I never tire of Buchanan and Britt Montero. Buchanan injects humor into a genre that often takes itself too seriously. Start with early Montero so you grow to understand her character.
Review Date: 7/17/2007
This book pulls you into a world that, unless you were raised Indian, you cannot possibly have any idea about. It's a powerful lesson about another culture, that sheds light on our own. Each story is tightly written, not a single wasted word, and some are deeply moving. This is an astonishing accomplishment for such a young author.
Review Date: 3/15/2012
Christopher Buckley is a hipper, waggier (is there such a word?)Carl Hiaasen. He is incapable of writing that is not witty, knowing, full of inside jokes, with tongue firmly in cheek. In fact, I'd call him cheeky.
Start with "Thank you for Smoking", then "No Way to Treat a First Lady", then anything else he's written.
Start with "Thank you for Smoking", then "No Way to Treat a First Lady", then anything else he's written.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
Hornby is a brilliant, witty writer. I've now read 4 of his novels, and the prose consistently brings me LOL pleaure. Even if you have seen the movies, read the books. They are way better.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
Helpful Score: 2
When I read that this was considered by many to be the greatest French novel ever (and particularly this translation), I simply had to read it. It does not disappoint. The prose flows over you like dark clouds. Emma is a dreamer, and her dreaming puts her in a vortex that inevitably brings her to a tragic end. A cautionary tale.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
This writer is among the funniest around. If making fun of lawyers gives you pleasure, this is the book for you. Buckley also wrote Thank You For Smoking, which was made into a movie. I've now read 3 of his novels, and have been delighted with all 3.
Review Date: 6/5/2008
Evanovich turns the mystery/detective novel on its head. This is one very funny book. The grandmother alone is worth the price of admission. I've now read Two also, and I believe Evanovich is pretty consistently entertaining. This is light summer reading, and will have you laughing out loud.
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