Book Reviews - Lisa H. (anoisblue)

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from Publisher's Weekly:
Escaping from a New Hampshire hotel fire at the turn of the 20th century, Prof. Nicholas Van Tassel catches sight of Etna Bliss and is instantly smitten. She does not reciprocate his feeling, for she has her own unrequited lust, for freedom and independence. That they marry guarantees tragedy.

Anita Shreve is a great contemporary writer who understands the human heart and its foibles.
Review Date: 3/10/2006

It's a comprehensive study of American Indian lore. Very interesting.
Review Date: 1/29/2006

Written in 1963, this is a comprehensive study of rape: forcible, statutory and imagined.
Review Date: 3/10/2006

from Amazon.com's review:
"It takes guts to write a novel that combines an ancient secret brotherhood, the Swiss Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, a papal conclave, mysterious ambigrams, a plot against the Vatican, a mad scientist in a wheelchair, particles of antimatter, jets that can travel 15,000 miles per hour, crafty assassins, a beautiful Italian physicist, and a Harvard professor of religious iconology. It takes talent to make that novel anything but ridiculous. Kudos to Dan Brown (Digital Fortress) for achieving the nearly impossible. Angels & Demons is a no-holds-barred, pull-out-all-the-stops, breathless tangle of a thriller"
Review Date: 3/10/2006

This book is one of my all time favorites and has stuck with me since I read it 4 or 5 years ago. It begins with a murder of a man and wife in their 50s when they return to the place they first met. The bodies go undiscovered for some time. There are chapters that deal strictly with the bodies and what is happening to them, and then every other chapter takes them back in time to when they first met and beyond, into childhood. By the time the book is finished, they feel alive again. Amazing work.
Review Date: 1/31/2006

Deloria is an excellent writer and if you're interested in an American Indian's point of view, you should read him.
Review Date: 1/29/2006

I've always loved reading and writing and hated literature classes. A Death in the Family was assigned in one of those classes and is the only book I remember. It is an amazing, thought-provoking and poignant classic.
Review Date: 3/10/2006

I had always avoided the Dune books thinking that it wasn't my type of book, but I was so surprised to find that it was simply brilliant and relevent. And excellent read, wonderful characters, and a story that draws you in and makes you feel like you are part of the story.
Review Date: 5/5/2006

This was like going back in time, and not all the way back to the 40s and 50s of the story, but even just to my own childhood where my mother wore a cocktail dress in the afternoon and my father mixed martinis. This book brought back so many memories--like the days of local society pages that talked about people in one's own city who "seen about town" or "vacationed with the family" in some exotic place like Aspen. A time when boys got into "scuffles" instead of drive-bys. Connell managed to portray the good of that era while laying bare its sexism and racism. Mrs. Bridge is a sympathetic character despite herself. Also, I liked the vignette format. It was fresh.

Review Date: 3/9/2006

This is a memoir of Ernest Hemingway by his son, Gregory H. Hemingway M.D. I thought it was interesting.
Review Date: 1/29/2006

The author, probably in search of a book, goes on a letter writing binge and ends up carrying on correspondences with 14 brutal serial killers. The book is a collection of those letters At least, the letters to her from the murderers--the author doesn't share her own back and forth with them but you can still get the gist of how she manipulated them while they tried to manipulate her.
Review Date: 3/10/2006

"Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons that I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Emerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through." - Frank, in The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

**

This is, beyond the gruesomeness, really an entertaining story. It is rich with black humor and interesting character development.

While contemplating the author's sanity and humanity, I was reminded of a time when Ken and I were discussing the whole idea of "write what you know". He took the stand that you could write about anything and do it well with enough talent and imagination and he backed up his idea by writing a poem from the point of view of a serial killer. The poem was so intensely disturbing that I asked him to destroy it, lest homicide detectives (coming across the poem on his computer under some sort of odd and coincidental circumstances) zeroed in on him as their main suspect.

I am sure Banks did much the same when writing this book about a family of sociopaths. He just had the nerve to see it published.
Review Date: 7/12/2006

Anita Shreve writes excellent character who are human, with all their mistakes and hurts and loves. In this case, a boy and girl meet at camp and fall in love. Thirty years later, the boy (now a middle-aged man) sees a photo and article of the girl from camp and dares to write to her. At the expense of both of their families, what follows is a passionate love, but ultimately, they pay the price.
Review Date: 3/10/2006

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