Review: Breaking the Chain: How I Banned Chain Restaurants From My Diet And Went From Full To Fulfilled

Breaking the Chain: How I Banned Chain Restaurants From My Diet And Went From Full To Fulfilled by Allyson Reedy

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Once the author has covered how difficult it is to avoid what she has defined as chain restaurants (definitely a YMMV definition), the book becomes stories of her experiences. The details about meals ate at local restaurants aren't that compelling to someone who hasn't or doesn't plan to eat at those restaurants. Reading over and over again about the inconvenience she caused her coworkers and friends seemed more about pointing out how special the author was for what she was doing rather than using the opportunity to educate why eating local might be a good idea. But, there's a reason for that. Reedy cause wasn't ideological, it was personal. She'd had repeatedly bad meals at the same chain restaurants. Also, I suspect she was looking for a blog topic and thought this was a good one. It probably would have made a better localized blog rather than a book with the word "Fulfilled" in the title.

Her writing style is light and conversational, and humorous if you find self admitted hunger tantrums funny.



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Review: Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The title tells you what you're going to read - the author's observations. These aren't only his observations on the rats in the particular alley he chose for his project, but also his observations about the people who make a living trying to get rid of rats when they are places that people don't want them to be. Each chapter attempts to deal with something related to the rats - rats and plague, how to trap a rat, rat diet, how the rat population of NYC was affected by 9/!!, but some times the author goes off topic or revisits a previous topic, giving the book a meandering feeling that can be frustrating to a reader who just wants to know what he discovered about the rats he observed.



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Review: Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The title tells you what you're going to read - the authors observations. These aren't only his observations on the rats in the particular alley he chose for his project, but also his observations about the people who make a living trying to get rid of rats when they are places that people don't want them to be. Each chapter attempts to deal with something related to the rats - rats and plague, how to trap a rat, rat diet, how the rat population of NYC was affected by 9/!!, but some times the author goes off topic or revisits a previous topic, giving the book a meandering feeling that can be frustrating to a reader who just wants to know what he discovered about the rats he observed.



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Review: A Discovery of Witches

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

My rating: 1 of 5 stars



I read this for a group challenge and boy oh boy, was it a challenge to finish this! It's not that this just isn't my kind of story, it's that there's the makings here for something good and the author ruins it with horribly characters that belong in the arrested development romance genre. For a really good review, I direct you to http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/158359633 , which I agree with 100%, minus the last paragraph.



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Review: Where Darkness Dwells

Where Darkness Dwells by Glen Krisch

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Definitely a 3 1/2 star book. Great sense of place, not only the oh-so-creepy tunnels, but also the above the ground town and surrounding country side. The plot is dense and twisted, maybe a little too much in the first third of the book, but when Krisch starts to bring everything together, he does so with just the right blend of exposition and action. So why not 4 stars? I think there are just too many characters in the book. There's George and Ellie's mom who makes a great monster, but only in what she does to the pregnant girlfriend of Jesse, who also doesn't add anything but shock and horror to the story. We're supposed to feel some empathy for Jesse discovering what happens to her, but given so little back story, the girl is a device, not a person. The same with the local "witch" and her son - they're side stories and devices and everything they do could have been done by one of the more developed and integral characters. These unnecessary characters got in the way of identifying with the central characters, and made the story just a little less scary when it could have been horrifying.



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Review: The Tiger's Wife

The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I'm torn between three and four stars. At the core this is not only a very good story, but some damn fine story telling. But I cound not shake the feeling that about one third of the book is padding. Dialogs and descriptions go on too long; there's an awful lot of gazing action at something that ends up having nothing to do with the story other than tell us that the character was searching, both internally and externally which the reader already knows about from the well told parts of the book. In the end, I'm being generous with the four stars because the two fables that the story is built around, The Tiger's Wife and The Deathless Man are great pieces of short fiction all on their own.



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Review: Troubles

Troubles by J.G. Farrell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Take Cold Comfort Farm, move it to 1919 Ireland, add a larger cast of characters and an author who wishes to educate at the same time he entertains and you have Troubles. The Majestic Hotel is one of the best buildings as a character I've ever read, and the family and lodgers who cross her crumbling threshold are gothic to the perfect degree. Farrell uses newspaper articles to keep the entire story from becoming farce, and those historical touchstones come at just the right frequency to remind the reader that no matter how loony the story, the Troubles were very real.



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Review: Gulliver Travels

Gulliver Travels by Justin Luke Zirilli

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Fun and light read that can turn to dark and serious in a paragraph. There's also a balancing act going on between true life and romantic fiction that is most noticeable with the fairy godfatherlike characters of Todd, the room mate and Sebastian, the website owner. But the places are well described and most of the plot all too believable, making for an interesting if not important read.



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Review: The Minstrel's Tale

The Minstrel's Tale by Anna Questerly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This is a book I think I would have loved as a child, maybe up to about 8 or 9 years old. The original fairy tales told by Amos, the Minstrel, have the detail that not only keep the reader reading, but also would have held the interest of a crowd of villagers who had plenty of experience with well told tales. The actual Minstrel's tale, of taking on an apprentice with his own very interesting back story, works for a young reader looking for safe escapism. However, there's something uneven about the characters themselves, Amos and Richard, in that their life experiences and personalities seem to to weaken and strengthen depending on plot twists, that even a child might question. Also, the bookends of the tale, a young contemporary girl who discovers the manuscripts when she begrudgingly accompanies her parents on a vacation to France is totally unnecessary.



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Review: The Marlowe Conspiracy

The Marlowe Conspiracy by M. G. Scarsbrook

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



There were parts of this book I loved (the use of well researched details of theatre life and the Star Chamber courts), parts that made me cringe (yes, it's fiction, but fiction based on something as well documented as the time line of Christopher Marlowe's short life shouldn't play fast and loose with that time line). Parts of the book seemed forced (Shakespear's created involvement in the last day's of Marlowe's life came from being an extreme fanboy? ), while others made perfect sense (a man capable of writing what Marlowe wrote should have been able to figure out that he wasn't being invited for a friendly drink in Depshire. There are plot developments that are convenient at one moment and forgotten when they wouldn't be (why would a clever man like Kit risk sneaking into Scadbury again when a night watchman had caused so much trouble the first time?). But in the end, my over all feeling was that this was a fun, far better than average piece of real person fan fiction, and that averaged out to three stars.



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