User Profile

some hit, some miss. but some that hit were incredibly funny: shout-out to George Kaufman for 'annoy kaufman, inc' and Robert Benchley's 'it's fun to be fooled...it's more fun to know' and - believe it or not - woody allen's 'the kugelmass episode'

I was expecting something more from the author of Unwritten but this was a typical, contrived high school movie. it wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly good either.

his is why I go to bookclub - I enjoyed this book about disassembling a tiny newfoundland fishing village and it's stubborn patriarch. and I liked that it wasn't all 'henry david thoreau' (or even gary paulsen come to think of it) and the guy cannot survive alone, be it the weather, the weevils, the madness of having no human company. but going to bookclub made me realize that every tiny possible death that happened, did happen. and that he never made it off those rocks with his dead grandson in his arms.

the third and final memoir in her series. I still loved the first one the best, but the first half of this book was quite funny in its own right. interestingly enough, if you just read this one, you'd wonder why someone deigned her life worthy of a memoir - it's not terribly exciting or pressing - but I imagine there was a clamor for her first 2 books to continue.

still kicking around after 10 years of being published, this book was supposed to be a bible of sorts for meditation. too bad I'm not ready to actually start meditating yet. this book is really meant to be an aid as you start up your practice and contains lots of imagery (which I sort of hated) to help in the meditation process. I found him too goofy at times, too medical at others. and certain phrases he loves to use trigger me to think blah-blah-blah.

yup, I'm too old for this title but I read it anyhow. or skimmed it because it was god awful. even the things that had turned out horribly for her - like getting a Brazilian - was still enthusiastically recommended. smacks of inexperienced youth that was programmed to follow any patriarchal, marketing technique. yuck. not to mention, she's a little full of herself and her youth to think these 101 things can only be done before 30 (ie: before the old, married, pregnant part). as my teen said, she made her journal entries be the goal: live my life or you'll be missing out. ppttttt.

meh. it was interesting to read - a great start with a desire to see the mystery unfold. but it did so at too slow a pace, and without enough reward when the ending became clear

I was curious to re-read this book as an adult, or I mean precisely, an adult mother of teenage children. I remembered the stories being youth centered, meanwhile, they were not (did I only focus on the young one due to my age back then? or did I confuse it with Margaret Laurence books, like "bird in the house"?) And I remembered the mother/stepmother as hated by myself and the protagonist, but not so - rose has room in herself for much more layered emotions, including admiration and compassion. but the biggest surprise was finding, within it's pages, a story I had vividly remembered and retold many times in my life only to be NOT as I remembered. in my youth and innocence, I saw the protagonist as a victim of an action. with my matured viewpoint, I could see she had a more complicit role.

i read this one. often, when it's a comedy book, i'll get the audiobook instead. this one i read.
in comedy, delivery is everything. the written word just doesn't do it justice. i laughed out loud 2, maybe 3 times. but mostly it was a breezy, easy to read account of how this girl from 'the office' got to where she is. in that aspect - it was interesting: she's the writer for 'the office' and had a hit off-broadway show she wrote and starred in. it's nice to know that plain people who seem to make it big out of nowhere actually have a long path that took them there.

this was a good primer for someone who is going to read anne frank: diary of a young girl. it spans her entire life and so it covers alot of the political background of the time (even things that anne herself doesn't comment on in her diary). there are lots of asides that are labelled 'snapshots' and they do a good job of expaining world events or political movements in the context of her life. all in all, a great book that will emphasize - once again - that anne frank was not only a real person, but also a real talent that was lost when nazism spread across europe.

supposed to be a trilogy. so far it's so-so. I'm learning stuff about the civil rights movement and that's good. not sure it's a self-aggrandizing effort from a politician or a proper piece of history. i'll read the rest and assess.

it's sedaris, need I say more?

a marathon of a book.
upon finishing it, i feel both relieved it's over, and proud i made it through
that said, the content is so dense, and my grasp of the politics of King Henry VIII's court is so tenuous, that i often felt out of my depth. yes, i better understand the papacy and it's underlinings as a power source rather than a religious one. yes, i see the political alliances (and debts) of marriages within European powers. yes, i better understand the era's superstition - mired in the plague and other easy deaths. but these were things i did know, however casually. new information was harder to process... the king, in his need to be exalted, has no real friends? the construction of the Church of England was more a money grab than a new marriage for Henry VIII?

this is supposedly the beginning of science fiction and - after you get used to the archaic language and his use of the main character postulating theories before the reader has a chance to formulate his own - it's actually quite a gripping story. i was on the edge of my seat at times.
i read this alongside ds as we did this novel as a literature study. there were many times that ds was supposed to create his own sci-fi situations, but his scenarios always seem to involve the rich gaining control of the army and moving to a deserted island. this may just be a reflection of how little sci-fi he's read in the past.