I’m not a great reader of biographies or even non-fiction. However, after learning so much about Alexander Hamilton through the musical, I decided to take a deep dive into the actual history of Hamilton’s life. I expected this biography would be interesting and informative, but I did not anticipate how moving and readable Chernow’s book would be. This book with 731 pages was practically a page turner. I’m a fan of pared down writing with no unnecessary diversions. If you read through my past reviews […]
Just go watch some DVD commentaries
I’m not sure who this book is for. As a die-hard Whedonite, I already knew most of it. For someone who wasn’t already a fan, why would they care? Plus, the author goes into a weird amount of detail about eeeeeeverything. I can understand a quick recap of what Buffy is about, maybe for those who only discovered Joss through Avengers. And I can understand slightly a recap of the Alien universe (Joss did most of the screenplay for Alien: Resurrection) for people who aren’t […]
A Nazi, a Fascist, a Communist, a novelist, a countrywoman, and a Duchess walk into a bar-and I don’t know what happened because I didn’t finish the book
I hate quitting on books. Hate. It. Because I’m a fast reader, I can usually convince myself to stick with my read. But I white-knuckled my way through about 100 pages of “The Six: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters” before I finally tossed it and moved on. Life’s too short. I’d never heard of the Mitford Sisters before but I guess they’re pretty famous. They were socialites who managed to deliver more drama than the Kardashians. Beautiful, witty, articulate and unpredictable, they were at […]
“He ate little but drank much and vomited proportionally.”
A Dead man in Deptford is one hell of a book. Imagining the fascinating life and early death of Christopher ‘Kit’ Marlowe – Elizabethan playwright, poet and alleged spy – on opening I was a little worried that the language might be too dense (’tis written in the parlance of the time) but before long I was putting off sleep to read more while gleefully noting all of my new favourite olde words and pretty much wanting to roll around in the wonderful writing. While […]
Culinary Catnip (for me, anyway)
I’m a complete sucker for food-related books, especially biographies and memoirs. If you have a recipe collection with a few essays woven in? I’m in heaven. The Apprentice was a stand-out in this regard, since it had food, biography, and France, so I was completely unable to resist its many many charms. More uncontrollable gushing can be found here! Sidebar: searching for an amazon link for this book mostly got me links to a certain reality TV series, and now my delightful high from this […]
Quick, and Fun, Like Riding a Bike (Not a Bronco)
Half Broke Horses is a “true-life” novel, meaning that Walls took all the stories she had heard and collected about her grandmother and wove them into a narrative, smoothing them into place in a coherent timeline. Since the novel is written in the first person, she admits to assuming her grandmother’s thoughts and exact words, and it’s probably best to just treat the whole thing as probable fiction – beyond that, though, many of the stories kind of defy belief! From learning to fly a […]
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