Category: Book Reviews

This one went over my head, I’m afraid, although I believe the gestalt is that Christianity provides the bases for morality and a worldview, and that without believing in objective morality, a person can have no purpose or direction in life. And without a higher purpose, man is no different from animals. Thus, the abolition Read more

The writing was so clever, so funny, so lighthearted even, with a charming interspersion of Russian names, which I happen to love for their complexity and diminutives, yet still it was such a slog. It almost presents as a narrative, with extensive forays into long lists. Lists of manners of torture, for instance, and the Read more

This book is well written, extensively researched, and easy to read. It was sad. Sorrowful. An overwhelming sense of dread followed the characters. It is not, however, my personal cup of tea when it comes to historical fiction. It was an unhappy mix of extraordinary detail, researched to the minutia, with artistic liberties taken by Read more

I fell in love with this book from the first few pages. The cowboys live a rough life, and plenty of it is unpleasant, but the narration remains lighthearted and funny (until it doesn’t). There are a million characters, but they’re all memorable and identifiable by their little quirks. And, of course, I love a Read more

Jane Austen books are undeniably entertaining. I will say, the characters in this book were more annoying than in most. Marianne was prejudiced, reckless, and cocksure, and I wasn’t sorry to see her humbled, but I didn’t find her eventual marriage believable or even satisfactory after how she belittled Colonel Brandon. I don’t think she Read more

My Antonia is beautifully written and has all the pieces to make a Great American Novel, including immigrants pursuing the American Dream, veneration of the land, and pioneerism, to name a few. Perhaps its only defect is that it is so little like a novel, aside from being incredibly romantic and sentimental. If one’s life Read more

I’m not a fan of science fiction or dystopian novels, but this may be my favorite of that category, perhaps because it was written in 1930, so the diction is charming.   The setting is a successful communist society, in that no one is starving and there is perfect societal stability, through scientific advances and social Read more

This was a fantastic recommendation from my mother. 5/5 stars. It was scandalous in its time but sounds virtuous to modern ears, at least my modern ears. It is an epistolary novel, meaning it is a compilation of letters and diary entries, and told from many perspectives (maybe 6? Maybe 8?) Yet the character list Read more

I’m not normally a fan of sci-fi, and I suppose I’m not in this instance, either. But it was more interesting than I thought it would be originally. It was an incredibly ambitious project, to try to write the origin story of an entire galaxy. It was a bit tiring to accept the premise that Read more