Anastasia by Carolyn Meyer

Anastasia: The Last Grand Duchess, Russia, 1914 by Carolyn Meyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this simplified look at Russian history through the eyes of a young child.

View all my reviews

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Total weirdness. Made very little sense in the beginning. The issue of the daemons was pretty straightforward, but "dust" still basically makes very little sense. Eventually, the other characters explained to Lyra (and to me) what was going on but I wasn't that impressed by then.

I like that this takes place in an alternate universe that acknowledges the possible existence of ours. The story seems like it would be especially fun if you first read it as a child. I also like that this is the anti-Narnia series (though I did love Narnia).

View all my reviews

Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hsieh sounds like a lot of fun. I appreciate that he considered his career in terms of greater life satisfaction, and did some reading on the topic. I appreciate that he also applied these principals to his employees and clients. He's done a great service to business in this country, and I hope the trends he's created continue to grow.

The book could definitely have used a ghostwriter though. Some parts just seemed extraneous or annoying... the sections on raves or his apartment, for example.

View all my reviews

Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I actually took an edX course about this topic and read the book as part of the course, but most of the lectures are covered in this book. Although this book is primarily about solving problems in developing countries, and all of the examples deal with India specifically, the way of analyzing problems and testing solutions really changed the way I think about social and political problems in this country. We need to stop philosophizing, guessing, and bickering and just do case studies of possible solutions.

View all my reviews

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#3) by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

(#3) This one is much better than the second one. It has a lot of moving parts and interesting and developed new characters. I recently reread this and seeing Snape's intentions in the correct light is really interesting.

Favorite parts: discussions about Hogsmeade, Lupin, Scabbers, Sirius Black, Hermoine's school schedule, the introduction of Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang, the Hippogryph, and of course the map!

View all my reviews

Virtual Book Club- May 2013

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

In case you want to follow along with us, our May book club selection is Water for Elephants. We talk about it on Google+ Hangouts at the end of the month. Let me know if you want to join us.

Since I started this blog, this is the first book I'm reading (finally!) that my dad actually read. He read it shortly after I asked him to join Goodreads, and his review of it was, "Needs more elephants." I love you, dad.

View all my reviews

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jaime, Michele, and I started a virtual book club, and Michele picked this for our first book in April. [Lot's of spoilers below.]

Here's what I liked: he tried to write a book about male platonic love. Not friendship, but love. He contrasted it to male romantic love, though he didn't necessarily do a great job with that, maybe because it was unclear if one of the gay characters was actually gay, and their was no part of the book from the perspective of the actually gay character. The least compelling relationship was the heterosexual romantic love which seemed opportunistic at best.

I also liked how he layered Moby Dick, and the fictional book that President Affenlight wrote about Moby Dick, and the fictional book called The Art of Fielding. Male platonic love, obsession, and introspective panic are all layered on top of each other.

Harry is infinitely more interesting after he starts freaking out. The line about how he expected life to improve little by little, but that that was not reality could have been my own diagnosis, and has stayed with me.

I also like Pella eating her earrings, because why not?

Here's what I didn't like. There's some problem with the pacing of this book, it goes very very slowly for the first 60% or so of the book, and then it moves quickly and somewhat unbelievably towards the end. My biggest problem with the plot is that Schwartz forgives both Harry and Pella. In real life, I think he could forgive one of them, either one, depending on how passionately he felt for one or the other, but not both.

The ending also felt like forced drama. Otherwise, no one is forgiven, nothing in particular happens, and everything just ends. But the baseball ending was forced drama enough- the rowboat scene is just too much. Oh look at us! Our friendship is so deep that we can rely on each other to grave rob! Sure.


View all my reviews

Little Men by Louisa May Alcott

Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

More of a children's book than Little Women. The boys have little adventures, and none of them have very distinct personalities except Dan. The famous Jo March is so changed she's basically unrecognizable. Alcott follows her old formula and throws in a family death but it's not so central to the story this time so it's not very moving.

View all my reviews

The Magician King by Lev Grossman

The Magician King by Lev Grossman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So fun! I read through it voraciously. I liked it much better than the first book, The Magicians. I am now holding my breath for book 3. This one was more Chronicles of Narnia than Harry Potter. Note that these books are not for children. There is explicit sexual violence in this one.

View all my reviews

Ajax Penumbra 1969 by Robin Sloan

Ajax Penumbra 1969 by Robin Sloan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cute back story of Mr. Penumbra. His adventure makes more sense than the one in Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.

View all my reviews