Title: A Little Life
Author: Hanya Yanagihara
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Summary: This book follows four friends that meet in college and explores their post-college life as they establish their careers and build relationships. The men are held together by Jude, whose traumatic childhood has made him fragile and fiercely protected by his three best friends.
Review: Wow. Even writing this review weeks after I finished it, I'm blown away. I loved the characters and their development and how the story takes them all to the very end. Jude is so damaged I can't even begin to fathom him. If there's anything negative I have to say, it's how many years Jude wastes staying so damage, but then again, that's obviously a huge part of the book. Go out and read this book. It's long, but it's worth it.
Time to write: 2:54
Showing posts with label Manhattan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Manhattan. Show all posts
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Book review: City on Fire
Title: City on Fire
Author: Garth Risk Hallberg
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Summary: Manhattan, 1976. Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney are estranged siblings and heirs to one of the city's great fortunes. Keith and Mercer are the mean who love Regan and William. Charlie and Samantha are two suburban teenagers enthralled with the up and coming Manhattan punk scene. Then there's the magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor. Finally, the detective that's trying to figure out the link between all of them and what they have to do with a shooting on New Year's Eve.
Review: This book is too freaking long (944 pages). This book needed a better editor. It just too long to develop and get all of the various back stories and everything jumped back and forth in time. The characters were interesting enough, everything was dragged out too long. Eventually I was so far in that I had put in the time, I might as well see it through, but save yourself and don't bother.
Time to write: 1:40
Author: Garth Risk Hallberg
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Summary: Manhattan, 1976. Regan and William Hamilton-Sweeney are estranged siblings and heirs to one of the city's great fortunes. Keith and Mercer are the mean who love Regan and William. Charlie and Samantha are two suburban teenagers enthralled with the up and coming Manhattan punk scene. Then there's the magazine reporter and his idealistic neighbor. Finally, the detective that's trying to figure out the link between all of them and what they have to do with a shooting on New Year's Eve.
Review: This book is too freaking long (944 pages). This book needed a better editor. It just too long to develop and get all of the various back stories and everything jumped back and forth in time. The characters were interesting enough, everything was dragged out too long. Eventually I was so far in that I had put in the time, I might as well see it through, but save yourself and don't bother.
Time to write: 1:40
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Book review: A Fall of Marigolds
Title: A Fall of Marigolds
Author: Susan Meissner
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Summary: This is a tale of two women--Clara and Taryn. Clara is working as a nurse on Ellis Island in 1911. She can't bear to return to Manhattan after witnessing the man she loved fall to his death during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Taryn's story takes place in Manhattan in 2011. Taryn's husband died on 9/11. Taryn was supposed to meet him in the Tower to tell him she was pregnant but she was running behind and she survived while her husband died. Their stories are blended by a beautiful scarf that provides comfort to both of them in their time of need.
Review: I wanted to like this book more. There was nothing wrong with it. It just wasn't great. Maybe I feel like it should have been more heavy. There are some heavy topics here but it didn't get too deep. Everything was pulled together in a pretty bow at the end and sometimes I get disappointed by those.
Time to write: 1:38
Author: Susan Meissner
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Summary: This is a tale of two women--Clara and Taryn. Clara is working as a nurse on Ellis Island in 1911. She can't bear to return to Manhattan after witnessing the man she loved fall to his death during the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Taryn's story takes place in Manhattan in 2011. Taryn's husband died on 9/11. Taryn was supposed to meet him in the Tower to tell him she was pregnant but she was running behind and she survived while her husband died. Their stories are blended by a beautiful scarf that provides comfort to both of them in their time of need.
Review: I wanted to like this book more. There was nothing wrong with it. It just wasn't great. Maybe I feel like it should have been more heavy. There are some heavy topics here but it didn't get too deep. Everything was pulled together in a pretty bow at the end and sometimes I get disappointed by those.
Time to write: 1:38
Book review: Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's post-crash Recruits
Title: Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's post-crash Recruits
Author: Kevin Roose
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Summary: Wall Street. It used to be the go-to job of Ivy grads looking to make money and set themselves up for a long boring career that would make them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. But how has the 2008 crash changed this career path and does it still hold the same appeal to today's generation getting out of college?
Review: I was intrigued by this book and the peek it provided into a world that holds no interest to me yet I'm sort of fascinated by it. What's the point of working 100 hour weeks if you can't enjoy life? I liked that some of these kids didn't buy into the hype. This world will always hold some appeal to some but it's promising to hear that it seems to have lost its luster.
Time to write: 1:56
Author: Kevin Roose
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Summary: Wall Street. It used to be the go-to job of Ivy grads looking to make money and set themselves up for a long boring career that would make them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. But how has the 2008 crash changed this career path and does it still hold the same appeal to today's generation getting out of college?
Review: I was intrigued by this book and the peek it provided into a world that holds no interest to me yet I'm sort of fascinated by it. What's the point of working 100 hour weeks if you can't enjoy life? I liked that some of these kids didn't buy into the hype. This world will always hold some appeal to some but it's promising to hear that it seems to have lost its luster.
Time to write: 1:56
Saturday, November 29, 2014
Book review: You Should Have Known
Title: You Should Have Known
Author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Summary: Grace Sachs has an enviable life--she lives in Manhattan with her pediatric oncologist husband and son. A successful therapist, her first book, You Should Have Known, is about to be released. The premise of her book is that women generally have only themselves to blame when their relationships begin to fall apart. Grace argues that problems of infidelity or poor money management or emotional unavailability are obvious very early on, but women have a tendency to overlook these things. In other words, they should have known.
When the mom of a kid at the school that Grace's son's attends is murdered, Grace is stunned when the cops show up at her door asking the whereabouts of her husband. He could never do such a thing--he's a pediatric oncologist loved by his patients and their parents. Turns out, he's also a sociopath. Grace's life as she knows it disintegrates.
Review: When I read books like this I can't help but wonder what I would do if I were in the same situation. Inevitably, the women in these books seem to have more resources than me. In Grace's situation, she has the luxury of escaping to her summer place in Connecticut, where she takes the next few months off so she can process what has happened and what her next steps will be. Granted, the summer place isn't winterized and Grace and her son end up moving there in the winter. So they have that to deal with. But both their Manhattan apartment and the Connecticut summer home are paid for because they've been in Grace's family for years.
I know I shouldn't take these books so literally--they're fiction. But I can't help it. In Grace's defense, she states a few times in the book that they couldn't afford their Manhattan apartment if they had to buy it with their salaries. But she still has it. And yes, I realize these people aren't real. But it's this inability for me to relate to her convenient financial situation that led me to give this four stars over five. If my husband turned out to be a sociopath, I would still have a mortgage to pay with two kids in daycare. I wouldn't have the ability to run away to our summer place. If I was lucky I'd have friends that would let me stay at their summer places, but I'd still need to work to pay for the aforementioned mortgage and other bills.
The rest of the book was great. There's the right amount of buildup to Grace's discovery, and her reaction feels real and raw. But I just couldn't get past my frustration (and envy?) that her financial situation oversimplified things for me.
Author: Jean Hanff Korelitz
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Summary: Grace Sachs has an enviable life--she lives in Manhattan with her pediatric oncologist husband and son. A successful therapist, her first book, You Should Have Known, is about to be released. The premise of her book is that women generally have only themselves to blame when their relationships begin to fall apart. Grace argues that problems of infidelity or poor money management or emotional unavailability are obvious very early on, but women have a tendency to overlook these things. In other words, they should have known.
When the mom of a kid at the school that Grace's son's attends is murdered, Grace is stunned when the cops show up at her door asking the whereabouts of her husband. He could never do such a thing--he's a pediatric oncologist loved by his patients and their parents. Turns out, he's also a sociopath. Grace's life as she knows it disintegrates.
Review: When I read books like this I can't help but wonder what I would do if I were in the same situation. Inevitably, the women in these books seem to have more resources than me. In Grace's situation, she has the luxury of escaping to her summer place in Connecticut, where she takes the next few months off so she can process what has happened and what her next steps will be. Granted, the summer place isn't winterized and Grace and her son end up moving there in the winter. So they have that to deal with. But both their Manhattan apartment and the Connecticut summer home are paid for because they've been in Grace's family for years.
I know I shouldn't take these books so literally--they're fiction. But I can't help it. In Grace's defense, she states a few times in the book that they couldn't afford their Manhattan apartment if they had to buy it with their salaries. But she still has it. And yes, I realize these people aren't real. But it's this inability for me to relate to her convenient financial situation that led me to give this four stars over five. If my husband turned out to be a sociopath, I would still have a mortgage to pay with two kids in daycare. I wouldn't have the ability to run away to our summer place. If I was lucky I'd have friends that would let me stay at their summer places, but I'd still need to work to pay for the aforementioned mortgage and other bills.
The rest of the book was great. There's the right amount of buildup to Grace's discovery, and her reaction feels real and raw. But I just couldn't get past my frustration (and envy?) that her financial situation oversimplified things for me.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Book review: The Book of Jonah
Title: The Book of Jonah
Author: Joshua Max Feldman
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Summary: Jonah's a lawyer at a Manhattan white shoe firm on the partner track. He has a girlfriend that he's pretty sure he's going to end up marrying one day. In the meantime he's also still seeing another girl on the side. He's on top of the world. Then Jonah goes to a party one night and has a disturbing vision. These visions continue and end up turning his life as he knew it upside down. He crosses paths with Judith Bulbrook, an intense woman with struggles of her own
Review: I loved the first part of this book and the end. The main reason I didn't give it five stars is there was a small part of the middle that seemed a little vague and meandering. Perhaps that was the point but it didn't really resonate with me. This book was different from anything I've read in a long time. Jonah's self-destruction is fascinating and Judith is an interesting character in her own right as well. Judith is set to conquer the world when tragedy changes her world forever. I love living vicariously through characters whose life takes a path that I didn't get a chance to explore.
Author: Joshua Max Feldman
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Summary: Jonah's a lawyer at a Manhattan white shoe firm on the partner track. He has a girlfriend that he's pretty sure he's going to end up marrying one day. In the meantime he's also still seeing another girl on the side. He's on top of the world. Then Jonah goes to a party one night and has a disturbing vision. These visions continue and end up turning his life as he knew it upside down. He crosses paths with Judith Bulbrook, an intense woman with struggles of her own
Review: I loved the first part of this book and the end. The main reason I didn't give it five stars is there was a small part of the middle that seemed a little vague and meandering. Perhaps that was the point but it didn't really resonate with me. This book was different from anything I've read in a long time. Jonah's self-destruction is fascinating and Judith is an interesting character in her own right as well. Judith is set to conquer the world when tragedy changes her world forever. I love living vicariously through characters whose life takes a path that I didn't get a chance to explore.
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